A Regimental Sergeant Major’s Advice to Young Officers (From War to Sandhurst) | Steve Armon

How do you actually become an officer in the Royal Marines? How hard is the training? What does it take to be successful? Sam, who spent 13 years as a Royal Marines officer and left as a major, with Afghanistan and Iraq deployments behind him, tells us about his journey. We start with the reality of Royal Marines officer selection: why people fail POC, what changes when you stop trying to look “ready”, and how the Royal Marines Reserve can build the kind of fitness and resilience that holds ...

The fastest way to lose the “this is an adventure” mindset is to watch reality arrive with consequences. We start with that switch: days into a deployment to Basra, Iraq, a Lynx helicopter is shot down over the city, and the scale of danger becomes impossible to ignore. From there, we get into what it really feels like to put boots on the ground, step out of the gate, and carry the expectation that an RPG or suicide attack could happen at any moment. We also talk about the gap between pre-de...

A midnight knock on the steps, a simple order, and suddenly you’re walking into a mud compound to arrest a Taliban suspect. Johnny’s account of that night in Helmand Province is raw, human, and strangely instructional: cultural understanding is not a buzzword, it’s a capability that can calm fear, protect standards, and change the temperature of a whole area. We go back to the beginning too, from joining the infantry at 17 and patrolling West Belfast, to learning how leadership works when yo...

You can say you want the Parachute Regiment in one sentence. Earning the trust to lead in it takes years, and it starts with the part you can’t talk your way around: the standard you can prove on the day. Our guest, Thomo, is a serving British Army Major with 15 years in the Parachute Regiment, and he’s frank about what selection, P Company, and battalion life actually demand from officers who want to be credible with soldiers. We get into why so many people express interest early, then fall...

Most people imagine the Army Reserve as a light commitment and a bit of adventure on the side. The truth is sharper: it is leadership in compressed time, service with real trade-offs, and a second career you have to actively manage. We sit down with Major Ash Bardwaj to unpack what Reserve life actually looks like when you are also building a civilian career as a travel journalist, defence journalist, author and speaker. We get into the motivations that pull people towards service, how purpo...