Twenty-Six Platoon had won! Colour Sergeant Christie had said that he’d eat his hat if we came first. One of the platoon offered to fetch some tomato ketchup to spice it up a bit, but the colour sergeant all of a sudden had lost his appetite. With the trophy came a chit for a barrel of beer, which lasted all of two hours. The College Commander declared that we could have the weekend off to let our feet recover, for which we were eternally grateful. The actual healing process took place gradually over several weeks: I didn’t regain the feeling in my toes for almost twenty days after the numbing cold of Wales.

With the passing of Long Reach, there was a markedly more relaxed atmosphere. Gone was all the pointless “Bull” – or at least much of it – and we were treated more like intelligent human beings. Lessons introduced us to the Estimate procedure. This is a drill whose purpose is to make us stop and think about things logically, to consider each individual factor and to make sensible deductions from them. Although it seemed pointless and long-winded at times, it would get us into the correct routine so that no possible course of action would be involuntarily overlooked in the heat of the moment.

Week 7 was the first wave of cadets unlucky enough to be “Rowco’d”. Their performance had been assessed as not being up to standard. These poor humans would have to undergo the fourteen week ‘toughening up’ course in Rowallen Company, before starting the first term again from square one. For a couple of anxious cadets in my platoon, Damocles’ Sword did not fall, and they passed unscathed.

Drill lessons took place every day in preparation for the Sovereign’s Banner Parade. We marched till we were blue in the face, and every manoevre was perfectly executed: the sergeant major would be happy with nothing less. As a Welsh Guardsman, drill is his forte and, not satisfied with Inkerman Company taking the Long Reach Trophy, he’d set his sights on another choice piece of silverware: he wanted to win the Drill Competition.