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Linton Officer Top Student In Melbourne Course
Trans-Tasman rivalry is alive and well in the New Zealand Army, and one Linton officer is making sure it stays that way.
Second Lieutenant Paul Cocker not only won the Student of Merit Award for the Royal Australian Signals Regimental Officers Basic Course but also the Lieutenant Colonel J P O’Brien Award for all-round performance.
A total of 34 students , including four New Zealanders, attended the three and a half month long course at the Defence Force School of Signals at Simpson Barracks, Macleod, Melbourne.
“This was the first time a Kiwi had won the award against the Aussies – we had won the advanced course before but no one had ever topped the basic course,” says 2LT Cocker.
“I was pretty surprised really, I certainly didn’t think I’d get both of them and I thought one or two of the other guys would have got the academic one so I was pretty pleased.”
The course covered the physics and technical theory behind radio and the technology behind radio waves and digital circuits.
“We were taught how signals relate to the rest of the Army and how it’s employed in a tactical environment. We finished with a three-week field phase where we got a turn as the commander of a detachment based at Puckapunyal.”
2LT Cocker says after attending university he was inspired to join the military after hearing the war stories of a friend who was in the Air Force. He has been with the New Zealand Army for about four and a half years and is now Troop Commander of 22 Information Systems.
“I did my training at Waiouru then was posted to Burnham for three years, then last year was back in Waiouru at OCS before joining the 2nd Signal Squadron at Linton. For me, I like the fact it’s always a different job every day, there is always variety, always new things to do. I was posted to Afghanistan for six months in 2005.”
2LT Cocker says his colleagues were happy that he had done so well in Australia.
“Everyone here was pretty stoked we had beaten the Aussies and I got a nice letter from the Regimental Colonel to say well done. The Aussies always say we send the best officers to the course every year but we send ALL our officers. The number of signal officers who graduate from Duntroon is the same as the total number of officers who graduate from OCS in New Zealand so their whole magnitude is so much bigger than ours.”
This page was last reviewed on 14 September 2007 and is current.
