The Tower grew in size but over a 250 year period from 1078 it is now 18 acres . There is documentation that suggests that there were 40 Yeoman Warders living in and guarding the tower . Not the monarch as such but guarding the actual tower .
other regiments did not have so I then said right I am going to badge to that regiment . But that decision is about a year into your training . Once that has been established they tick the box and you then start getting uniform that depicts that particular regiment so you start wearing the brown beret which distinguishes you from other people in that unit . I left junior unit after two years and joined the regiment . The Royal Hussars were based at Bhurtpore Barracks in Tidworth , Hampshire and I joined them in the January of 1970 . We were in Tidworth for four years from there we travelled pretty much to Hong Kong , to Hong Kong twice , to Cyprus and Kuwait . Having never left the country ever before and all of a sudden I am being thrust into these other parts of the world . As an 18 year old in Cyprus it was ‘ wow this is different ’. It was all part of a learning curve .
Whereabouts in Cyprus were you stationed ? Nicosia , right in the capital and we did a six month tour for the United Nations and that was the very first medal that I was ever awarded . We left there in 1971 and then that year we went off to Hong Kong for six weeks and then we went back again in 1972 for six weeks . I toured round Great Britain in a Ferret Scout Car that was part of the adventurous training type of thing and then we went to Germany in 1974 . I
The Tower grew in size but over a 250 year period from 1078 it is now 18 acres . There is documentation that suggests that there were 40 Yeoman Warders living in and guarding the tower . Not the monarch as such but guarding the actual tower .
met my wife in ‘ 74 , we were married and then moved out to Germany . We stayed there for six years and we were in a place called Sennelager which is near Paderborn and again that was really , really good . I thoroughly enjoyed Germany . From there whilst in Germany I did three tours of Northern Ireland . So we had to retrain from armoured corps to infantry because obviously it was an infantry role out there and that was a bit challenging of course . Our son was born whilst I was in Northern Ireland at the time so I missed the birth . The first time I saw Mark was when he was about two months old and I tell you in those days going home on paternity was slightly more difficult .
During that period I decided that my expertise lay in gunnery , in tank gunnery . I had a sort of a knack for it , just a natural knack for it . So I then decided to become an instructor and I went on an instructor ’ s course to learn how to teach gunnery and passed that so in ‘ 79 we went to Catterick in North Yorkshire to a training regiment . And I did a year teaching raw recruits what I had been taught and it was suggested to me that instructing was again something I was naturally good at so I decided to become a schools gunner instructor . This meant going back to Bovington Camp and
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