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Armed Forces recruitment on rise in West Midlands
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The English Midlands has been identified as one of the most fertile recruiting grounds for the British Armed Forces – with 4,500 applicants from the region joining up each year.
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Birmingham's Armed Forces recruitment office does better than anywhere else in the country, with the latest figures suggesting that 1,200 people are expected to have signed up by the end of this financial year.
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So what makes West Midlanders so willing to serve their country? Inside Out on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ One West Midlands (Friday 23 February, 7.30pm) investigates.
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For the current crop of recruits to the Armed Forces, the possibility of being sent to serve in combat conditions is higher than it has been for decades.
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With conflicts continuing in Iraq and Afghanistan, there are more British troops deployed on operations than at any time in the last 50 years.
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Yet this very real prospect of serving and possibly dying for their country is not putting off young recruits from the region.
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Signaller Anthony Mullinex is a 17-year-old from Birmingham, and has just finished his basic training at Whittington Barracks, near Lichfield.
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Four months ago Anthony was working in a Birmingham call centre: "It was a dead-end job, going in every day, sitting behind a computer. That's when I started thinking that I wanted to do something different."
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Fellow recruit Matthew Fieldhouse, 18-years-old and also from Birmingham, has also completed his training at the same barracks.
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He felt he was not getting on very well at college so took the decision to leave without really knowing what he wanted to do.
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That was when he visited a careers office and began speaking to the army. He signed the forms and within a month he was beginning his training for a life in the Armed Forces.
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Dr David Dunn of the University of Birmingham says the current high figures for recruits into the Armed Forces from the West Midlands is in part due to a tradition passed down through generations.
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He says the Midlands have historically been an excellent recruiting area for the services.
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He adds: "The Midlands secondary education system is unusual in the UK. There's a lot of separate gender education. In boys schools there's a male bonding ethos similar to the army. There are also many grammar schools with combined cadet forces."
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Lieutenant Colonel John Moody, Commander of Regional Recruiting, suggests the prospect of serving in Iraq or Afghanistan is the motivation that encourages people to sign up.
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He says: "If you join the army you can expect to go on operations, and there are a lot of people who are up for that challenge. It doesn't put a lot of them off. Indeed it has the reverse effect, and well done them."
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For some of these young recruits though, their journey could end in tragedy.
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Sue Smith's son, Phillip Hewett from Tamworth, was killed in Iraq in 2005, aged 21, and just four days into his tour of duty in the country.
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Despite the agony of losing a child, she does not regret her son's decision to join the army.
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She says: "When Philip was a bricklayer he got really depressed with life. He felt there was no purpose. He didn't want to be a nobody – he wanted to feel he had accomplished something.
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"The three years he was in the army were the best years for him. I wouldn't say that now on reflection that I'd do the same thing again, but he was old enough to make that decision himself, whether I agreed with it or not."
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Inside Out, Friday 23 February, 7.30pm, ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ One West Midlands
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