The new Commandant of Cambridgeshire Army Cadet Force is Colonel Adam Fraser-Hitchen, Deputy Commander (Reserves) 7th Infantry Brigade and HQ East.
Colonel Adam Fraser-Hitchen joined the Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers as a junior soldier in 1986 spending five years as an Armourer with the Royal Anglian Regiment and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, before being commissioned into the Corps in 1992. He has filled a mix of Combat and Combat Service Support roles throughout his career with early regimental appointments including OC Pre-Para Selection in 5 Airborne Brigade, regimental operations officer in 7 (Para) Royal Horse Artillery for an operational commitment in Northern Ireland and on promotion to major, nine months as an operations officer in the Former Republic of Yugoslavia.
He attended the Advanced Command & Staff Course over the period 2001-2003 where he completed a King’s College Masters Degree in Defence Studies. He qualified as a Chartered Engineer over the same period. He has served in NATO’s Allied Rapid Reaction Corps on three occasions, has extensive experience of the Canadian prairies and has commanded on Operations as a company, battalion and group commander (in Sourthern Iraq on Op TELIC 10 and Afghanistan on Op HERRICK 12, 16 and 17 respectively). His second tour as a Colonel saw him appointed to Army HQ as the Chief of Staff to Director Support in 2014 before retiring early from the Regular Army in 2017 to better support his family. Now a Reserve Officer, he has been Deputy Commander (Reserves) 7 Infantry Brigade & HQ East since 2017.
Colonel Fraser-Hitchen owns a Business Consultancy with his wife, herself a former career-soldier and Chartered Engineer, and has three sons. Having settled in Derbyshire, he is a Fellow and the next President of the Society of Operations Engineers, has a lasting fascination for military genealogy and attempts to retain his youth through fell-running, cycling and ‘slower-than-previous’ snowboarding.
Colonel Fraser Hitchen has been appointed as Commandant of Cambridgeshire ACF on a Temporary basis and will serve until September 2021.
