Flying and gliding, performing music, learning first aid – and experiencing the Cold War at close quarters.
The memories of three HUC colleagues span different generations and different branches of the cadet movement, but all have something in common: experiences that have stayed with them long after their time as cadets.
For Health Advisor Arwen Adriaans, pictured centre, the Royal Air Force Air Cadets offered opportunities ranging from flying and gliding to first aid and radio communications.
“I would say absolutely in a heartbeat,” she says when asked whether she would recommend joining. “There is so much that you can get out of it.”
“I’ve learned first aid, radio skills. I can recite the phonetic alphabet off the top of my head. I know how to use a radio properly. I’ve gone flying, I’ve gone gliding.”
Her enthusiasm for first aid also helped influence her decision to join HUC, where she has worked for two years, describing her role as a Health Advisor as being a little like “first aid over the phone”.
And Arwen’s cadet story has now come full circle. After leaving in January 2025, she has returned to 1166 (Welwyn Garden City) Squadron as a volunteer Civilian Instructor and is preparing to become its Training Officer when the current postholder leaves to join the RAF.
'One of the best decisions I've ever made'
For Eleanor Everett, a Health Advisor and Coach based at HUC’s Peterborough Call Centre, becoming an Army Cadet was rather less planned.
In fact, she had little interest in joining at all.
A lifelong friend knew Eleanor, pictured with Lord-Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire Julie Spence, played the flute and spent around six months trying to persuade her to join because the Corps of Drums needed flautists. Eventually, aged 15, she relented.
“One day I said, ‘Okay, you know what, why not? Let’s give it a try. Let’s see how it goes.’
“And it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my entire life.”
Over the next three years, Eleanor combined her lifelong love of music with camps, friendships and a packed summer programme of performances – often spending virtually every weekend playing somewhere.
“It was a lot of commitment, but genuinely it was so fun,” she recalls. “It was just blending something I’d never been interested in with something that I loved.”
Her greatest achievement was being selected as one of Cambridgeshire’s Lord-Lieutenant’s Cadets – an honour which brought some extraordinary opportunities, including meeting Prince Edward.
Eleanor never wanted a military career, but remains unequivocal about recommending the cadet experience.
“I got so many good opportunities from it. You learn so much while you’re there.”
An eye-opening experience
Robert Beard’s memories take us back to a very different era.
Robert spent three years in the Combined Cadet Force at The Perse School in Cambridge, where Monday afternoons were devoted to cadet activities.
There was drill – or “square bashing”, as Robert remembers it – first aid and the usual training.
But it was the opportunity to go away on camps that made the biggest impression.
One in particular has remained vivid: a trip to Germany in the summer he finished school.
The Berlin Wall was still standing and the Cold War was very much a reality. Robert remembers being conscious that, while there was no fighting taking place, they were experiencing the atmosphere of its front line.
“It was very eye-opening. I learned a lot,” Robert recalls of the Germany trip.
It also included a visit to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp – an experience that made an even deeper impression and left him with what he describes as “never-to-be-forgotten images of human cruelty”.
More broadly, Robert remembers enjoying the challenge of cadet life and the opportunity it gave him to experience a world beyond the one he knew.
As cadets, Robert and his contemporaries were able to mix with both officers and other ranks, spending time in both the officers’ and soldiers’ messes.
“As a naive public school boy, I had a lot of experiences there that I hadn’t had before and have not had since either,” he recalls.
Like Eleanor, Robert did not go on to pursue a military career. Instead, he entered Church of England parish ministry before spending much of his working life in the voluntary and community sector.