For All Who Serve

[Peter Crowe]

I have been a secondary school History teacher primarily serving underprivileged urban schools and also spent some time in Special Education (Social Emotional) for about seven years. When I was a younger man I wanted to have a career as an attested Police Constable in Scotland. Strathclyde Police was my first choice and although unsuccessful in that endeavour I briefly worked part-time as a civilian crime prevention field-worker with the then Community Involvement department of Lothian and Borders Police at Hawick. I also tried to enlist in the TA (52nd Lowland Volunteers, KOSB Coy.) with a view to officer candidacy but discovered I was medically unfit for police/military service with scoliosis and being significantly underweight for my height, the cause of which I only discovered in 2010 . For those reasons I only checked the Education box. Most of the men from my father's family were in either the British Army or the British Merchant Navy.

In my adolescence I was a Cadet with the Air Training Corps in Hamilton, Lanarkshire. I was also active in Scouting from the ages of eight to sixteen when our family moved to the Borders.

I discovered in 2010 that I was born with a hereditary connective tissue disorder (marfan syndrome) probably (we speculate) inherited from my late mother which makes military/police/fire service and contact sports dangerous for a sudden aortic dissection and also causes poor weight to height ratio and scoliosis. I had to have aortic repair surgery in May 2010 as I already at 43 (due to life's wear and tear) had an aortic aneurysm that was in imminent danger of dissection.