Page 9 - Cormorant Issue 19 - 2016

End of Course Dinner
teams and OGDs. The course also provides numerous opportunities
to ‘escape’ the Defence Academy. HCSC 16 included a 5 day trip to Whitehall, during which students visited Departments of State and met with the Prime Minister, as well as a whistle-stop tour of Europe, taking in NATO HQs, the EU and US COCOMs.
The nal visit of the course was the famous HCSC Staff Ride. This took students from Portsmouth to the Normandy Beaches, across Maginot
The combination of lectures, visits, exercises, syndicate room discussions, reside chats and re ection time ensures that HCSC students have a genuine opportunity to develop their personal way of thinking, leading and commanding. The graduates of HCSC 16 certainly departed with an improved understanding of the contemporary strategic environment; the value of historical study; and the conduct of operational art in a truly joint, combined and interagency environment (not to mention a HCSC king sher tie!). More than this though, the students left with a fantastic new network of trusted friends which will endure. If you are ever given the opportunity to attend the course, grab it with both hands because it
is a truly rewarding and enlightening experience. For the students of HCSC 16, the course certainly lived up to its excellent reputation; I can only hope that the same will be true of HCSC 17 (now that I am on the staff!).
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“Nine-tenths of tactics are certain and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the King sher ashing across the pool, and that is the test of generals” T E Lawrence
“HCSC students have a genuine opportunity to
develop their personal way
of thinking, leading and commanding. ◆◆◆
Line and into Belgium. The ride delivered 35 stands over 10 days, each of which was linked to a student’s Staff Ride Paper and
set in historic context by one of
the course’s outstanding King’s College London academics. Stands ranged from the siege of Chateaux Gaillard in 1196, through the Franco Prussian War in 1870 and onto the more familiar campaigns associated with two world wars, covering signi cant geographical and intellectual ground in the process!
A Staff Ride Stand attracts Bovine interest