First Man In: Leading from the Front

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To the only person who can make me or break me with one sentence. This woman pushes me on a daily basis and will not accept anything less than one hundred per cent from me at all times. When I lose my way, she redirects me. When I put a foot out of place, she stamps on it. And when I fail, she is the only person who can lift me back up and make me feel invincible. My wife is the reason I am here today and she is the lady that has made me the man I am.

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When I was a new recruit at Pirbright, those lessons were still an extremely long way off. Three weeks after I’d seen that young lad being posted through a plywood wall, I found myself on the parade ground beside him. We were in formation, waiting for the corporal to arrive for inspection. Next to us, looking confused and out of place, was a new recruit called Neil. He’d joined our troop after falling out of Basic Training, having suffered a broken ankle on week five of his intake. Now he was mostly better, he’d been inserted back into the programme. Neil was a big, leery lad and slightly chubby round the middle, probably out of shape after being out of action for a while.

‘Mate,’ I said to him. ‘Why don’t you jump up here, because the instructor’s going to come any second?’

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