wsBlog.

for Veterans by Veterans

Why I Owe the Army Everything

Having started life as a foundling, abandoned as a baby in a Harrods carrier bag on the steps of Thomas’s hospital, I guess most people would assumeI was never going to amount to much. Growing up in childrens’ homes and foster care, I got through nine schools in seven years, and I was pretty much a lost cause. The highest hopes I had as a kid was to be a bus driver or a printer, although the latter was never going to happened because I had no relations working in the print, and to get a job there you needed to know someone in the ‘Chapter’. There was one other job I dreamt of, and that was becoming a panel beater. To be honest, not one of us kids really knew what they did, but we knew they earned good money for it, so it had to be good. You didn’t need much education for any of those jobs, so that was it, why bother going to school? All I needed was to get a council flat, with or without a job. I had that cracked because my adopted parents were already on the list. All I needed beyond that was a Mark Two Ford Escort and that was me made.

But of course it never works out like that. Despite what Only Fools and Horses would have you believe, Peckham was never full of Del Boy cheeky chappies, having a laugh on the market, then going off to drink cocktails in the pub. It was full of unemployment, drugs, guns, and mindless vandalism.

By the age of 16, I ended up in juvenile detention. I was running in a gang of other kids just like me, instead of being in school, we spent our days stealing, and turning over flats that we thought would be full of things we could sell. Not being criminal masterminds, we kept raiding flats in the same block, and funnily enough, after a while, the police were lying in wait for us. We tried to do a runner, I got away, being chased by an overweight policeman, but I was cocky, and whilst I was busy turning round to give him health advice, I didn’t notice the other guy with the police dog standing right in front of me. I reached into the bin for a weapon, picked out an empty crisp packet, and threw that at the dog. Once it and its handler had stopped laughing, they had me on the ground and that was it. It was a long time before I started to switch on and realise that people had to work to get the things that I smashed up or stole, and to get work and succeed, you needed to be educated. I just wanted everything without understanding how to get it.

That was where the army came in. They used to recruit boy soldiers from detention centres. I fell for the recruiting teams’ patter that I was going to become a helicopter pilot, but once they realised I could barely tie my boot laces, I found myself in an Infantry Junior Leaders Battalion and committed to six years of service.

After three months of being shouted at and chased over assault courses, all the stuff that infantry soldiers do, we were marched off to the Army Education Centre. I didn’t even know the army had educators, I was in the army now, why did I need to learn?

An army educator came in, he looked like the world’s oldest soldier to us. Turns out he used to be a regimental sergeant major in an infantry battalion and got a commission to become a late entry officer, but wanted to go into the Army Education Corps. He said, pointing at the barbed wire surrounding the camp, ‘Out there, the other side of the fence, they all think you are thick as shit. But you aren’t, you are just uneducated, and from today, that all changes.’

And that was when my world changed for the better. Turned out I had the reading and writing age of an 11 year old. The first book I read was a Janet and John book for little kids. Janet and John Book Eight I think it was. Janet and John climbing a tree, kicking the dog, that kind of thing. I vividly remember reading it, closing the book and the educator saying ‘there, you’ve read a book, now you just have to keep reading.’ He taught me that reading, and education, gives you knowledge, that the more knowledge you’ve got, the more power you’ve got to do the things you want to do, as opposed to people telling you what to do, because they’ve got more power.

The Army is one of the world’s largest adult education initiatives, and I’m certainly not the only one who owes it a huge debt of gratitude.

Andy McNab CBE, DCM, MM, DArts

Making the UK the best country in the world to be a Veteran