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The 'Royal Military Academy Sandhurst' ('RMAS'), commonly known simply as 'Sandhurst', is the British Army officer initial training centre.
Its stated aim is to be "...the national centre of excellence for leadership".
All British Army officers—including commissioned Warrant Officers—and many from elsewhere in the world, are trained at Sandhurst. Nearly 10% of British cadets are female and nearly 10% of all cadets come from overseas.
The Academy opened its doors in 1947 in the former Royal Military College (RMC) at Sandhurst. The Academy straddles the border between the counties of Berkshire and Surrey, marked by a small stream known as the Wish Stream, after which the Academy journal is named. The nearest town and railway station is Camberley.
Sandhurst, unlike some other national military academies such as West Point in the United States, the Royal Military College of Canada or the Australian Defence Force Academy, is not a university. Eighty-five percent of entrants are university graduates, but this is not an absolute requirement.^[1] This is illustrated by Prince William and Prince Harry; one a graduate, the other not.

Contents

Courses

Organisation

Regular Army

History

Alumni

Royalty

Politicians

Authors and poets

Actors

Musicians

Sportsmen

Explorers

Archaeologists

Businessmen

Black sheep

Lineage

Notes

Further reading

External links

Courses

The Commissioning Course lasts 44 weeks and must be passed by all British regular army officers (with some exceptions) before they receive their commission. It is usually preceded by the Army Officer Selection Board and followed by a further training course specific to the Regiment or Corps the officer will serve in. A shorter commissioning course is run for professionally qualified officers (e.g., doctors, dentists, nurses, lawyers, vets and chaplains). This shorter course, lasting just four weeks, is known colloquially as the ''Vicars and Tarts'' course.
Another short course includes the testing phase of the Territorial Army Officer Commissioning Process which last only three weeks. The TA Commissioning Course (TACC) is avaialble to Officer Cadets after completion of 3 training modules, with Sandhurst seen as Module 4 of the Officer's training and assessment. This prior training typically takes 2 years to complete, although a new course has recently begun to reduce this to several weeks during the Summer. This "fast track" route to a TA commission takes place in August and aims to train officer cadets in all the required skills ready to pass directly into the September commissioning course intake. Upon completion, Officer Cadets become Probationary Second Lieutenants in the TA or Officer Training Corps (UOTC). The probationary period ends upon completion of further officer training in areas such as Soldier managemenet and 'specific-to-arm' training and must be completed for a TA officer to be deployed on operations.
Sandhurst also runs a variety of other courses for officers, most notably the Late Entry Officer Course (LEOC), and has renowned academic departments staffed by civilian lecturers. The noted academics John Keegan and Richard Holmes were both members of the faculty.
All officer cadets who complete the full Commissioning Course are eligible to become Licentiate (part qualified) members of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) as the course satisfies the requirements of the CIPD's Core Management programme.

Organisation

In overall charge of the RMAS is the Commandant, usually an officer of Major General rank, while the Academy Sergeant Major (AcSM) is the most senior individual warrant officer in the British Army (only Conductors of the Royal Logistic Corps rank higher than the AcSM, but there are several of them at any one time). The main RMAS commissioning courses start in January, May and September of each year. Each new intake numbers approximately 270 cadets, each of whom joins a company. The commissioning course is split up into three terms, each lasting fourteen weeks, and on each course cadets are put into one of three companies. There can be as many as ten companies within the RMAS at any one time, each commanded by a Major and named after a famous battle in which the British Army has fought. The company names vary but are currently :

★ The Falklands Company

★ Imjin Company

★ Malaya Company

★ Blenheim Company

★ Inkerman Company

★ Waterloo Company

★ Gaza Company

★ The Somme Company

★ Ypres Company

★ Dettingen Company—the Short Courses mentioned above (for Territorial Army and Professionally Qualified Officers) are operated sequentially, and are each known as "Dettingen Company".
Within a company are three platoons each of thirty officer cadets, commanded by a Captain and supported by a Colour Sergeant. Unlike West Point, RMAS entrusts the majority of officer training to SNCOs. Dettingen Company is divided along the same lines as the regular intakes, though smaller courses may consist of only two platoons.
There is also a "rehabilitation" platoon—Lucknow Platoon. It looks after cadets who are injured during training, with a view to preparing them to re-enter the commissioning course or processing those who are medically discharged.

Regular Army

A small number of regular army units are based at the RMAS to provide support for the colleges and their training:

★ Gurkha Demonstration Company (Sitang): This is a company-sized unit drawn from all units of the Brigade of Gurkhas, to provide realistic battle training for the cadets.

★ 44 Support Squadron, Royal Logistic Corps: This is the RMAS's permanently based transport, logistic and signals support unit.

History

The RMA Sandhurst was formed in 1947, from a merger of the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich (which trained officers for the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers from 1741 to 1939) and the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. Following the ending of National Service in the UK, the RMAS became the sole establishment for initial officer training in the British Army as the Mons Officer Training School in Aldershot was closed.
The Royal Military College opened its doors in 1802; coincidentally the same year as Saint Cyr and West Point. Amongst the current Military Academies only the Dutch Military Academy is older.

Alumni

Sandhurst is prestigious and has had many famous alumni. There are so many famous generals that a fair and representative list would be immense. Despite urban myths to the contrary, Idi Amin and Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi did 'not' attend the RMAS. Note, this list contains a number of ''students'' who did not complete the course. With a few exceoptions, the foreign royalty were not, for example, commissioned.

Royalty

★ Prince William of Wales ("William Wales") (Blues and Royals)

★ Prince Henry of Wales ("Harry Wales") (Blues and Royals)

★ Henri, Grand Duke of Luxembourg

★ His Serene Highness Prince Alois of Liechtenstein

★ Hassanal Bolkiah, Sultan of Brunei

★ Pavlos, Crown Prince of Greece

★ HRH Prince Khalid Bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia

★ HRH Prince Mishal Bin Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia

★ King Abdullah II of Jordan (13th/18th Royal Hussars (Queen Mary's Own))

★ King George Tupou V of Tonga

★ Sultan Qaboos of Oman

★ Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa of Qatar

★ Mohammad bin Zayed Al Nahyan UAE

★ Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum (Awarded the Overseas sword)

Politicians

★ Sir Winston Churchill (4th Queen's Own Hussars)

★ The Right Honourable Ian Duncan Smith (Scots Guards)

★ Patrick Mercer OBE MP (Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Regiment (29th/45th Foot))

★ Sir Robert Cary, 1st Baronet (4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards)

Authors and poets

★ Ian Fleming did not complete course

★ George W. M. Reynolds

★ Gerald Brenan

★ Keith Douglas

★ Sir Osbert Sitwell applied twice and failed to get in.^[2]

★ Lord Dunsany

★ Harry Graham (Coldstream Guards)

Actors

★ David Niven (Highland Light Infantry (City of Glasgow Regiment))

Musicians

★ Victor Silvester

★ James Blunt (Life Guards)

Sportsmen

★ Olympic gold medal horseman Mark Phillips (1st The Queen's Dragoon Guards)

★ Multiple amputee Chris Moon^[3]: completed Marathon des sables and a campaigner against land mines^[4] (Royal Military Police).

★ Olympic gold medal modern pentathlete Jim Fox

★ Captain of England rugby team, Will Carling (Royal Regiment of Wales)^[5]

★ England rugby international, Tim Rodber (Green Howards (Alexandra, Princess of Wales's Own Yorkshire Regiment)

Explorers

★ Chris Bonington (Royal Fusiliers, commissioned into the Royal Tank Regiment)

★ Daniel Byles (Royal Army Medical Corps)

★ Captain Oates (6th (Inniskilling) Dragoons)

★ Richard Profit (Royal Engineers)

★ Francis Younghusband (1st King's Dragoon Guards)

Archaeologists

★ Augustus Pitt Rivers

Businessmen

★ Robert Taylor-Hughes, Managing Director, Beiersdorf Middle East ^[6]

★ Greg Leniston, Sales Director, Ice Broadband Dublin

Black sheep

★ James Hewitt (Life Guards)

★ Simon Mann (Scots Guards)

★ Katie Hopkins (Adjutant General's Corps) and Paul Callaghan, participants in ''The Apprentice''.

Lineage

|-style="text-align: center; background: #c4df9b;"
| align="center" colspan="4"|'Lineage'
|-
| width="25%" rowspan="20" align="center" | 'Royal Military Academy Sandhurst'
| width="25%" rowspan="2" align="center"| 'Royal Military Academy'
| width="25%" align="center"| 'Royal Military Academy'
|-
| width="25%" align="center"| 'East India Company Military Seminary'
|-
| width="25%" colspan="2" align="center"| 'Royal Military College'
|-
| width="25%" colspan="2" align="center" | 'Mons Officer Cadet School'

Notes

1. RMAS: The Officer Cadet.
2. Poet: Sir Osbert Sitwell - All poems of Sir Osbert Sitwell at PoemHunter.com.
3. Chris Moon MBE: Motivational Speaker (official site).
4. Gordon, Bryony, "Land mine victim's 1,284-mile trek", ''The Daily Telegraph'', 14 March, 2004.
5. [1] Biog from 6. http://www.itp.net/events/campaignconference/intenationspeakerfaculty.php International Speaker Conference, Dubai.

Further reading

★ Mockler-Ferryman, A. F. ''Annals of Sandhurst: A Chronicle of the Royal Military College From Its Foundation to the Present''. Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger Publishing, 2007 (reprint; original 1900). ISBN 1432665588.

External links

★ Royal Military Academy Sandhurst website

★ Army Officer Selection Board website

★ A dozen images of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst

★