The initial marching and shooting was mandatory, plus a “camp” on an actual military base and “adventure training” (hypothermia in Wales).
After that it split into typing, first aid etc. for people like me, and “Marines” for people with genuine military career ambitions.
I think ~50% of my year went into the forces.
They did the marching and the camp bit. You need a parent to sign off on firing a gun so there was zero chance of me OKing that. CCF is compulsory at the kid’s school or I would have nixed the whole thing from the outset. Most of the the kids drop out after the camp/marching.
The Bren would have taken the .303 that the SMLE used, or, if it had been modernised, the NATO 7.62 so I doubt ammo was a problem, more letting kids empty a 30 round mag in 5 seconds or so…
Played with a few 
SLR
GPMG
LMG
SMG
Browning hipower
SA80
LSW
MP5K
Sig Sauer P226
And how has no one with a particularly pacifist bent had a massive go at that policy? That could get lost straight away if I got anywhere near it.
Similar for us but we had an army and raf section. Somehow I got both, so half the time I was doing Signals the other half flying planes.
The raf bit was awesome flying bulldogs with semi retired pilots making sure we didn’t die
Yes, there was one guy who liked to carry it every week. Went on to be an officer, obvs. He didn’t like me 
Public/private schools are still massive recruiting centres for officers.
It is compulsory to give it a try. In reality the drop out rate is huge as most of the kids hate it and the school aren’t arsed forcing the uninterested or those whose parents absolutely refuse.
My eldest like boats and FoL V2.0 likes the drumming. A note from pacifist parents will get kids out of CCF but mine wanted to give it a go. This was OK with me as long as a NO GUNS rule was adhered to so I included a ban from the range/any weapons in my letter to the school. This is not an unusual set of options according to the school. The girls weren’t keen on the guns anyway.
Yeah all about the recruitment! Two of my class went on to pretty serious military careers. One SBS and got the conspicuous gallantry cross. The other RAF and ended up as a group captain.
I am told that there are at least 3 kids in FoL v1.0’s sixth form cohort who have chosen the services over straight entry into University if their A-levels are up to it. I think they are looking at officer cadetships with the Army/RAF picking up some or all of their tuition fees. I went to University with a dope smoking fiend who was on some sort of a similar scheme. He seemed to be doing an UG degree majoring in rowing and rugby with a minor in beer and spliffs.
Short Service Commission?
When FoL#2 was thinking of being a vet, she looked into doing a SSC with the Army Veterinary Corps, who would have massively subsidised her Uni & Vet school courses in return for 6 years commissioned service and doing OTC at Uni. Seemed a good deal to me.
Unfortunately the Army won’t subsidise architects…
My state school had a CCF (Army, Navy and RAF) but membership was entirely optional and no-one took the regular stuff very seriously. They told me the camps could be fun though. The air-kids went flying, the navy went out on boats and the army shot at stuff, camped and drove heavyish machines. I weighed up months of drill and fiddling with uniforms against a week or two a year away and didn’t bother. If I needed 50m of D10 for a long-wire aerial I could get it from any of the signals lads in return for beer.
VB
You need to open your house up for museum purposes
We have a tiny ww2 event yearly about 1/2 mile from here.
Sadly due to weather, covid it hasn’t been held since 2017.
Always have some great vehicles from the period along with music and stalls.
Jeez, DON10, in my previous life, in addition to being a unit accountant I was also a UNICOM systems admin. So they taught me to wire up a field computer network using that stuff. I used to go along to the TA annual camps and set up a system for them. They were great, 2 weeks away playing with guns FV432s and land rovers, cheap beer in the mess and as I was meant to be on duty 24hrs a day I got 16hrs a day overtime for 2 weeks.
You probably had wire-strippers. We used whatever came to hand so I’ve lost count of the number of times the steel strands in it stabbed me in the fingers. It was nearly unbreakable though.
VB
Sounds strangely familiar, except for the rowing bit
I’m less convinced by how important language skills are. I don’t know anyone who has used any of the French or German they learnt at school for anything other than the odd holiday. I still remember a bit of German, but only because my mother grew up there and we went there often when I was a kid. I wonder what percentage of the population regularly need to speak a foreign language, and whether they learnt that language at school. If you’re a supervisor in a factory, I could see Polish being useful but I doubt many schools teach it. If you’re involved in manufacturing Chinese might be useful, but not for the majority of the workforce. Do the Chinese have fronted adverbials? I suspect most kids would be better off learning how a country works.
