Major Chris Hunter QGM joined the British Army in 1989 as a sixteen-year-old army apprentice. He trained initially as a Russian linguist working in defence intelligence and after four years of enlisted service was selected to undergo officer training at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He graduated at twenty-one, and was subsequently awarded the Carmen Sword of Honour. He was then commissioned into the Royal Logistic Corps ?the route that would eventually lead to his becoming an Ammunition Technical Officer. He served as a troop commander on operations in the Balkans, East Africa and Northern Ireland and undertook arctic warfare training in Norway, before becoming an Explosive Ordnance Disposal operator. As an operator he deployed on two high-threat tours in Northern Ireland and one in Iraq, undertook EOD protection duties for the Royal Family and assisted in the planning and conduct of numerous police arrest operations involving the threat of explosive devices. He was also the designated technical Operations Officer for the national contingency response to the terrorist use of a weapon of mass destruction in the UK.