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to the inevitable.
    I joined a couple of the lads on an excursion to York one Saturday afternoon which turned into an extremely messy day out and ended with us all in a world of trouble.
    We found a pub, one that was willing to serve us without ID, and settled there. Curfew was at 11 p.m. on a Saturday and that day we missed it.
    The trouble we faced upon returning to the college was insane. We knew we’d messed up. It was so serious the four of us had to go and see the senior officer commanding Waterloo Company, which 6 Platoon was part of, on the Monday morning.
    The platoon sergeant called us into the office. ‘So, you are my four bad lads.’ This was something I wasn’t used to being called. I was a good lad. ‘Thing is, gents,’ he continued, ‘the trick is not getting caught!’ He recounted another tale of behaving very badly while serving in Bosnia ten years earlier and, naturally, getting away with it. A lesson was learned very quickly that morning. We got slapped wrists and were put on three-month warnings. We had to behave – or at least not get caught.
    Before we knew it we were counting down to the last few weeks and days until graduation and leave. We’d soon be joining our respective regiments around the world.
    Having chosen the Household Cavalry, Warren, Dean and I were to report to London after leave to begin ceremonial training and riding school. The excitement was really starting to build up. I’d never been to London and had always considered it a place where dreams came true. I’d seen the city in movies and on TV and hoped to live there one day; that day was now fast approaching.
    The final challenge of basic training was ‘Final Ex’, a five-night exercise in the Northumbria hills testing all the skills we’d learned throughout the year. This was supposed to be the peak of testing environments, but in due course we’d all be going on much harder exercises for much longer and much further away than Northumberland.
    They tested us well, attacking us throughout the night and making us travel long distances in the day. Of course the weather was awful, which I’m sure the platoon sergeant had arranged especially. He’d scream his favourite slogan at us whenever it was wet: ‘If it ain’t raining, it ain’t training!’ It was a challenging time and, as the end of our test week as soldiers arrived, it dawned on me that I was going to make it. I was going to pass out, a trained professional soldier, in front of my family.
    Out of the forty-nine that began our army adventures on 7 September, thirty-nine had reached the end. Over the course of the year we lost ten guys, for various reasons but mostly because they found the army just wasn’t for them. As testing a period as the whole thing was, there wasn’t a single moment when I considered packing it all in and quitting. I’d made my mind up almost four years earlier that a life in the military was what I really needed, and achieving that meant basic training. Basic training was now over.
    The whole family came to see me graduate a year after they’d left me at the college and, at that point, it was the proudest moment of my life. I’d gone through the army’s basic training and reached the other side a tough young professional soldier. My school days felt so long ago. What were my schoolmates all doing now?
    Two thousand soldiers passed out of training that day, some of whom would be fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq within six months. I didn’t have that worry on the horizon for some time, as I, along with Dean and Warren, was off to the safety of London to ride with the Queen for a couple of years. The thirty-nine members of 6 Platoon marched off the square proudly that afternoon , the future quite unknown to us. We had a massive party at a venue in the middle of Harrogate, which ended with us all getting very drunk. We said our goodbyes to each other and that was that.
    A year of being together every day, joking, fighting, drinking,