Page 10 - QARANC Spring 2024

10 The Gazette QARANC Association
Returning as Colonel Commandant ‘feels like a homecoming’
Andrea Lewis is the QARANC’s latest Colonel Commandant, bringing a wealth of experience from the NHS and the military. Gazette editor Steve Bax finds out about her life and accomplishments, as well as plans for the role.
Colonel Andrea Lewis RRC was appointed as the newest QARANC Colonel Commandant in July 2023 having already blazed a trail in the NHS and the Army. But the former Warrington lass, who now lives close to Sandhurst with her husband, admits: “Nursing hadn’t come into my mind when I was at school, despite coming from a family of midwives.”
Andrea’s grandmother was constantly trying to persuade her to become a nurse, but she constantly said no, until at 16 when that all changed. Andrea got a Saturday job at her local BUPA hospital making tea and coffee for the patients and generally lending a helping hand. It enabled her to get to see the nurses in action and the impact they were having, as well as an example of great teamwork. “That triggered me then thinking ‘oh my god, I really want to be like them”, Andrea recalls, and of course her grandmother was delighted.
She applied to Leighton Hospital as it was nearby and was part of the first cohort for Project 2000, a new style of training for nurses which involved a mixture of university study at Chester and coming into the hospital. Andrea’s grandfathers had both served in the military, the Royal Air Force and the Army respectively, but she only began to think about joining herself when her student nurse flatmate came home with information about Army nursing. One trip to the careers office later and Andrea was “completely hooked in” and at the start of a lifelong adventure.
Andrea became ‘Private Lancaster’ and did her basic training at Lichfield in January 1994. She remembers it being a grueling baptism of fire involving physical exercises and running with weight. The instructors did things that wouldn’t happen today, such as coming to their locker and bed inspections armed with a bat and menaces! She jokes that it
This first posting really hooked me in and the thought of going for commission was attractive – the matrons were supportive and encouraging
made her later training at Sandhurst seem like “a breeze”.
Andrea’s first posting was the Queen Elizabeth Military Hospital in Woolwich, and it was also her first time living in London, a “big deal” for her at the time. “I absolutely loved it,” she recalls. “This first posting really hooked me in and the thought of going for commission was attractive – the matrons were supportive and encouraging.” Andrea was at Woolwich and at the Cambridge Military Hospital, just prior to their closure.
From here she was deployed to Bosnia, where a civil war was raging. Her commissioning course was deferred because it was felt that a deployment would be a good experience, and with NATO on the ground, an additional field hospital was set up in Tomislavgrad, in the hills. Andrea and her colleagues ended up seeing fewer casualties than expected, allowing her to soak up the experience of being away and seeing the world.
She excelled in her officer training and, in 1996, was posted to Frimley, as Lt Lancaster. She was recommended to be an instructor and ended up going back to Lichfield but this time as a Platoon
Regimental Mess Dinner at Roberson House: Colonel Sharon Findlay, Maj (Rtd) Kerry Clarke, Andrea and Maj (Rtd) Fiona Grist