National Service - Earning the Pips: Reflections on Officer Selection - 1947-1963

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Between 1947 and 1963, every able-bodied male in Britain turned seventeen was required by Act of Parliament to do two years’ service in one of the Armed Forces (with the inevitable variations and exceptions).

In the course of those fifteen years, over two and a half million young men were drafted into uniform of one colour or another. Seventy-five per cent found themselves in the Army. Human nature being what it is, that meant that a sizeable proportion or them formed, or cherished, the ambition to become an officer, to hold the Queen’s Commission. That’s a lot of ambition.

The successful ones among them would have to undergo some fairly intensive training before that commission was granted. That meant that, before anything else could happen, the authorities had to make up their minds which aspirants seemed to be the most likely prospects. Put in military terms, how did ‘they’ locate and select their ‘Potential Leaders’?

This is an account of what happened to a typical national serviceman who found himself drafted into a ‘Potential Leader’ platoon for his ten weeks’ basic training - in this case in the Army. How did he get there? Why did the Army put him there? And what did they do in the succeeding ten weeks to reassure themselves that they hadn’t made a mistake?

It made for an eventful, and at times slightly mysterious ten weeks.