a man under pressure

As part of our Fathers' Day celebrations at ashgrove we have a special guest in our AM worship gathering - Brigadier Jim Wallace (former commanding officer SAS) will be speaking about men under pressure. In preparation we thought it might be interesting to find out a little more about Jim...

a man under pressure...

Jim Wallace left the Army as a Brigadier in late 2000 after a 32 year career which included command of the SAS Regt, Special Forces and the Army's mechanised Brigade of three thousand personnel and most of the Army's fighting vehicles. He is a graduate of Duntroon in Canberra, the British Army Staff College and the Australian College of Defence and Strategic Studies.

Jim has also lived in the Middle East where he served with the United Nations in Lebanon and Syria. In 1984 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia for his services to counter-terrorism.

Jim is currently the Managing Director of the Australian Christian Lobby, a growing political organisation, which aims to see Christian values better acknowledged.

some thoughts on manliness from Jim...

'Interestingly, the SAS culture of manliness doesn't tolerate the shallow expression of it that is so much in evidence in society today. A person who expresses 'manliness' in drinking or loutishness will not stay in the Regiment for long. In fact, in the SASR I saw fathers and husbands showing levels of devotion well above the community average, despite all the pressures of service life...

The reality is that to be real men - blokes - is to be unashamedly different from women and at the same time able to be demonstrably loving and affectionate to family, and particularly wives and children.'

-       From the foreword in Being a Bloke by Peter Janetzki & Michael Knight (2010).