Page 80 - RADC 2017

The last of the Few!
A final muster of ex-RAMC Apprentices
Colonel Andy Yates, AH Defence Healthcare Education & Training
This article marks the conclusion of the RAMC Apprentice College while we have enough ex-but still serving-Apprentices to fill a photograph!
As can be seen from the photograph,
we still have eight RAMC (although one
was RADC before commissioning), three QARANC (there should have been five
but two couldn’t make it) and one RADC Officers who have continuously served in the Regular Army since leaving the College.
‘This is an island. At least I think it’s an island. That’s a reef out in the sea. Perhaps there aren’t any grown-ups anywhere.” The boys understand that the ruling
order of society that they are used to has disappeared.’
Lord of the Flies William Golding
The idea of ‘Boy Soldiers’ is not new
and a brief glimpse back at our Corps history records Hospital Apprentice Andrew Fitzgibbon, aged 15 years, winning a Victoria Cross during the capture of Taku Forts, China in 1860. The RAMC formalised its
junior soldier intake and on 4th February 1955 fourteen Apprentices arrived from
the Army Apprentice School Chepstow to establish the RAMC Apprentice College within the RAMC Depot & Training Centre in Church Crookham. In 1964 the Depot, and College, moved into its final home in Keogh Barracks in Mychett, near Aldershot. The College went from strength to strength and from its humble beginnings it grew to a point where, at any one time, approximately 200 Apprentices were in training.
The routine was a mixture of Military and Medical training and Education, and in any given week an Apprentice could be seen in action on the drill square, in the model ward trying to understand the intricacies
of a ‘Many-tailed Bandage’, sweating
over equilateral equations and digging a two-man fire trench (to ‘Stage 3’). If this wasn’t enough, we had sports afternoons three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday), hobbies evenings twice a week and Church Parade on Sunday. There was, of course, still time to ‘bump’ floors, polish boots and be inspected!
To ensure that there was an element of
organisation and to engender competition the Apprentices were divided into three ‘Houses’; ‘Harden’, ‘Chavasse’ and Martin Leake’, although other ‘Houses’ came
into existence for short periods to cope with increased Apprentice numbers. Each House had a ‘House Officer’ and ‘House Sergeant’, and then just to add to the confusion, a number of the senior intake held command appointments, Apprentice Sergeant Major and each House had an Apprentice Sergeant & Corporal and three Apprentice Lance Corporals, what could possibly go wrong with this William Golding social experiment!
The ‘Apprenticeship’ lasted for 18 months culminating in a Corporals Course (which enabled promotion to substantive Sergeant) and two subjects from the Education for Promotion Certificate scheme which gave us a massive head-start on
the ‘Fourteen Weekers’ – Adult Recruits. Once we ‘Passed-Out’ of the College,
we entered Adult Service as a Medical Assistant Class 3 (or Class 2 for those
who had selected Medical Assistant (now Combat Medical Technician) as their main
Photograph taken outside the former RAMC Apprentice College, Keogh Barracks.
Photographer - Sgt Sandile Dlamini RAMC (AMS Corps Recruiting Team)
Front L – R: App A’Lee, App Fletcher, App Moore, App Cpl Reeves, App Wiles, App O’Callaghan, App LCpl McCulloch Rear L – R: App Sgt O’Brien, App Yates, App Cpl Woolsey, App Cpl Earnshaw, App Cpl Meredith, App LCpl Hall Absent on duty (collecting the tea urn and cakes for Miss Sibbald in the WRVS room) App Marshall, App Woodall
78 RADC BULLETIN 2017
MEMORIES