No wonder the Army is so under strength.
It has been DS1's dream to be an Army Officer since he was about 11yo. He wasn't particularly academic and had to work really hard to get the ALevel grades needed to make an application to Sandhurst.
He made his application at the end of 2018 while was still at school. There was endless toing and froing over pieces of information they were "waiting" for but that he had already sent and that they had acknowledged.
He finally got to the medical stage in June 2018 and was deferred because of very minor hearing impairment. He met the standard but they wanted the cause investigated. Saw a consultant in Sept 2018 who took 2 months to advise him that he was considered unfit for service, despite having met all their published standards.
He appealed that, which took another 5 months but he was eventually successful. And given a date in June 2020 for initial selection, which of course was cancelled (OK, that one isn't their fault).
They restarted selection on 1 June and he was promised a new date "within 10 days" but he's just finally, after very many phone calls received a date in September. However as his medical is now 12 months old, he has to do another one so he's back to square one.
If he was even a tiny bit less committed to this he'd have given up long ago and meantime, it must have cost the taxpayer a fortune, multiple trips to Wiltshire by train to see various doctors. And still he's no closer to getting in and they are no closer to successfully recruiting.