Flying the flag

FIGHTING FIT: The Army puts on its biggest show parade outside London in Harrogate. John Grainger was there to see it.

The whole colourful event, complete with military band, was watched from the stands by 5,000 proud friends and relatives. “There was a lot of emotion,” says Maj Laurence Roche, an Army Educational Officer who teaches Military Studies and Leadership and Initiative training. “Many of the mums and dads had seen their boys and girls during the year, but perhaps they needed to actually see the parade for them to realise how far they’ve come and what they’ve achieved.

“Those young men and women arrived on the parade ground as junior soldiers and left Harrogate as privates in the British Army.”

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None can have been prouder than the family of the year’s top recruit, 17-year-old Adam Cundy, from Ashbourne in Derbyshire. As junior Regimental Sergeant Major, he commanded the parade, escorting the reviewing officer, Maj Gen Dickie Davis CBE, and giving the final words of command to the Class of 2011.

What was, perhaps, surprising about the event – given that it was the largest parade put on by the British Army outside London, surpassed only by Trooping the Colour – is that hardly anyone in Harrogate knew about it. The fact is that AFC(H)’s contribution to Harrogate’s educational life is often overshadowed by the town’s other main education providers, despite the fact that it trains between 1,200 and 1,300 junior soldiers per year and employs about 90 civilian teachers who live locally.

It’s easy for the town’s schools to hog the limelight – after all, four of its five state secondary schools are rated “outstanding” by Ofsted – but they would all surely envy the 99 per cent success rate routinely achieved by AFC(H)’s apprenticeship programme. Since 2000 the college, which is the British Army’s flagship initial training establishment, has issued more than 10,000 apprenticeships.

Part of the reason for the College’s relatively low local profile is its location, in sparsely-populated countryside just to the west of Harrogate. The site employs more than 500 staff and has accommodation for 28 platoons of soldiers, a gymnasium, swimming pool, athletics track, theatre, cinema, library and a canteen that can serve 1,000 at a time. But it’s all screened behind trees on a quiet road leading to nowhere in particular.

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Another reason is that few of its protégés actually come from the town. They are from all over the country, to what Maj Roche calls – without a shadow of irony, despite the town’s overwhelmingly white, middle-class population – the “melting pot of Harrogate”. “There are two intakes a year and we’re oversubscribed,” says Maj Roche. “They come from everywhere from the Highlands to the Channel Islands. We’ve even got a couple from Gibraltar.

“Once they arrive here, recruits do everything a civilian might expect a soldier to do – military exercises, the assault course, rifle training, marching around the lanes of Harrogate and so on – as well as a lot that might not be so obvious. For example, every recruit spends time doing voluntary service in the town – planting trees or working on conservation projects. They also go on a trip to France, to see the beaches and battlefields of Normandy. They learn to relate the events of 1944 to the present day, and it gives them an insight into the reality of war.

“Some of them have the chance to go on overseas tours with sports teams. Last Easter, for example, the water-polo team went to Malta and the hockey team toured Catalonia. They enjoy the very best the British Army has to offer. We want them to be inspired.”

It’s not all trips and tours, though. Maj Roche continues: “We assume zero knowledge when they arrive, so they spend a lot of their time in the classroom. They leave with an Apprenticeship for IT Users, which includes a Level 2 Diploma, and soldiers with no previous qualifications can work towards a GCSE equivalent in English and maths. Our pass rates are above the national average.

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“Along the way, you get to know your students, which is one of the things I love about working at Harrogate. They mature while they’re here and that’s one of the great pleasures of the job. This is where they do a lot of growing up, but within a disciplined environment.”

It all forms a vital part of training for the teenage soldiers – about five per cent of whom are girls – before they progress to Phase 2, when they specialise. After Harrogate, about 60 per cent will go to the infantry at Catterick, and the rest will be evenly split between the Royal Artillery, the Royal Armoured Corps and the Royal Logistics Corps. From there they will go on to pre-deployment training; within a year or two, almost all of them will go on operations to Cyprus, the Falklands, Germany or Afghanistan.

And so the military wheel turns full circle. A new intake of fresh-faced 16- and 17-year-olds will arrive at the college in a few days’ time and 42 weeks later, the words their commanding officer, Lt Col Khashi Sharifi, spoke before this summer’s parade will apply to them too: “Twelve months ago the men and women of Intake 25 embarked upon a journey that has been long, demanding, and at times emotional. They are a testament to the very best of this nation’s young people and we can be rightly proud of their achievement.

“They have taken that huge stride from civilian to soldier and I have no doubt that they are now fully prepared and armed for the rigours of their Phase 2 training as well as the Field Army beyond that.”