Regular readers of this column will know that I spend time with the armed forces as part of an organisation called the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme. The AFPS was designed to allow those MPs who had no practical experience of our armed forces to be able to spend some time embedded with them to learn more about them. With no military experience of my own, this has been an opportunity to be informed about detail of military life before voting on war.
The programme asks us to commit, in the first year, to 25 days and in the second year to just 15. During the recent parliamentary recess, I completed my second year with a group of professionals that I had not properly met before - The Royal Marines.
The opportunity was to spend three or four days learning arctic survival techniques in northern Norway, and to see how the marine commandos train for duties in sub zero conditions.
As it turned out, despite being north of the arctic circle, the temperature at -5 degrees was not much colder than Kidderminster. However, the conditions do affect everyone who lives and works in that region so the training was compulsory for all service personnel working in the camp during the winter. It involved learning about the effects of frost nip and frost bite, hypothermia, building an ice shelter, and recovery from falling through an ice sheet into a frozen lake. All quite challenging and something they all - including support personnel - have to undertake. But aside from a fascinating insight into the training we give our elite forces in hostile condition, it gave us all an opportunity to meet and spend time with a truly remarkable group of people.
The Royal Marines are unquestionably one of the finest regular forces in the world. But they combine extraordinary toughness with an immense amount of humanity. For me, one of the highlights was talking to a woman who had all but completed the commando course. Learning of her views about women on the front line was truly fascinating.
So now that I have completed my full two year course on the AFPS, I can say that I have a far greater insight into the complexities of our military. Without this, we MPs would have a far less informed insight on our military when we need to put them in arms way.