Why would anyone want to join HM Forces? Particularly in an age where most other jobs offer comfortable offices and the stay at home option in case of a cold, (and all you need to do, is provide a fit for work chit from the doctors). You have the opportunity to lunch on exquisite food and spend the weekend sipping Chardonnay at a stylish pub. While members of the forces gulp down water and sit down to a boil in the bag.
On the face of it, a career in HM Forces doesn’t pay too much. Your can be called on 24/7 365 days a year, spend the best years of your life in places the rest of the world has never seen. You stay away from loved ones for months at a stretch. Miss your children growing up and break endless promises due to work commitments, you miss birthdays and holidays.
It feeds you on the cheapest foods provided by the lowest bidders. It wakes you up at unearthly hours and makes you sprint in the biting cold in shorts and tucked in T-shirts.
The training is gruelling; the instructors break you down to the point where you wish you were dead and you feel you can’t go on any more. Young men and women quit everyday, for those who continue they can only expect more hardships and tears.
You work in blistering desert heat in heavy combat gear that can exceed your own body weight. You will never comprehend what’s it like to serve in places like this; nothing prepares you for the smells, the infrastructure in places like Afghanistan. All this hardship and the only things HM Forces asks from you is Loyalty, Discipline, Selfless Commitment, Courage (moral and physical), Respect for others and that you will unquestioningly give, when required, your life for your country.
Who wants the good life?
You don’t join the Forces for money; you join it to be part of something bigger. Maybe you join because you want to be apart of history; maybe you join because of family tradition. People join the forces because they want to go on operations and see the world. People no longer join for dignity and honour that comes after when you have earned the privilege to wear the uniform.
You will find friends willing to live and die with you, and at the very least, friends for life. It also provides you with experiences you could only dream of, like riding on horse back through the Rockies, Canoeing through the Austria surrounded by the Alps. Exercising in far off countries like Canada, Belize, Kenya, Poland, Cyprus to name a few.
What the Forces will give you is a career and a life that you can be proud of. Your family, friends and country will be proud of you and will respect you. You can look back on your life and know you achieved something with your life. It will install values and standards and an ethos that will serve you well in years to come.
I would do it all again, only better this time