I DOUBT if I'd have passed muster on Britain's Army parade grounds – and never mind dodging bullets on the battlefields of our post-colonial history.
My military CV: a few terms in B Company of my school's Army Cadet Force, shouldering the small arms that won the Second World War – well-seasoned Lee Enfield 303s and, if you were singularly unlucky on field exercises, the much heavier Bren gun.
When I helped to get half my platoon lost on the unforgiving war zone that is the Weald of Sussex it was clear that the laurels of Marlborough and Montgomery were never going to sit on my sweaty brows.
And when we were inspected by a general – a real general from the real Army – he took one look at my Brasso-smudged webbing, arched an eyebrow as if surveying Wellington's "scum of the earth", and strutted grandly onwards.
Notwithstanding this somewhat inglorious calling to the colours, I've often been within earshot of a sergeant-major's yelp.
In fact my maternal grandfather was a sergeant-major who was gassed in Flanders and coughed, spluttered and wheezed for half a century before he died in the late 1960s.
A brother serves in the Army and his mother swears she never slept during his six-month tour in Afghanistan.
A nephew begins officer training in the autumn.
For these reasons I tend to follow the fortunes of our armed services and last Saturday I would have turned out for Armed Forces Day but for a kind prior invitation to the splendidly-presented Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust Fair at Widmerpool – where folk looked into sunny skies to see military aircraft heading for Nottingham (as well as the usual fly-pasts by Ryanair jets bound for nearby EMA).
By all accounts Armed Forces Day was a triumph for Nottingham and for the various contingents representing the services.
They say you know you are getting old when the policemen look young.
The same could be said of other uniformed officials – perhaps our bank managerettes but certainly our service personnel.
Looking at television coverage of Armed Forces Day on Saturday evening I was struck by the freshness of the faces under the berets, bearskins and forage caps.
A staged withdrawal from Afghanistan over the coming months prompts hopes of fewer sleepless nights for mothers – but also thoughts of what the politicians might next have in store for these young men and women.
Experience tells us that politicians are simply not to be trusted with our armed forces.
How on earth did the clots contrive the construction of two monstrous new aircraft carriers yet not the procurement of the warplanes that should be flying from them?
In times of retrenchment we must accept cuts to our armed services.
I don't have a problem in principle with the Royal Navy, apart from two upcoming and temporarily useless aircraft carriers, being reduced to the point where it could be floated in Trent Lock.
I don't have a problem with the Army being cut to just 80,000 – a size perhaps suitable for defending the Weald of Sussex.
The question is, will successive Governments accept that the services be asked to do no more than those tasks?
In other words, that they will match foreign policy to our capability to intervene?
With all the right clothing, equipment and back-up?
Or will a misguided sense of adventure and an unrealistic sense of our potency lead us into more ill-defined follies of Afghanistan proportions?
Watching those pictures of Armed Forces Day I was touched by our pride in the professionalism and brilliance of our service personnel.
Will they ever get the politicians they deserve?