Page 76 - The Royal Lancers Chapka 2017

74 REGIMENTAL JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL LANCERS (QUEEN ELIZABETHS’ OWN)
From the Ridiculous to the Sublime: 2017 – A Year of Contrasts
Ayear ago to the day I was frantically trying to complete my tax return before the imminent deadline, with insufficient financial information to hand, using intermittent wifi in the BATUS officers’ mess, and cursing. It was a completely nor- mal afternoon in the life of the brigade chief of staff. I should have been helping to write the BATUS 2017 exercise programme and battle group missions but on some days real life has to take front seat, and of course that plan was soon comprehensively de- feated (DEFEATED, DEFEATed?) in its opening engagements with marauding in-year savings measures. So, plan early, plan twice... Meanwhile, the rest of 12th Armoured Infantry Brigade was probably enjoying a respite from my increasingly flustered attempts to impose a reasonable degree of predictability and co- herence on training and operational programmes that neverthe- less remained in permanent, bewildering flux.
One year later, I find myself far away from the jittery turbulence of a deployable brigade headquarters, enjoying the second term of three on the Advanced Command and Staff Course. In fact, enjoying is the wrong word. Without wishing to sound too much like the class creep, toadying around and currying favour, I am loving it. Noting that, even in the indomitable Maslow’s mind, needs come before wants, the list of causes ought probably to start with a pay rise. Wanted? Of course. Needed? Well prob- ably: I married last year. Beyond the purely transactional, how- ever, lie a series of opportunities that fall neatly into that social scientist’s grubby terminology of ‘self-actualisation’. Ignoring the military completely for a moment, I have the opportunity for
the first time in many years, to relearn the piano and find that time and application are wonderful determinants of progress – it is quite heartening. I have also I suspect (looking anywhere but the mirror) shed those few pounds that life in a busy headquar- ters may have conferred on me last year. Its pound of flesh if you like, but in reverse.
The course itself is very well designed, well taught, challenging, fun, and – I expect – useful. I will spare you the details and just highlight some highlights. Nigel Farage may not be your cup of vegan, herbal tea but he spoke brilliantly and persuasively, if on the wrong topic. Pete Goss thrilled us with tales of team leader- ship on the high seas without ever once saying ‘I’ but perhaps pushed that virtuous point a touch too far to windward. Ed- die Jones was just brilliant: clever, honest, experienced, slightly rude – a model for us all. I could go on. Some would no doubt quibble that the course is overly academic but then as Lieu- tenant General Sir William Butler once said: “The nation that insists upon drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards.” It is 33,000 words in five essays if you do the Master of Arts, 22,000 in four if you do not. Hardly life-threatening and one certainly learns a lot. At the same time, weekends are sacrosanct, leave is entirely predict- able, and it is a big deal if a lecture moves by thirty minutes in the monthly programme. Thinking back to where I was a year ago, I think I know where I would rather be...
WJRR
A walk in the park