I did HAVO. After that I genuinely did not know what I wanted, and going into Defence just seemed like a hell of a thing to do, so I applied to Airmobile. I was seventeen.

They came back and said go and get some experience first, go do VeVa.

And I was seventeen, so my thinking was, well, if they say that then that must be how it works. So that is what I did.

VeVa stands for Veiligheid en Vakmanschap, Safety and Craftsmanship. It is an MBO programme built specifically to prepare you for a job in Defence, run at more than thirty regional colleges across the country. You need a VMBO diploma to start.

Which level you take decides what you are being prepared for.

I took level 3, the non-commissioned officer track. I did a year of it. And in that year I worked out that the level was simply too low for me, that I had more in me than that.

So I stopped, and I applied straight to the KMS.

The Koninklijke Militaire School is where non-commissioned officers are trained. I got in.

And then I had a genuinely rough time, because the level was extremely high. That was not because the course was unfair, it was because of who I was sitting next to. A large part of the group were doorstromers, people already serving who were working their way up, and they had an enormous amount of experience behind them. I had a year of school.

Next I had to think about what I wanted to do instead, and I landed on the Marechaussee, the Dutch Military Police, as a wachtmeester.

The reason it pulled at me was this. A wachtmeester is more or less the same thing as being a sergeant, but at the Marechaussee it sits at a different level than what I had just walked away from at the KMS, and that appealed to me enormously. Same idea, different world.

I put in a request. It was not accepted.

So I applied to the police, and at the same time I applied to Airmobile as a soldier. The police process was further along, so that one came first.

And here is where I have to be honest about my own part in it. I went into it far too casually. There were questionnaires, and I rattled through them, and that last questionnaire I filled in at speed and far too neutrally. What came out the other end was that I had too few competencies.

Rejected.

So there I was, heading for the exact rank I had spent two years telling myself was beneath me.

That is the honest version and I am not going to dress it up. I did not choose Airmobile because I admired it. I ended up there because every other door had closed, and I walked in looking down on the job.

For the record, that job sits in Cluster 6, which is Defence’s heaviest screening cluster.

Before the AMOL starts there is a physical assessment, and how long it lasts depends on where you are coming from.

What the assessment decides is where you start. Do well and you begin in week 4, straight into the real work. Do badly and you begin on day 1 and do the entire build-up.

I had not prepared physically. At all. Because I did not think much of being a soldier at Airmobile, so why would I.

They took me apart that day. My result was not good. And the result of that was that I started on day 1.

There is a genuine shame in that, because you could have been in week four if you had simply turned up fit. And it is not that I looked out of shape, or that anyone said anything to me about it. It was the result that told me. My conditioning had been measured, and it was not where it should have been.

But it put me in my place, properly, and that turned out to be exactly what I needed. That day gave me more than almost anything else has, and so did the whole run of rejections that came before it.

Because getting knocked back teaches you something that being waved through never can. If the police had said yes, I would have learned nothing at all.

The AMOL, Algemene Militaire Opleiding Luchtmobiel, ran for about six months. And it went well for me, which surprised nobody more than it surprised me.

I came in as a soldaat 1, because I was a doorstromer with the KMS behind me. You do get looked at slightly differently for that, and fair enough, but I was able to measure up and that settled it fast.

What makes the AMOL work is the build-up. It is put together properly, so even on that course you are being prepared for the highest level from the start. Because the build was good, the marching with a pack went fine. Nothing was thrown at you before you were ready for it.

You learn everything new. And more than that, you learn to go looking for your own limits, and then to step over them when you have to.

That is my experience and I am not going to pretend it is more complicated than that. The AMOL was a hell of a course. Genuinely tough, and genuinely doable.

The whole thing ends with a final exercise that runs for a week, and in that week you walk an enormous amount. It closes with a final march of 25 kilometres with a full pack.

That march is heavy. A few of the lads broke metatarsals on it. And that last kilometre is its own particular kind of cruelty, because you know you are nearly there and you are also completely finished.

I do not believe they do that any more, which is a shame, because it was the best part of the entire course.

These were men I had never met in my life. And walking past them felt like coming home. That was the first time I ever felt brotherhood like that, and I had never had anything close to it before.

That was the moment I knew. Not at the ceremony afterwards. There, on the road, half broken, being handed sweets by strangers who had done the same walk.

You come in early in the morning, and then you get a little time to yourself. You sit down. You eat something, you drink something, and you wait.

Then later that morning, once the families are there and the units are there and everything is in place, you fall in with your training platoon and you walk the last stretch.

Through the gates of the Oranjekazerne. With the music corps alongside you, pipes and drums, if I remember it right.

That was a genuinely extraordinary moment in my life and it is one I hold onto.

I look back on the AMOL with nothing but good feelings, and that final exercise especially. It was put together extremely well.

Which is a strange thing to say about a course I only ended up on because everybody else turned me down.

So if you are reading this because you got rejected somewhere, or because you are about to try something and you are scared it is above your level, here is what I have got.

What I found out, and I only really found it out once I was in the work, is that you have to forget everything you think you know and simply do your absolute best. Do that for long enough and you end up in the place where you were supposed to be.

I got into the place I looked down on, and that is the place that built me.

What came after the beret is a different story. I went operational, I started jumping out of aircraft, and about two years later I found out that the sniper group was standing empty.

That is part two.