A Unique Military Career

The author joined the British Army on an Army Scholarship and was selected for training at RMA Sandhurst, joining below the minimum age.  His first posting after RMA Sandhurst was an operational tour with 2^nd Bn Scots Guards in Belfast at the age of eighteen.  He subsequently served as Signal Officer, Exchange Officer with 3^rd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment and was an instructor at the Signal Wing School of Infantry. He then served as a young Company Commander in Cyprus.  After attending Staff College and a tour as Company Commander with 1^st Battalion Scots Guards, he served as the primary staff officer in Berlin from 1989.  His responsibilities included East-West access issues and the wind down of the British Sector following the fall of the Berlin Wall and German Unification. He then moved to Edinburgh and organised the Scots Guards 350^th Anniversary Celebrations. He was promoted Lieutenant Colonel in 1995 into the post of Brigade Major Household Division with responsibility for all State Ceremonial in London.  He was awarded the OBE in 1999, following his appointment as Commandant MCTC and Governor HMYOI Colchester, a trial to determine whether the military approach to custody could reduce the re-offending rate in a selected group of civilian young offenders. Latterly he spent 3 years at the Regular Commissions Board and was one of the Board members responsible for the selection of Prince Harry to be an Army officer.  He then served as KFOR Liaison Officer to the Kosovo Protection Corps, shortly before the Commander’s elevation to Prime Minister of Kosovo and he continued to deal closely with the Prime Minister and his new Commander as they prepared for transition towards the independence of Kosovo.