AS the recent BBC4 television series Bullets, Boots and Bandages set out to show, an Army doesn’t always triumph, or indeed even survive, on valour alone. It needs the right equipment in the right place at the right time.

No good rushing over the ridge and running out of ammo.

So the organisational skills of Colonel Andy Taylor, who spent a Regular Army career making sure the logistics were in place during war or peace, will come in very handy now he’s in charge of the cadets. Having retired after more than 30 years in what subsequently became the Royal Logistic Corps, Col Taylor has been appointed the new commandant of Hereford and Worcester Army Cadet Force, responsible for 21 detachments spread right across the area.

It’s quite a challenge in an era when youthful interest in what might be described as “traditional youth activities” is under pressure from computers, the internet and the mobile phones which appear to be surgically attached to so many young ears these days.

Some might well feel the Armed Forces have a leg-up over their competitors when it comes to catching the attention of the target audience, mainly because of the front-page publicity 21st century wars have given them. Hardly a day goes by without news of our Armed Forces, whether it be good or bad.

It’s surprising therefore to hear Col Taylor say that most young recruits don’t join the Army Cadets with an Army career in mind.

“Only 10 to 15 per cent go on to join the services,” he said. “Some in the Army, others the Royal Navy or the RAF. We certainly do not see ourselves as a recruiting arm of the Army. The training programme is not designed to produce junior soldiers, it is designed to help them develop as young people.

“Along the way they can gain qualifications which will serve them well whatever path they eventually choose.”

In fact, the Army was not Col Taylor’s first career choice.

Although his grandfather was in the Herefordshire Regiment during the First World War, his father was in the Navy and his mother in the WRAF during the Second World War – and he himself served as an adult instructor with Hereford Cadet Battalion – when he left Ledbury Grammar School, he joined Lloyds Bank.

Born and brought up in Ledbury, his embryo banking career also took in spells at Worcester and Malvern before, as he put it, he began “to get twitchy”.

“I couldn’t see me doing that for the rest of my life,” he said. So in April 1977, after five years in a suit behind a counter, he handed in his notice and signed on for the Army.

Following officer training at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, he was commissioned into the Royal Corp of Transport and there followed 32 years in the Army, during which he rose through the ranks and saw service around the world, including Ireland, Bosnia and the Middle East.

Not forgetting, of course, Germany, where there is still a significant British Army presence.

Among Col Taylor’s high-profile positions were staff appointments in Headquarters British Army on the Rhine and with the Ministry of Defence at the Logistics Executive (Army). Now he wants to give something back. He said: “The Army Cadet Force was instrumental in shaping the past 30 years of my life and I can think of no better way of repaying that than by working to give young people in Herefordshire and Worcestershire the opportunity to grow and to shine and to thrive in an organisation that prides itself on inspiring youngsters to achieve.”

There is also the opportunity, and let’s not be too coy about this, to play with guns. Something you don’t get with any other youth organisation.

Sure, the intention is not to turn out a conveyor belt of Clint Eastwoods, but life with the Army cadets is certainly more edgy and adventurous than with some other youth organisations.

“Weapon training usually starts with an air rifle and then a .22 rifle before going on to full bore,” Col Taylor said. “Obviously everything is done under full instruction.

“The Army cadets do provide the opportunity to do things you might not otherwise do.”

There are regular forays to the shooting ranges at Tiddesley Wood, near Pershore, and each year about 400 of the Hereford and Worcester Army Cadet Force’s 650 cadets, plus adult instructors, go off for a seven-day annual camp to test their skills and have some fun. Map reading, first aid and a host of other activities are all part of the curriculum.

And it doesn’t involve a major financial outlay for parents either.

“The only thing they have to buy are their boots,” said Col Taylor.

Army logistics, in this instance, doesn’t provide those.