Early Life
Wallace was born at Farnborough moving to Somerset with his parents almost immediately when his father started work for Clarks Shoes. Wallace attended Millfield School studying politics under the late Clive Thomas who also taught Julian Smith MP and Margot James MP. After School Wallace qualified as an Austrian Ski instructor and taught in the village of Aplbach, Tirol for two seasons. During that period his parents moved to Pennsylvania in the United States where they lived for 7 years.
At the age of 19 Wallace attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, before being commissioned as a platoon commander into the Scots Guards. During his 9 years military service Ben Wallace servied in Germany, Windsor, Cyprus and Central America. In addition he served on operational tours in Northern Ireland. In 1992 he was mentioned in despatches for the capture of a provisional IRA asu in West Belfast. He later reurned to Northern Ireland to work as an intelligence officer. Ben Wallace's last post was as Company Commander of F company Scots Guards.
After leaving the Army, he became in 1999 a Conservative Member of the Scottish Parliament as a list MSP for North East Scotland, before standing down in 2003. He was the Scottish Conservatives shadow Health spokesman during that time. From 2003 to 2005 he was overseas Director of QinetiQ, the UK's part-privatised National Defence laboratory.
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