Britain’s top general says he wants more rule breakers to join the Army
THE head of the Army has says he wants more buccaneers, mavericks and pirates to join up.
Gen Sir Patrick Sanders, Chief of the General Staff, said the Army benefited from soldiers such as those in BBC drama SAS Rogue Heroes.
In a podcast, he said: “If you look at some of our finest troops, one of the sets of skills the special forces try to encourage is to learn how to break the rules.
“There are times where knowing and having the confidence and the courage to break rules is an important set of qualities.
“You need some buccaneers, some mavericks and pirates as well as regulators. You need rat catchers and regulators.”
The drama SAS Rogue Heroes follows the fortunes of the early days of the group — when only proven rule-breakers were asked to join up.
In the podcast the general also revealed his fears over the increasing legal restrictions being placed on troops – what he called law-fare and the impact they might have during a battle.
He added: “I do worry about the increasing layer of constraints. I worry about the impact of litigation in warfare – so law-fare and whether that holds people back in critical moments in an engagement but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep trying to push back on these constraints.”
The Army chief also said that all soldiers needed to be given the opportunity to fail and said that he had failed, sometimes quite badly, at every level of command.
General Sanders added: “I learnt a lot from failure. I have failed at every level. But I failed quite hard, quite early on.
“I got thrown out of university on an (Army) cadetship after my first year for a combination of not working hard enough and misbehaviour.”
“At Sandhurst I accumulated what must have been the worst disciplinary record of any officer cadet in history – about 40 days of restrictions of privileges – but there was nothing so heinous that they couldn’t see the potential in me. I made every single mistake that a young officer can make.”