Just a quick note for now.
A comment in response to my article on Aldershot really got up my nose; using he term ‘squaddy’ in a derogatory way. Typical ‘go with the flow’ sheeple trope.
Don’t know today’s equivalent qualification Army wide but in my day, for my regiment, the entrance test was a grading of SSG(summed selection group) 1-3. Mine was SSG 1 and most of my colleagues were 1 or 2.
There is a quote variously attributed to Orwell or Churchill – ‘We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.’
I understand it was influenced by the works of Kipling notably with his poem ‘Tommy.’
‘For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that and ‘chuck him out the brute.’
But it’s saviour of his country when the guns begin to shoot.’
In The Falklands 3 Para took Mount Longdon in a night attack involving hand to hand fighting. I knew Sergeant Ian McKay who was subsequently awarded a posthumous VC. Colonel H Jones I knew well when we were in the same battalion. He also was posthumously awarded the VC for his actions at Goose Green.
All arms in the Falklands acquitted themselves well and there are lots of heroic stories; Britain lost 255 service personnel in that short war.
Godfrey Bloom referred to The Sir Galahad in a recent article. That was a real tragedy and brings to mind the saying ‘Lions led by donkeys.’
Perhaps the commentator would have liked to be with us when we searched the DZ for the body of one of the battalion who had a parachute malfunction or when a corporal was killed by a GPMG accidental discharge whilst live firing on The Beacons? And that was just in training.
© Gillygangle 2025
