Having spent a lot of my career in instructional posts with new recruits and Officer cadets it always astonishes me to see young men and women succeed in this great organisation, realising their own strengths and weaknesses and overcoming mental and physical barriers to develop into young officers and soldiers in the field army. Assisting in that choice to serve is a key motivator and allows me to reflect on my own choices that I made to join the Infantry, a choice that has often allowed me to realise how I have been looked after by the team to get to where I am today.

One of the main things that disappoints me is the young man or woman that makes a snap decision to leave training before they have given themselves a real chance. Training is hard, its designed to be hard, so that in difficult situations it allows you to find the strength to succeed.

Its always good to have a clear vision of where you want to be within your career and projecting forward but realistically the army has a clear structure when it comes to promotion, whilst you may show potential early on it still takes a good proportion of your career to get to a senior level. Each rank on the way to your end goal has its own merits and arguably being a full corporal is the only time where you have 7 soldiers directly under your command to shape, mentor and lead. The further you go on the promotional ladder has its own challenges but is outweighed by the merits.