that is where the tank firing ranges and the gunnery school are . This took me up to the top level of instructing and that gave me the skills to be able to teach other guys to become instructors . Taking it up to a completely different level .
They made me go back to Germany after the gunnery school and we went back to Fallingbostel which is a bit further east and when I was there I got sent off to Canada for a year to become part of the safety staff because it is live firing out there . It is whole battle groups so you have got all of the elements of the military ; the infantry , the artillery , tanks , engineers everybody , the whole lot there . They are doing live firing exercises so my job was to make sure that the tanks were not shooting other tanks . So it was a very , very intensive job but also the reason they did it was because I had been out teaching for two and a half maybe three years so it was a good way of getting back into modern tactics as it was then . So it was a very good grounding
for me but from a family point of view , you know we were separated .
It was a bit disruptive . So we then decided that it is probably not a good idea for this to keep happening all the time so we decided to buy a house . We ended up buying a house in Newport Pagnell which is near my mother and sisters and that was in ’ 84 , we sold it fourteen months later when the property market just went bonkers and bought a house in Shoreham but I was posted to the Middle East out in Oman then . I was teaching Omanis how to fire tank guns . So again it was teaching . But I had to learn Arabic and teach it in Arabic which was a bit of a challenge . I did that for two years but it was unaccompanied . So I did two years in the Middle East and I then came back to Germany and for the next seven years before I was due to leave the army we lived a sort of separated way of life . I came back to the house as many times as I could from Germany . It was just a way of getting the kids settled into school without them being disrupted and that is the only reason we did it , it was all for the kids sake . There were challenges for Pat and I but there we go . In 1989 I had an opportunity to go back to Lulworth again as a Warrant Officer instructor . You do not get involved in teaching as such you do the administration side of things . And so from ‘ 89 to ‘ 92 when I left that is what I did and that was really good because I used to then drive back on a Friday afternoon , drive back from Lulworth to Shoreham . It would take me two hours . And then leave at 6 o ’ clock in the morning on Monday morning to drive back again .
So in 1992 I had to leave the army . I left the army and what do I do ? I became a retail manager eventually . I started with a security job in Sussex University . That was for about six months . I hated it . It was not the job but I just hated the processes behind it , but that is another story . Then I went from there to the Brighton Palace Pier and worked on there .
I worked in their cash office . I had absolutely no training whatsoever but I just carried on doing it . I did that and a neighbour of mine , who had stores around in Southwick called Carters , were opening up a store and he said would you like to become a manager for him
I did that for three months and then I ended up working for Comet . They were paying a lot more . I did that for the rest of my time with Comet and I worked in the Brighton , Lewes , Eastbourne and Worthing stores . I did that until 1998 when I became a Yeoman Warder .
So that is quite a change from electrical retail management to working in these historic buildings . Yes , well . To be honest the biggest challenge was not that side of it . The biggest challenge for me was leaving the army and becoming a civvy . That is the biggest change because I have never had any civilian working experience .
There is an order to being in the forces . There is a way of doing things . Yes , there is a discipline aspect . If they say jump you say how high . You know that type of thing . So you do not have that in civvy-street . So that side of it but playing hockey for Southwick and being part of the community helped tremendously in that transition bit for me . Changing from Comet to here to the Yeoman Warders to a historic building was quite an easy change for me . The only thing that I had in my head that sort of concerned me is I do not like history . I never did like history at school . Now coming to one of the most historical sites in … arguably in the country , coming to the Tower I have got to learn
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