Maurice’s news - May 2020

When my ON school friend Nick Jenkins shared some news with me about the school’s new pavilion and a photo of Lynn James (below), it brought back many memories. Nick and I were fellow boarders at Adams and we have remained good friends over the years. Indeed, he was my best man and is godfather to one of my four boys.

I can remember the moment this photograph was taken. I am the one at the front, kneeling and full of joy as the 1st rugby 7’s team had just triumphed at The Haberdashers’ annual 7’s tournament in 1985. This very sadly was the final season for Lynn, although his passion for rugby and his message of ‘tackle hard, run hard’, fair play and sportsmanship have remained with me as metaphors for life.

Post school I attended Cardiff University to study law with an Army scholarship. I went on to attend military training at The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, being commissioned into The Gloucestershire Regiment (now The Rifles), leaving in the mid-1990s.

Years on, I own and run a global advisory and consulting company called Armstrong Wolfe with offices in New York, London, and Singapore, although my main office is in Cheltenham: www.armstrongwolfe.com. We are presently advising the Chief Operating Officer communities of the investment banking and asset management sectors on how best to navigate their way through the COVID-19 crisis. This same community sponsors and supports my charity www.gcfbosnia.org, dedicated to four of my comrades killed on our operational tour to Bosnia on UN Service in 1994/1995.

We asked Maurice about the two books he has written.

My first book is called ‘No Place to Hide’ and is about the role of the Banking Chief Operating Officer (COO), a dry book by all accounts! Its content is drawn from the roundtable debates my company runs and I moderate quarterly in Toronto, New York, London, Singapore, and Hong Kong. They were all face to face pre-COVID-19 crisis, now all executed virtually.

I contend in this book that every COO’s role is unique and through a compilation of papers I analyse one of the most important and yet largely misunderstood leadership roles within banking today. If you are an established COO, aspiring to be one, seeking to hire one or generally interested in the subject of executive management and leadership, this book may be of interest to you.

My second book has an unusual title: ‘Donkey Mail and Bully Beef’, it does of course make perfect sense when you read it. It is about my first deployment to Bosnia when I was part of a six-month operational tour and is the intertwined memories of my soldiers and fellow officers. We were all ill equipped, poorly supported, and isolated, yet we managed to get through the winter months and achieve all military and humanitarian objectives.

The hardship was made worse, however, by the intransigence of the Serbians, who surrounded the town and prevented fresh rations from entering the enclave. This left us on a traditional bully beef diet, packed in boxed 24-hour ration packs. Before a time of mobile or internet communications, the soldiers waited patiently at their observation posts for the sporadic arrival of letters and mail. These were delivered by donkeys purchased by the battalion, as diesel was scarce and too valued for simple mail delivery services to the soldiers in the UN observation posts high in the mountains overlooking the town of Goražde.

All proceeds from the sales of both books support GCF Bosnia, which I founded in 2012 in memory of the four comrades who lost their lives in 1994. We have helped rebuild the school since 2012, where I visit twice yearly to monitor progress. If you would like to support this charity and read a book penned by a fellow ON, both books are available to buy from Amazon.

Mr Banks, my English teacher throughout my days at Adams, would be a little surprised I believe that I ended up a writer and a published one. My school reports would have suggested this unlikely!