24 March 2006
No heroes
Posted by tony under: Random .
When I was 17 years old, having been a little bit rebellious and caused my parents numerous sleepless nights, I decided that learning a bit of discipline would probably be very good for me. With this in mind, I decided to apply for a highly-prized one-year commission with the Army. Also, for some reason the idea of being able to kill someone with just my thumb was oddly appealing. (I’m not sure where I got the idea that the principal weapon in the modern soldier’s arsenal was his opposable digit, but there you have it).
Sponsored by the Royal Green Jackets, I headed down to the Regular Commissions Board at Westbury, proudly flashing my military pass at every British Rail employee I could find. Once safely ensconced in the Army’s bosom I promptly managed to ace the intelligence and general knowledge tests and miserably fail the team leadership section. I imagine these days it would be the other way around.
However, aside from trying to match the older applicants drinking prowess on the last night, standing on the mess table singing a song about why I didn’t want to join the army and being profoundly sick in my room, the toilet and the nearby Geranium bush, one thing stands out in my mind more clearly than anything else. During my interview, the officer in charge asked me who my hero was, and I was stumped.
I could not think of a single individual at that point in time who I genuinely looked up to. In a desperate bid to cover the vacant look on my face I made an appropriately toadying answer (I think I said General Sir Michael Rose, the ranking officer in the Army at the time and ironically my future boss). However, I will always remember that at age 17 I confronted the fact that I had no one to look up to and it felt horrible.
I am lucky ten years down the line that I have a battalion of heroes to look up to. From Pete Goss and Borge Ousland in the world of adventure, to Bill McDonough in the world of design, to Sunny Bates, who is quite simply the nicest person I have ever met. I have no shortage of people to learn from and be inspired by.
In this respect I have been lucky, and I wonder if one of my deeper motivations for doing what I do is to set an example so that a teenager one day won’t have to grow up without anyone to inspire him. It sounds arrogant to think you might inspire someone else, and it is. But if I live with that aim in mind, that desire to set a higher standard, even if no child ever hears of me or knows my story, surely my life will be all the richer for it.
