Peter McCall is an army colonel but you wouldn’t guess it when you first meet him. He’s relaxed, friendly and fairly young-looking for 56, and he doesn’t wear a military tie or sport a moustache.

He doesn’t use the title either. But he believes his background in a uniformed, disciplined, highly structured public service helps him in his role overseeing another such service – as Cumbria’s new police and crime commissioner.

After winning the election as the Conservative candidate he was formally appointed to the post on Thursday of last week. So he now begins his second week in the job.

The lengthy military career that preceded the new one wasn’t something Peter had ever envisaged as a boy, and he had only expected to spend three years in the forces. He ended up staying for 34 years.

Yet it was through the army that he met his wife Ruth, who was in the nursing corps. And he says: “I really enjoyed my career and I would do it all again.”

Peter is now back living near the town where he grew up, Wigton, allowing him to pursue pastimes like fell walking, cycling, daily running and involvement in his local church.

And he took a roundabout route home – via Germany, Northern Ireland, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone.

But he had no specific career in mind at Nelson Thomlinson School or later at the University of Strathclyde.

He studied business and economics there, and afterwards decided to widen his experience with a spell in the army.

He enrolled for officer training at Sandhurst and recalls: “I went for three years on a short service commission. I had every intention of staying a short time and then maybe going into industry or business.

“After 34 years I’m quite pleased to be doing something very different now.” His area was logistics, organising supplies of everything from food to ammunition, and early on he found himself in a leadership role “At the age of 22 I was in charge of 85 soldiers.”

Not many careers offer quite as many opportunities for travel as the army – though few of the places soldiers are sent are typical tourist destinations. Peter had tours of duty in Northern Ireland both before and after the IRA ceasefire.

“Northern Ireland isn’t without its problems, but it’s good to see how things have changed,” he says.

He was also regularly back and forwards to West Germany during the Cold War era, and remembers it as a tense time. “We really thought that the Russians were ready to come storming across the German border. They certainly had the kit to do it.”

But he also saw the transformation. There was the greater optimism when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power. And he adds: “I was there when the Berlin Wall came down. It was amazing that in such a short space of time we went from that tension to the wall coming down.”

But the Cold War was followed by hot wars for British forces, most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. Part of logistics is bomb disposal and in Afghanistan Peter’s troops had to deal with Taliban explosives.

It was dangerous – and sometimes deadly – work.

“We lost several soldiers,” he says. “Part of my role was to deal with the families, and that was probably the hardest job, standing at Brize Norton airfield with relatives and trying to support them.”

Another deadly threat was the ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. Organisations dealing with the epidemic such as Medecins Sans Frontieres asked western governments to help with troops, so in October 2014 he found himself sent to the west African country.

“The order was: ‘We don’t really know what’s going on. Find what’s broken and fix it’.

“It was an absolutely chaotic scene. It was about bringing order out of chaos.”

They also had to deal with local customs which were causing the virus to spread. When someone dies in Sierra Leone, the tradition is for relatives to wash the body – and handling the body of an ebola victim, Peter says, was “almost like committing suicide.

“In some families you found 10 to 20 people or more handling the body. Not doing that was anathema to them. It had to be disposed of in as dignified a way as possible, but also safely.”

Peter McCall photo

Being deployed to different places meant endlessly moving house. “We moved every two and a half years for at least 30 years. I always tell Ruth that she knew what she was letting herself in for!

“The one good thing is that you have a good clear-out of the attic every two and a half years.”

But that upheaval is no life for children, so their two, Harriet and James, attended boarding school, offering more stability.

“It was the only option, but I think they both enjoyed school,” their dad reflects. “They have fond memories of it.”

They’re now grown up. Harriet is 25 and is a wine merchant while James, 23, works for a logistics company.

It is the leadership experience from 34 years in the army that Peter sees as the main help in the new job. But over the years the army have worked alongside the police in situations such as the foot and mouth crisis or fire brigade strikes, and he adds: “It helps if you have a certain empathy. I know what it is to work in a disciplined, uniformed service.”

He also notices the precise fit between his relationship with the police and the relationship between a government and the armed forces.

“It’s for the Government to say: ‘Go and invade X country’. But they would never dream of telling the military how to do it.

“It’s exactly the same. My job is to set the priorities, based on what the public want. But it is not to be a policeman. I would never get involved in operational policing.”

Covering all the public priorities will be a challenge. “Speak to people in the street and nine and a half times out of 10 they’ll say they want to see more bobbies on the beat.

“But the reality is that the areas of crime we need to target, child sexual exploitation, cyber crime and domestic violence, aren’t necessarily fixed by seeing more bobbies.

“So we need to balance the public’s need for reassurance in terms of uniformed presence with the need to tackle these pernicious, and increasing, areas of crime.”

Turnout at this year’s PCC elections was up on last time – but still meagre. In 2012 only 15 per cent of electors turned out to vote.

This time the PCC elections coincided with council elections, so turnout was up – to 26 per cent. Nearly three-quarters of those who could vote still didn’t. For some of them it was ignorance and indifference while for others it was objection to the idea of involving politics in policing. But Peter points out that the there was always a political ingredient, since the old police authorities, which the PCCs have replaced, were largely made up of councillors.

I will use the party affiliation if I think it’s going to help get the best for the people of Cumbria

Peter was never a Conservative party activist, let alone an election candidate, before, and says: “I consider myself to be a very moderate Tory.”

Indeed he contemplated standing as an independent, but explains: “I didn’t for two reason. First, I am a Conservative and I felt it would be dishonest not to say so. Secondly, the party label means people have some idea as to what my values are.”

And with a Tory government in Westminster he believes he – and Cumbria – may get a better hearing.

“Since I became the candidate in October I’ve met the home secretary Theresa May four times, and each time I’ve been able to argue the case for Cumbria policing.

“I’ve also met David Cameron twice. As an independent I would never have had that kind of access.

“That’s not to aggrandise myself. But I will use the party affiliation if I think it’s going to help get the best for the people of Cumbria.”