Chapter 2 - West Meets East

Hong Kong, 15 March 2019

The flight from London gave him the leisure to ponder over his life as a military officer for the first time in several years.

After resigning his commission only several months before, he had almost no time until then to reflect upon the only way of life he had ever known since his graduation from Eton College at the age of eighteen. For until his ceremonial release from military service the previous week, he devoted all his energies toward attending to severance minutia and executing the necessary arrangements to begin his new career in Hong Kong.

Comfortable and relaxed in his premier class-seat, General Sir George Smythe absently stared at the movie playing on the screen in front of him. He listened to a classical music programme through headphones as his mind wound through the collage of his military career.

He began to recall the day of his arrival at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst after his graduation from Eton College. The subsequent forty-four weeks he spent there as a cadet flashed through his memory. Although it was a time of intense personal growth and learning for him, it was also a time to be inculcated with the ritual of military duty and honour as an officer.

He fast-forwarded through his initial career posting as a second lieutenant and staff officer with the Intelligence Corps after being commissioned into the Royal Anglian Regiment. Excelling in that post to such an extraordinary degree he was promoted to first lieutenant after only two years of service. Two years later, he advanced to the rankof captain as a result of his extraordinary contributions and leadership abilities.

In his first assignment as a captain, he served as a special liaison officer with the British Defence Staff office stationed in Washington D.C. Upon return to his regiment, he served as both an operations officer and adjutant commander in both the Northern England and Cyprus campaigns. In his eighth year of his military career, he was promoted to the rank of major. Several months after the promotion, he received the Distinguished Service Order decoration in recognition of his brilliant combat leadership contributions.

He savoured the memory of that phase of his military career. The experience was all the more memorable since he knew then that his career path was on a fast track toward advancement to the upper echelon ranks of military command.

After attending Staff College Camberly in his tenth year of military service, he returned to the Royal Anglian Regiment, headquartered at Bury Saint Edmunds, as adjutant to colonel of the regiment. Upon his promotion to lieutenant colonel four years later, he held several high-level staff appointments within the Ministry of Defence.

In his twenty-ninth year