Under the watchful eyes of Lieutenant Wahab, Sergeant McIntosh and Corporal White, recruits face the reality of what it means to be a frontline soldier at a time when war is raging in Europe for the first time in a generation
. Some will stay the course as they achieve things they never dreamed themselves capable of, and others will struggle at the first hurdle.
The stereotype attached to army training is that it is all about the corporals shouting at the recruits. Do you think this series will help to overturn that image? I've learned that the most pertinent thing to basic training is that you often see people around you who you might think are the finished articles, but everyone keeps learning. Often soldiers feel uncomfortable taking a step up in responsibility, but that's what people have done for thousands of years. It's almost like I tell them to play the character of a trained soldier, and that's what they slowly become.
Yes. You don't really think about it while you're training them. But once the training starts to slow down and you're getting ready for their pass-out parade, that's when you start to think about when they came through the door, when you first laid eyes on them.
During Captain Gardner’s career he has completed several operational deployments including tours in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Afghanistan.Callum loved playing video games and started out studying plumbing, but found it wasn’t for him. Before he joined the army, he worked at McDonalds.Before training I was at college studying plumbing. Then over the summer, I took a part time job at McDonald's.
One thing that was quite funny was some of the phrases said by quite a few of the lads. I'm not entirely sure if they've been caught on camera but Sergeant McIntosh said some very funny things and I'm quite looking forward to reliving some of his catchphrases.Private Roberts, he was in my bed space for the first 12 weeks, he was always there to give some advice and show me how to do things. It was quite nice to have a friend to chat to in the evening.
That not everyone's going to finish. You can go in being one of the strongest or the smartest but that doesn't mean that you're gonna finish through training. There were a couple of people that were quite ill, but applied their mindset to get through it.