It is an autumnal day in November when a delegation of Sikh serving personnel arrive at a country house in Oxfordshire which - unusually for a stately home - sits behind a secure perimeter, forming part of an MOD site.
As they gather under the oil painting ‘Homage to the Fallen’ members of the group talk amongst themselves about the day that lays ahead of them. They know they have come here to discuss spiritual resilience in the armed forces, but what does that mean?
The Sikh delegation are students for the day. They are here at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom to develop their skills with the help of the Armed Forces Chaplaincy Centre (AFCC) based in the Grade II listed, Beckett House.
This annual event at the academy falls, this year, on the 555th Gurpurab of Guru Nanak Dev Ji making it a unique edition in the seminars run by AFCC since 2006. The attendees spent the day collaborating with each other over three sessions. They share personal experiences with one another and reflect on pertinent issues. The students held frank discussions covering such subjects as dealing with doubting their faith in crisis/difficult times and understanding/practicing compassion in challenging and divisive situations. Discussing such topics enables the cohort to develop their morals as individuals and helps them make good choices.
Granthi Mandeep Kaur MBE, Sikh Chaplain to the British Armed Forces said:
By enabling events such as this, AFCC is providing skills to support and enhance military integrity and create a better fighting force. Facilitating dialogue around faith and resilience helps students to prepare for the potential internal conflict they may have within themselves.
AFCC shows that, for effective military personnel, training and development never stops and there is much more to fighting than knowing how to use a weapon. It is important to recognise every religion we have within defence, and to enable them all to be effective, capable fighters who are both operationally effective and capable of making morally-sound decisions.
