Page 4 - Qaranc Spring 2014

2 QARANC THE GAZETTE
Editor’s report
What a year that was, I cannot believe it has been a year since I retired from the Army full time. Still feels like it was only the other day, however the Reserve, QA Association AMS Museum and the QA Gazette are keeping me busy.
I had the opportunity to go to Washington (and New York) to watch Maj Hughes and the team run the Marine Corps Marathon, what an excellent couple of days, they all did so well, we were able to be at the beginning during and at the end to see them coming in, the SG must be deaf in one ear with all the shouting I did. (Wow! they all looked remarkably fresh) if you ever get a chance to take part do so as it is a great experience (every sportsman needs a supporter!! and those who know me know that it would take the ultimate miracle to get me to do one (or even run for that matter) I take my hat off to them and all of the injured service personnel who
also took part.
Once again there have been a good amount of varied and
interesting submissions for the Gazette, apologies for those that did not get published in the last edition hopefully I have managed to fit them all in this time.
I would like to apologise for missing the obituary for Molly Finch, sorry I hope my omission did not cause too much stress.
Thank-you Millbank Branch for inviting me to their Christmas lunch. Thank you for the great company, lovely food and what an excellent location. I managed to control my fear of heights and soon got down to enjoying the company and forgetting how high up I was, I even won a prize in the raffle (no it was not a fix) ask Heather how many she won!
Here’s hoping you will all enjoy another good read and it gives you the spur to contribute further. Have a fantastic year Editor
DANS foreword
The Corps has continued to achieve a great deal over the last six months and the record in this issue of the Gazette only represents the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Afghanistan continues to be Defence and the Army’s Main Effort and we continue to prepare HCAs and nurses for deployment on HERRICKs 19 and 20. The training mission in Kabul will continue following our withdrawal from Helmand and we will be maintaining our professional footprint on what will be Operation TORAL. Preparation of units committed to contingent operations is running furiously and concurrently to HERRICK keeping the AMS Training Centre. I briefly visited a squadron of 16 Medical Regiment preparing for their role in the Air Assault Task Force this January and they were proving to be a very professional and competent team. Then there’s our commitment to UK Resilience with the Commonwealth Games later this year in Glasgow along with a potentially exciting Defence Engagement programme which will include overseas exercises and exchanges to countries that we may not have traditionally worked with as well as some old friends. You will be pleased to see that despite being extremely busy our soldiers and officers are managing to play a bit of sport and to enjoy some adventurous training. There is great diversity too, from the USMC Marathon in Washington DC to trekking the Sahara, the Nijmegan Marches and closer to home the Fastnet Yacht Race!
Army Transformation continues with
re-basing, restructuring and reforming shaping our future. Troops and units are already coming back from Germany and the nascent Defence Primary Healthcare Service, where many of our nurses and HCAs are already working, are responding to shifting demands not only of relocation but of new concepts of operation. The Reactive Force being very high readiness and high readiness elements of the Army and the Adaptive Force which includes the Reserves who will be engaged in follow on missions as well as defence engagement (at home and overseas) and homeland resilience. What does this mean to our Corps? We need to be ‘forward leaning’ and in the vanguard not only as a physical presence, we already have QAs deployed and employed in every AMS unit as well as in exciting Defence and Army staff jobs. We need to be polyglots; that is not only understanding and speaking the language of the AMS fluently but that of the Army as a whole, the other two Services and Defence. We also need to continuously develop our ability to operate with our Allies and I intend to exploit the commemorations of World War 1 that will take place over the next few years as a platform.
As I wrote in my previous Foreword, our single aim is to optimise capability to meet the needs of Army 2020 and the most important part of that is you. You are the AMS’s and the Army’s strategic edge; high calibre and highly committed health and care professionals. Reserves, Regulars and Veterans alike you all have a contribution to make. So what do we
see changing over the next few years and what do we need to do to meet the challenge? We will leave Helmand and we will need to be mission ready for whatever meeting engagement or intervention happens next. You will see an account in this edition of my visit to UK Medical Group in Camp Bastion with CNO Wales just before Christmas. The reason for that and my visit last summer with CNO England was to give them a better understanding of what our nurses and HCAs do in the field and to identify better ways of working across the public and private sectors effectively setting the conditions for the integrated approach to operations. That is using the best people for the job and calling on colleagues from other organisations when we need to and treating them as one of us. So, I urge you to swamp the Editor with anecdotes of your activities and achievements as we are all making history. Lets dive deeper to expose more of that iceberg.
This will be the last time that I refer to Regular, Reserves and Veterans because we are all one Corps family including our families who intimately support us. We could not do the job without them and I thank you all for the hard work that you continue to do despite the frictions caused by transforming the Army whilst in contact. I am proud to serve you as your Director in this challenging time. Helen and I look forward to meeting as many of you as we can over the next few months.
Sub Cruce Candida in Friendship and Mateship