Chapter One.
For so thou didst ordain when thou createdst me,
saying, "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."
I.
Born to a military family, I had generations of service behind me. Great-grandfathers from the USA and England fought in the War of 1812, the US Civil War, and both World Wars. My maternal great-grandfather was wounded serving with the Devonshires at Arras, and my grandfather was in 8th US Army Air Force intelligence in World War Two. My father was first a Royal Navy, then a RAF pilot, decorated for gallantry in the air during the Fastnet Race disaster of 1979, when his crew flew back-to-back shifts over the Summer leave period to rescue stranded sailors caught in a storm. My first home was RNAS Culdrose, and my childhood was that of a peripatetic ‘pad brat’; moving from base to base: Culdrose, Shawbury, Cosford, Chivenor. My earliest memories recall my father landing his Wessex helicopter in a field near our house, and taking my sister and I for joyrides in the days when pilots could get away with such antics. I wanted to be in the Armed Forces for as long as I could remember.
My supercilious German teacher once asked, “What do you want to do when you leave school?” I replied that I would join the Army. “You will never join the Army,” he said. “The Army requires discipline.” I was not a model student.
After university, I applied for the Regular Commissions Board at Westbury and passed. I was going to Sandhurst and I was going to be an Army officer. I enjoyed Sandhurst, spending longer there than most due to an ankle injury. I did well on the commissioning course, but my time in the rehabilitation Lucknow Platoon gave me the physical fitness that would stand me in good stead throughout my career. The daily developmental thrashings fixed any mental weakness. I left physically strong and with a new robustness; pain was now something I knew I could beat, and that physical fitness, in spite of numerous injuries, is something I have maintained ever since. I commissioned into the Royal Welch Fusiliers (RWF), aged 26, slightly older than my peers. I was fit, strong, and with a passion arduous infantry soldiering.
After Sandhurst, primarily a leadership course that turns out the generic Army officer, the second phase of my training as a Second Lieutenant was the Platoon Commander’s Course at the Infantry Battle School in Brecon. This is where the infantry is forged; all levels of command pass through there, and learn their craft over the unforgiving terrain of Sennybridge Training Area. Brecon had been months of pushing ourselves.