Its been one week
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
On the 17th of October last year I got the chance of a lifetime to do my fourth year work experience at Redford Barracks in Edinburgh. Before I went I had several steoro-typical views about the Army, so I thought I would write this guide entry to dispel (or maybe comfirm) the views held by a lot of people. And plus I had to write it anyway for an English personal experience essay...
I had been looking forwad to this experience for months, and before I knew it, the time was nearly upon me. The day before I left I was beginning to get slightly nervous. I had watched all the television programmes such as “Soldiers to Be”, “Guns and Roses” and I was wondering what exactly I had let myself in for! I even woke up at three o’clock in the morning the night before I left and sorted through my bag for the tenth time, checking I hadn’t forgotten anything. The great thing about it was that I hadn’t paid for anything, so if I didn’t like it, it didn’t matter. Even my transport was paid for, so when I got on the train I flashed my Ministry of Defence travel warrant importantly at the ticket collector each time he passed me.
When I got into Edinburgh Haymarket a minibus took me into Redford where I met up with everybody else, who to my relief, looked just as lost as I did. All I had been given concerning what I was going to do all week was an “Outline Training Program”, and that consisted entirely of acronyms. All I knew was that I had an “APFA” after I had been issued my “DPM’s” and “RCF’s”. I soon found out that meant that after I had been given my camouflage clothes and rucksack I would be getting an assessment of my physical health and fitness. I was the youngest there, everyone else was in fifth/sixth year or had left school, so I was worried that I wouldn’t be as strong as them. The assessment was how many press-ups and sit-ups I could do in two minutes, followed by a one and a half mile run. I ended up doing better than a lot of people, even the boys, which was a big boost to my confidence.
There were ten girls and thirty boys, and all us girls slept in the one barrack room. The first night was a great time to get to know everyone. I was lucky to be in with a great crowd of girls, which was my biggest fear over with. I was afraid that they would all be cliquish and I would be ignored but, as it happened, nobody knew anyone which was amazing to think because after just five days when it was time to go home, it felt as if we had been friends for years, not just days.
We were split into four squadrons of ten when we first arrived and any activities we did went towards points for our squadron. I was in squadron two, the winning squadron! Our leader was Nichol from the Highland Fusiliers. He came everywhere with us and was a great motivating influence. The week was not as physically demanding as I expected. I am not complaining, although I was surprised. The focus was “more on brain than brawn” said our Recruiting and Liaison officer Lt Col (Ret’d) Halford-MacLeod, who was about 60 years old and quite a character. He was continually reminding us that “it is all terribly exciting to have you here”. We started to doubt his words however at the top of our fifth peak of our thirteen-mile-seven-peak hill walk in the Pentlands. Where were the brains in that?
There were a lot of command tasks to do, which was to see how we coped working in teams. These included activities such as successfully getting all our team, any equipment used and the yellow ammo box across a “minefield” which was marked off with white tape. We weren’t so good at that, losing three team members and a plank of wood within the first few minutes, but soon everyone was working together brilliantly and operating smoothly. This amazed me because usually I can’t get anything done without constantly bickering and falling out. After the tasks we were taken down to Dreghorn Barracks for the evening where we could do either indoor rock-climbing or football.
Wednesday evening was a formal dinner and very different from our usual meals in the mess hall. All the boys had scrubbed up quite nicely in their dinner suits and the girls had on their evening dresses. It was a proper occasion, although when they said “formal dinner” I was expecting a nice hall with chandeliers and violinists playing in the corner, not a portacabin with a hole in the ceiling. The Army did know how to make a place look good though, when I walked inside the cabin was candle lit, with tartan tablecloths, silver goblets and candelabras. A piper playing “Flower of Scotland” signalled that dinner was served. There were a few rules I wasn’t used to, for instance you couldn’t eat until the Colonel started eating and I had over four sets of cutlery to choose from. We were given champagne to drink, although we found out later that is was only 0.1%, toasted the Queen and listened to speeches given by our Commanding Officer. It was a night to remember.
The next morning it was up at 6:30am again, with breakfast at seven. This time it was a two-mile log run. Most of the girls couldn’t even get out of bed, being so stiff from the yesterday’s activities, never mind run around the countryside carrying a telegraph pole on our shoulders. It was during this activity that I discovered the disadvantages of being smaller than the boys, there had to be four people on the log at all times whilst running so every time it passed to me a it fell from a height of about six inches, to collide painfully against my left shoulder and ear, reducing the movement of my arm to barely above my chin.
There were also some surreal moments during the course. Once, when we had finished the hill walk, we sweet-talked Nichol into letting our minibus stop at a shop on our way back. So there we were, ten of us in full combat gear, mud up to our knees running through the aisles in Safeway shouting “Chocolate!!!” We got some very strange looks and on the way out I heard on little boy tug at his mum and say “Look mummy, clowns!”
When I returned, the rest of that day was spent on written assessments, an aptitude test and a “Time & Space” problem. The Time & Space problem was “How to evacuate a team of eight undercover civilians, surveying a Russian nuclear testing base, from an island in the Arctic”. I thought, “Yeah, that's easy!” But there was more to it. “A walrus has attacked Team A’s fuel supply and they are now left with only 25 gallons of oil” – okay, not too bad, but then - “Nuclear interference in the atmosphere means that radios will be rendered inoperable after half an hour, and the three members of team A who had gone missing return with their nuclear radiation expert on a stretcher with massive internal injuries who will die if not taken to the hospital aboard HMS Fearless within six hours, whose Puma helicopter is down and wont be operable until 0600 next morning, by which time Team B, who have all come down with Yellowditch fever will have died and everyone else will have been destroyed by nuclear radiation”!! I could actually achieve the goal if I left the nuclear radiation expert to die, not the recommended outcome! The last thing I had to do that day was a Current Affairs test in which I failed miserably, my excuse being, “Well, I’m only just 15...”
The biggest surprise to me was how kind and ‘laid back’ the officers were. They didn’t yell, well, not much, which I think is the biggest difference between the soldier and the officer work experience. At the end was the prize ceremony, where Squadron Two got free t-shirts for winning. I was also very surprised to hear that I came second out of forty in the aptitude test, out of all of those fifth and sixth years.
I was really sad when I had to leave. There were tears in my eyes! Everybody was great and I had an incredible week. I took a lot of photographs and still keep in touch with some of the friends I made.
This week really did change my attitude towards joining the army as a possible career. Before I left for the course I was sure that the Forces were not for me, but after a taste of the army life, experiencing the challenges, excitement, range of activities and the opportunities of sponsorship on offer to school pupils like me, I would now seriously consider it an option. I would thoroughly recommend anybody else who thinks that they would enjoy what I did to find about opportunities where they live and find out for themselves!
I had been looking forwad to this experience for months, and before I knew it, the time was nearly upon me. The day before I left I was beginning to get slightly nervous. I had watched all the television programmes such as “Soldiers to Be”, “Guns and Roses” and I was wondering what exactly I had let myself in for! I even woke up at three o’clock in the morning the night before I left and sorted through my bag for the tenth time, checking I hadn’t forgotten anything. The great thing about it was that I hadn’t paid for anything, so if I didn’t like it, it didn’t matter. Even my transport was paid for, so when I got on the train I flashed my Ministry of Defence travel warrant importantly at the ticket collector each time he passed me.
When I got into Edinburgh Haymarket a minibus took me into Redford where I met up with everybody else, who to my relief, looked just as lost as I did. All I had been given concerning what I was going to do all week was an “Outline Training Program”, and that consisted entirely of acronyms. All I knew was that I had an “APFA” after I had been issued my “DPM’s” and “RCF’s”. I soon found out that meant that after I had been given my camouflage clothes and rucksack I would be getting an assessment of my physical health and fitness. I was the youngest there, everyone else was in fifth/sixth year or had left school, so I was worried that I wouldn’t be as strong as them. The assessment was how many press-ups and sit-ups I could do in two minutes, followed by a one and a half mile run. I ended up doing better than a lot of people, even the boys, which was a big boost to my confidence.
There were ten girls and thirty boys, and all us girls slept in the one barrack room. The first night was a great time to get to know everyone. I was lucky to be in with a great crowd of girls, which was my biggest fear over with. I was afraid that they would all be cliquish and I would be ignored but, as it happened, nobody knew anyone which was amazing to think because after just five days when it was time to go home, it felt as if we had been friends for years, not just days.
We were split into four squadrons of ten when we first arrived and any activities we did went towards points for our squadron. I was in squadron two, the winning squadron! Our leader was Nichol from the Highland Fusiliers. He came everywhere with us and was a great motivating influence. The week was not as physically demanding as I expected. I am not complaining, although I was surprised. The focus was “more on brain than brawn” said our Recruiting and Liaison officer Lt Col (Ret’d) Halford-MacLeod, who was about 60 years old and quite a character. He was continually reminding us that “it is all terribly exciting to have you here”. We started to doubt his words however at the top of our fifth peak of our thirteen-mile-seven-peak hill walk in the Pentlands. Where were the brains in that?
There were a lot of command tasks to do, which was to see how we coped working in teams. These included activities such as successfully getting all our team, any equipment used and the yellow ammo box across a “minefield” which was marked off with white tape. We weren’t so good at that, losing three team members and a plank of wood within the first few minutes, but soon everyone was working together brilliantly and operating smoothly. This amazed me because usually I can’t get anything done without constantly bickering and falling out. After the tasks we were taken down to Dreghorn Barracks for the evening where we could do either indoor rock-climbing or football.
Wednesday evening was a formal dinner and very different from our usual meals in the mess hall. All the boys had scrubbed up quite nicely in their dinner suits and the girls had on their evening dresses. It was a proper occasion, although when they said “formal dinner” I was expecting a nice hall with chandeliers and violinists playing in the corner, not a portacabin with a hole in the ceiling. The Army did know how to make a place look good though, when I walked inside the cabin was candle lit, with tartan tablecloths, silver goblets and candelabras. A piper playing “Flower of Scotland” signalled that dinner was served. There were a few rules I wasn’t used to, for instance you couldn’t eat until the Colonel started eating and I had over four sets of cutlery to choose from. We were given champagne to drink, although we found out later that is was only 0.1%, toasted the Queen and listened to speeches given by our Commanding Officer. It was a night to remember.
The next morning it was up at 6:30am again, with breakfast at seven. This time it was a two-mile log run. Most of the girls couldn’t even get out of bed, being so stiff from the yesterday’s activities, never mind run around the countryside carrying a telegraph pole on our shoulders. It was during this activity that I discovered the disadvantages of being smaller than the boys, there had to be four people on the log at all times whilst running so every time it passed to me a it fell from a height of about six inches, to collide painfully against my left shoulder and ear, reducing the movement of my arm to barely above my chin.
There were also some surreal moments during the course. Once, when we had finished the hill walk, we sweet-talked Nichol into letting our minibus stop at a shop on our way back. So there we were, ten of us in full combat gear, mud up to our knees running through the aisles in Safeway shouting “Chocolate!!!” We got some very strange looks and on the way out I heard on little boy tug at his mum and say “Look mummy, clowns!”
When I returned, the rest of that day was spent on written assessments, an aptitude test and a “Time & Space” problem. The Time & Space problem was “How to evacuate a team of eight undercover civilians, surveying a Russian nuclear testing base, from an island in the Arctic”. I thought, “Yeah, that's easy!” But there was more to it. “A walrus has attacked Team A’s fuel supply and they are now left with only 25 gallons of oil” – okay, not too bad, but then - “Nuclear interference in the atmosphere means that radios will be rendered inoperable after half an hour, and the three members of team A who had gone missing return with their nuclear radiation expert on a stretcher with massive internal injuries who will die if not taken to the hospital aboard HMS Fearless within six hours, whose Puma helicopter is down and wont be operable until 0600 next morning, by which time Team B, who have all come down with Yellowditch fever will have died and everyone else will have been destroyed by nuclear radiation”!! I could actually achieve the goal if I left the nuclear radiation expert to die, not the recommended outcome! The last thing I had to do that day was a Current Affairs test in which I failed miserably, my excuse being, “Well, I’m only just 15...”
The biggest surprise to me was how kind and ‘laid back’ the officers were. They didn’t yell, well, not much, which I think is the biggest difference between the soldier and the officer work experience. At the end was the prize ceremony, where Squadron Two got free t-shirts for winning. I was also very surprised to hear that I came second out of forty in the aptitude test, out of all of those fifth and sixth years.
I was really sad when I had to leave. There were tears in my eyes! Everybody was great and I had an incredible week. I took a lot of photographs and still keep in touch with some of the friends I made.
This week really did change my attitude towards joining the army as a possible career. Before I left for the course I was sure that the Forces were not for me, but after a taste of the army life, experiencing the challenges, excitement, range of activities and the opportunities of sponsorship on offer to school pupils like me, I would now seriously consider it an option. I would thoroughly recommend anybody else who thinks that they would enjoy what I did to find about opportunities where they live and find out for themselves!
