Christmas!

Hello all

First  off my sincere apologies for not posting for so long.  The frantic end of term preparations, then a very busy Christmas, followed by an even more frantic start to the senior term have made things difficult.  However I now have a moment to breathe, and so will attempt to recap a pretty eventful month or so.

 The intermediate term ended in the now familiar flurry of ever so important tasks and predominantly hour after hour on the Drill Square.  Marching about with a big band and all the pomp and ceremony  can certainly have its moments, but I think you would struggle to find anyone outside the Household Division who could condone the about of Square Bashing we do here.  As the cold weather set in before Christmas we spent increasingly long periods plodding about, and popping painkillers to dull the ache in one’s arm as we held our Rifles in ever more inventive stress positions .  If only the audience knew beneath the rigid formations and perfect dressing, were coming on a thousand anesthetized Cadets subtly shaking under the pain and relentlessly thinking of anything else other than the existing spectacle .  I suppose however, we don’t have more guns and we certainly don’t have more tanks than any everyone else, but we’re definitely the best at marching, so it’s only fitting that the Officer Corps spend at least some time huffing and puffing on the Square.

During the Christmas break  a group of us undertook a gruelling, horrible expedition in the form of Exercise Piste Cadet.  Officially a week of extreme ski touring, and mountaineering in Chamonix, it was more akin to the barely hidden Exercise Pissed Cadet which we had actually been planning.  While some members of the group may have spent more time in Chamonix’s bars than its demanding couloirs, a fair few of us did charge up hills and slide down valleys again.  The snow was truly epic and we got some of the best steep and deep skiing i’ve ever seen in our New Years week, so all was not wasted!

 

The last two weeks then have seen our return to the Academy and a grateful charge into the Senior term.  Happily this return was not accompanied by the empty stomach disappointment of returning for the Intermediate term, and spirits were far higher than expected.  This new found happiness was compounded by a number of new privileges in our sixth former role within the institution.  At an average age of about 25 we’re now allowed to go to the Cinema, and even to Dinner in Camberley all on our own, we don’t have to march when out of uniform, and we’ve been given the dubious pleasure of inspecting the Junior Cadets.

We do of course jest, but there has been a perceptible shift in the way we are treated, both by our rapidly softening Colour Sergeants and more generally by the other Cadets, who misguidedly seem to think that our new ‘Senior term’ rank slides actually mean we are more adept at anything than they are.  Of course we are not, we’re just 4 months closer to the end than they are.   

The course has however markedly changed, rather than chasing Motorised Russian Divisions around the Home Counties we’re now fighting Insurgents who appear deceptively like the Taliban, and learning how to operate in a more current environment.  This is welcome to all, and despite the growing hours spent doing homework  the added relevancy helps to mitigate the 14 hour days.  Of course we’ll regret forgetting all that tank on tank conventional war stuff when we all end up in Iran in 5 years, but for now we’re very happy learning who not to shoot in Afghanistan, and worrying about how we look chatting to John Snow during the Channel 4 News in a few years.

The first big exercise is looming large on the horizon and I suspect after that will be my next report here. In the mean time I leave you with some pictures of our charging about in the Alps, and the hope that, shock horror this term might actually be a fun one!