The following article appeared on the Daily Telegraph website on 12th November 2009.
SMI CroftsCNE SSM
The Army Cadet Force has been giving teenagers a taste of military discipline and leadership for almost 150 years. Robert Chesshyre sees recruits in training.
The boys and girls of Z Company from the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Army Cadet Force practise drill and assault exercises at Longmoor Army camp Photo: LEONIE PURCHAS
A late autumn afternoon washed by a pale sun: two dozen Army cadets, rifles at the ready and in full camouflage kit – their faces streaked brown and yellow – melt into the bracken. Had I not already seen them take cover, from 30 yards away I would not have been able to spot them. For half an hour the teenagers – aged 15 and 16, a third of them girls – patrol watchfully across Hampshire heathland towards a rendezvous point, checking constantly for signs of the 'enemy’. Adult NCOs rap out occasional instructions.
The afternoon is to culminate in a 'fire and movement’ exercise, when the cadets will fire blank rounds. First they must rehearse how to respond to enemy attack – one half of an eight-cadet section advancing beneath covering 'fire’ from their comrades. Each cadet carries a rifle (similar to Army-issue SA80s, though incapable of automatic fire) and 30 rounds of blank ammunition. 'Do not be fooled by the word “blank”,’ Staff Sergeant Instructor Ian Reddy warns. Blanks spit tongues of fire and make the echoing crack of a live bullet. Anyone within 50 yards could be injured.
For 40 minutes, watched by sergeant instructors (SIs), the cadets repeat the basic infantry tactic. At the first shot, they dash forward and throw themselves to the ground. Crawling cautiously, they advance on the enemy, half a section at a time. When close enough, the cadets stage a final assault – 'run and scream with your best war face,’ an SI shouts.
Lt Graham Wiseman, who arrived in a safety vehicle bringing a stretcher and first aid kit (safety considerations are paramount), says, 'They do it endlessly by rote, so that even on a dark night they will know what they are doing.’ After 40 minutes the cadets are ready for the blank fire exercise.
Instructors acting as the enemy lurk in the bracken. There is a puff of smoke and the bang of incoming fire as an instructor fires a blank. The cadets, wearing ear protectors, dive to the ground in a straight 'base’ line facing the enemy. Lying – crouching if they have cover – they fire their guns. 'There is a light in their eyes when they fire blanks,’ an NCO says. 'Shouting “bang, bang” somehow just isn’t the same.’
There is, inevitably, the odd screw-up: rifles jam; one section tumbles into an irregular base line - 'a shambles’ moans an NCO, theatrically threatening to shoot himself if the next section is as uncoordinated; a trainee 'enemy’ instructor misses the signal to fire. But, before the cadets set off on the long tramp back to the cookhouse for supper, the best section completes a full 'move and fire’ operation, and the instructors are happy.
We are at Longmoor in Hampshire, an Army barracks and training ground loaded with the remembrance of past years. With its corrugated-iron Nissen huts and brick barrack blocks, it looks like something from a 1950s film. I watch rookie cadets drill: most have mastered the basics, but an all-too-visible minority either march with their left arms swinging forward with their left feet, or, on the command 'right turn’, swing smartly left.
A patient instructor takes them through it time after time, and Dominic Duell, 17, a cadet corporal, takes a confused junior cadet aside for some one-to-one coaching.
It is day two of a weekend camp for Z Company of the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Army Cadet Force (with 1,650 cadets, the third largest county force), attended by 150 boys and girls aged between 13 and 17. They are here for two nights, sleeping in barrack blocks. Woken at 6.30am, they are drilled and exercised until they can scarcely move. It is demanding mentally and physically. Both cadets and instructors tell me that by the time they get home they are fit only to collapse into bed.
Next year, the Army Cadet Force celebrates its 150th anniversary. With 45,000 cadets, 8,500 adult instructors and 1,700 detachments across Britain, it is one of the oldest and largest youth organisations in the country. Its first unit was inspected in 1860 by Queen Victoria.
The key figure in establishing cadet units in the inner cities was Octavia Hill (who was also instrumental in setting up the National Trust), a pioneer in social housing who believed that – in the appalling conditions in which so many of the urban poor then lived – a cadet force would prove a constructive alternative to the criminal temptations that faced impoverished young people. Her aim was not militaristic, but she recognised that boys responded more enthusiastically to a uniformed organisation kept busy with Army activities than they did to the evangelising movements of the time that sought to 'rescue’ the deserving poor through high-mindedness and piety.
Those roots are important to this day because – despite the guns, the drill, the manoeuvres – the ACF still seeks to deliver the values of good citizenship through Army-style training. And, of course, 150 years on, it is still true that teenage boys (and now girls, who were first allowed to join in the early 1980s) are attracted to exciting activities. Several cadets told me that they had quit other youth groups, including the Scouts, because they found them tame.
There is often confusion between the ACF and the CCF (Combined Cadet Force). The CCF is schools-based, almost entirely in independent schools, and its officers are the schools’ teachers; as the word 'combined’ implies, it brings together Army, Navy and Air Force cadets. Traditionally, it has been seen as a route to a commission. The ACF is community-based and its instructors and officers are local volunteers. It was seen traditionally – for those 15 to 30 per cent of cadets who subsequently enlist – as preparation for the ranks.
Senior officers say that this division is no longer valid. The ACF – being an ACF cadet is far more demanding of time and commitment than belonging to the CCF – sends increasing numbers to Sandhurst. I asked one parade of 22 Hampshire ACF cadets on a high-flyer development course how many wanted to join the Army and how many would seek commissions: a forest of hands shot up – 19 wanted to join the Army and seven of them had set their sights on commissions.
The Army profile is higher than it has been for years – in part because of the casualties in Afghanistan – and recruitment has shot up: there has been a 25 per cent increase in adult enlistment (stimulated to a degree by recession) and a similar rise in inquiries from boys and girls wanting to know about the ACF.
The status of the ACF is slightly difficult (for outsiders at least) to pin down. Cadets wear uniforms, they carry guns, they march about, but they are not part of the Army. However, the Army provides equipment and training facilities, meaning that – in the words of a senior officer – 'we do have a great say over what cadets do’.
There is an Army Cadet Force Association (ACFA), a charity, also outside the Ministry of Defence, that 'promotes the aims and activities of the ACF’ and is run by Mike Wharmby, a retired brigadier. When I meet Brig Wharmby, he is with Col Murdo Urquhart, a serving soldier and the ACF’s assistant director of cadets. They stress the 'independent’ status of the ACF and hotly dispute what they claim is another misunderstanding – that the ACF has a role in the criminal justice system. 'Join the Army or go to jail’ – that sort of thing.
The best recruiting sergeant is word-of-mouth:teenagers who enjoy the activities tell their friends ('you’ll get mates joining together,’ an officer told me). And the internet makes it easier than in past years for teenagers to find out what the ACF is all about. The ACF is forbidden from recruiting for the regular Army. But if cadets show an interest, officers will point them in the right direction. The ACF, they say, provides three things that young people hanker after: someone to look up to; a structure; and excitement.
Apart from military training, the ACF gives young people opportunities not only for adventure, training, sport, overseas exchanges and competition rifle shooting, but also to take part in the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme and to study for BTECs. Cadets come from all walks of life – the range, one county commandant said, was from children dropped off by mummy in a 4x4 through to kids in care.
As part of its wider strategy for 14- to 19-year-olds, the Government’s declared aim is to increase the number of cadets (across all four cadet forces: the ACF, CCF, Air Training Corps and Sea Cadet Corps) by 24,500 and to create access to cadet training in state schools (though not all teachers would be keen: one officer told me how a head teacher accused the ACF of 'teaching children to be killers’).
Gordon Brown has professed himself an enthusiast: 'The cadet forces are perhaps the most under-utilised [organisations] in reaching their full potential of civic utility, particularly in offering opportunities for self-development, initiative, character building and leadership among young people, many of whom are forced by circumstances into blind alleys.’
A dozen parents sit in a semi-circle in the Naafi room at the Winchester HQ of the Hampshire and Isle of Wight ACF. Elsewhere their children are firing .22 rifles; drilling in a dark, dank car-park; rehearsing 'move and fire’ exercises. Parents are key to the success of the ACF: children may join in the school year in which they turn 13 and can stay until they are 18 years and nine months, and at first obviously require parental permission and support – not least in the form of lifts to and from evening parades. (Teenagers may join the regular Army as junior soldiers after GCSEs at 16. At 18 they become adult soldiers and can be sent on active service.)
Several sons of these parents – although almost a third of the Hampshire force is made up of girls, this group’s offspring happen to be boys – want to join the Army: some, say their parents, are 'Army barmy’, and desperate to sign on. These parents are (largely) middle class; all are delighted with the impact the ACF has had on their sons’ tidiness and punctuality – although most say that, while their uniforms are immaculate and their boots sparkle, their bedrooms remain tips. They contrast how their sons spend their twice-a-week cadet evenings with the alternatives – from sitting in bedrooms playing computer games to hanging about on street corners (though, for this particular group, that seems an unlikely pastime).
The prospect of their sons one day fighting in Afghanistan casts a shadow. Photographs of amputees are displayed on a wall, and parents refer nervously to them. No one would stop a son joining up – most would clearly be hard to stop: one mother speaks of her son’s 'overwhelming passion’ – but they do want them to have a rounded picture of Army life. One mother says that she insists that her son reads everything about the Army, so that he is not blinded by military 'glamour’.
Being volunteers, the teenagers go to cadets more enthusiastically than they go to school. The parents talk of the improvement in their children’s manners; the respect they show for adults; the pride they take in their appearance and their platoons. They speak of boys 'living and breathing’ the cadets; the anguish if they are late; the quality of the equipment; the excellence of the camps. 'Cadets is the only constant thing that my son does. Everything else is a one-day wonder,’ one mother says.
Two nights later, I am in Eastleigh, a less affluent town south of Winchester. Here I talk to mothers (no fathers this time) one-on-one. Most of their children want to be soldiers, and the women are level-headed about the perils of a military career. Alexandra Ellis’s son Jake, 15, is, she says, active rather than academic: 'I can see him as a soldier, a good soldier.’ She adds, 'No parents want their sons to go to Afghanistan, and I can’t begin to visualise what it might be like to have a child killed, but there has always been an Army, and soldiers are posted where they are posted. They can’t pick and choose – “I don’t fancy fighting in Northern Ireland or Afghanistan.” It is up to the Government to make those decisions.’
Mrs Ellis’s note of realism is echoed by the others. Belinda Masters says that her son, Oliver, 12, a new recruit, 'likes the rules and the discipline’. There is, she says, no bullying. She drives him 10 miles to cadets. 'He’s football mad but never polishes his football boots. We get home from cadets after 10 o’clock and he gets the polish out and is cleaning his Army boots.’ Tracy Blackburn’s 16-year-old daughter, Sam, 'gave the cadets a try, and that was it. She loved it from day one.’
Her son, Luke, 14, is also a cadet, so I ask about Afghanistan. 'I can’t say that would be without worries, but, if that’s what he wants to do, we’ll support him. The Army is an honourable profession, and, if you join, you may have to fight. Whether you think Afghanistan right or wrong, you should support the troops. Without our armed services, what would our country be?’
Amanda Jones, whose son Connor, 14, has wanted to be in the Army 'ever since he could walk’, is so enthused by the cadets that she is applying to be an instructor. She would, she says, have dearly liked to have been a soldier herself – she is a school dinner lady – but the idea wasn’t acceptable to her parents. 'I love being outside with kids. Cadets is so good for them because at school they are now not allowed to do anything even slightly risky.’
The week I had these conversations, the Government dropped a bombshell. The £40 million ACF budget for this financial year was to be cut by £4 million. The news came a few days after the announcement that the Territorial Army training budget was being frozen, saving £20 million. There was political uproar over the TA cuts, and the government, having first said that it would restore £2.5 million, rapidly cancelled the whole idea. A retreat had been turned into a rout. Against the furore of the TA backlash, the ACF cuts went unreported and – by politicians at least – unprotested against. They would appear to make a mockery of Gordon Brown’s ambition for increases in cadet numbers.
Afghanistan is the overwhelming Ministry of Defence priority, but a saving of £4 million is chickenfeed set against the MoD’s £37 billion budget. In Hampshire’s case the cut is £174,000 out of £450,000, meaning that the cupboard is bare from now until April. The expensive part of the year – summer camp in particular – is over, and ACF volunteers (unlike the TA) do not get paid for evening parades, so these will continue. But the instructors do get Paid Training Days (PTDs), weekend and annual camps. Major Tom Meggison, the cadet executive officer of Hampshire and Isle of Wight ACF, believes that instructors will willingly carry on until Christmas or even April, but that, if the cuts remain thereafter, many will quit.
'PTD payments serve as a modest thank you for the unpaid time instructors give,’ he says. 'The ACF budget should not be balanced against Afghanistan, but seen in the context of the Government’s youth policy and other community projects.’
Similarly, Brig Mike Wharmby believes that the ACF will see out the winter without loss of volunteers, but he fears that the MoD may be back for more. The ACF is already 1,000 volunteers under strength. 'We are in competition with other youth organisations,’ an officer explained. Even if most volunteers continue without pay in the short term, many can’t afford the loss of PTDs: from £55.19 a day for an SI to £159.69 for a lieutenant-colonel. Several told me that it was only these earnings that reconciled their partners to them being away as often as they are – typically two week-long camps each year and half a dozen or more weekends.
The ACF aims for a ratio of one adult to five cadets. Without more adults, no further cadets can be accepted: if instructors quit, training will be affected and cadets sent home.
A senior officer branded the cuts a 'scandal’. He said that in some areas one third of cadets are in care, and the ACF is often the only worthwhile thing in their lives. He argued that although the cadets are not part of the formal Army, they do belong to the Army family: 'You don’t treat members of your family like this.’
The benefits of the ACF cannot be measured in Army recruitment alone, but in the impact former cadets have on the community. Some, one officer said, join the fire, ambulance and police services; others will be good citizens, providing stability in our shifting social landscape. Children who once played truant and were difficult at school frequently blossom as cadets. One teacher said that he could date when certain boys had joined the ACF because their school behaviour improved out of recognition.
The cuts will certainly hit next year’s 'Cadet 150’ celebrations, which had already been scaled back. 'We’ve been told to put on a good show, but not spend any money,’ one officer said. As things stand, there will be a parade in London along the Mall in late July, followed by a review by the Queen (shades of Queen Victoria in 1860) at Buckingham Palace and a garden party for volunteer instructors and cadets’ parents.
Brig Wharmby said, 'It is in the less affluent parts of society where the ACF has its greatest impact, which is where the cuts will hit hardest. The need is for community-based youth groups like the ACF to be provided with more funding, not less.’
This month Thomas Harry, 18, begins training as a guardsman with the Grenadier Guards. When we talked, he was in his last week as a cadet, having reached the highest rank of Master Cadet. He had been the cadet company sergeant major for C Company in the Isle of Wight, and, as he drilled cadets, he looked every inch the soldier, ramrod erect with a polished pace stick under his arm. It had, he said, always been his ambition to be a soldier. He had not shone academically, so was joining the ranks rather than seeking a commission. In the two years since he left school, he had done a number of unsatisfactory jobs.
He said that, although the recent death of a Grenadier Guardsman in Afghanistan had 'hit home’ and that he will be 'scared’ if and when his time to serve there comes, he will welcome the opportunity. 'I will not be happy until I do it.’ His father, a policeman, had emphasised the dangers, but that hadn’t deterred Thomas Harry.
Connor Jones plans to join as a junior soldier at 16. He loves outdoor activities, and contrasts the fun he has at the Eastleigh parades with the alternatives of sitting at home or hanging out with mates. He finds the cadet training more relevant than 'maths and things’.
Nineteen-year-old Tom Smith (not his real name), a former Eastleigh cadet now in the Army, is just back from Helmand province in Afghanistan and visiting. He is lean and bronzed. His cadet experiences – he singled out Snowdonia adventure training and a foreign exchange visit – had enthused him for the Army, and he was now thoroughly committed and 'loving it’.
But the fact remains – which is always expected – that the vast majority of cadets do not join the Army. I meet several wannabe teachers and at least two would-be doctors. I write often about the disadvantaged areas of Britain: estates plagued by knife and gun crime; sink schools; young offenders; teenage parents. What is commonly missing in these environments is stability and role models: exactly what the ACF offers. Most cadets I met may belong to happy and comfortable homes, but, as Octavia Hill would have argued, the benefits of exciting activity and adult leadership are rarely wasted on a teenager.
2LT Bush after a hard days parking on Sunday.
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