Due to prior commitments, I was out of the UK this summer and could not get back until just two days before the Commissioning Course was about to start. Forty-eight hours of frenetic shopping and packing left me with little time to take stock of it all; before it had hit me, I was entering the gates of Sandhurst and embarking on a new and exciting career, one which I had eagerly awaited and anticipated for several years.

The trials and tribulations of an early morning train journey forgotten, I was ushered through the obligatory paperwork and issued with a fetching name-tag. When our platoon lines started to come alive with other officer aspirants, these badges were enormously useful – no one could be expected to remember all these names in one go – and it was amusing to see people greeting each other by craning their necks and squinting at the badly printed Dyno-Tape before, invariably, mispronouncing the newcomer’s name.

I was quite surprised by the average age of our intake. I had expected to be one of the older cadets when I came to Sandhurst, since I had spent four years at university. However, the current trend for higher education meant that, by far, the majority of my fellow Officer Cadets were twenty-one and over.

Our course got properly underway with introductory lecturettes from just about everyone in the Academy apart from the cleaning staff. These were probably the first and last times I would remain fully awake in a lecture for the next five weeks, such would be the fatigue we would experience over the coming days. For the duration of the College Commander’s lecture, Lieutenant Colonel Page’s dog, which was taking full advantage of the abrasive qualities of the stage carpeting to relieve an itchy backside, provided ample entertainment. None the wiser to his pet’s activities, the Colonel assumed the laughter was directed at his witty anecdotes.

As the introductions drew to a monotonous close, we settled into our Company lines and got on with “routine”. Colour Sergeant Christie, under whose total jurisdiction our lives would fall for the next fourteen weeks, ushered us from place to place as we amassed our ample issue of uniforms and equipment. Mountainous piles of green kit, each presumably with an officer cadet buried somewhere beneath it, scurried back to Old College in dribs and drabs.

With our rather ill-fitting uniforms neatly pressed, we were ready to hit the drill square for the first time. Once the Company Sergeant Major had taken a look, he was ready to hit us – with his pace stick! This platoon had some way to go before it would become a smart and coherent squad. Isn’t it surprising how similar Colour Sergeants’ drill voices sound? In the first few sessions of “square bashing” the neat(ish) progression of our platoon was punctuated by sporadic halts as one or two of the edgier cadets would stop marching in response to another platoon’s commands. The Sergeant Major just could not see the funny side.

Physical Training was begun by a termly fitness assessment (TFA). Heaves, sit-ups and a three-mile run were designed to gain an overall picture of a cadet’s standard of cardio-vascular fitness, or lack of it. The majority of us had had an inkling of the amount of “phys” the commissioning course entailed and had been able to train beforehand. We were wrong – and before long, we were all in a world of pain.