Wow the colours man!!, sorry about that, I slipped back to my time at the 1969 Isle of White pop festival. Anyway where were we???

WHAT I DID

I have led a fairly interesting life, one could almost say more than one man (sorry Deb) deserves, but hey someone has got to be interesting why not me??

I left school at 16 in the dark days of the sixties, so lets shoot ahead to the seventies

The Parachute Regiment.

1970 I JOIN THE ARMY !!!, Now if you are American and you can remember that far back you will know that you had a little war in S.E. Asia going on, which meant that you had conscription or as you colonials would say 'The draft'. Guess what? we did not have it and I volunteered!! (shock horror). That is not all, I did not choose some cushy rear echelon job where I could be comfortable as a REMF, I volunteered for the Parachute Regiment!! now these guys are tough. I walked in to the recruiting office at 19 looking 15, I was 5'7" in my stocking feet (I am now 5'10"), told the sergeant what I wanted to do and he looked me in the eye, laughed and said I would fail. Well I didn't I started training in May 70 and just before the end of the year I joined the second battalion of The Parachute Regiment.

I thought I was fit, was I wrong!!, but one thing about the regiment it made me the chap I am today, and if you can get enough wool I can make you one as well!!. So what did I do in the regiment? well I travelled all over the world to exotic places like Northern Ireland, Salisbury Plain, Brecon beacons in Wales and of course Aldershot!. Seriously I also went to Denmark, Germany, Malaysia, Singapore, Turkey and the Emirates. So I cannot complain that I did not see the world.

Want to see a picture of a para?

I must have been out of my tiny mind!!, I suppose I must have done about 50-60 jumps during my time with the regiment and the chaps that I served with plus the people I met will always evoke warm memories of the regiment . I include in that statement the men of the 101 and 82nd Airborne who I served with, I believe they went from there to Vietnam so respect brothers.

To find out more about the regiment go here-

http://chide.museum.org.uk/parachute.airborne.forces/parachute.index.html

I cannot list them all but I would just like to add a small role of honour of comrades I served with who did not survive:

Wally Baird

Brian Brown

Jock Ross

To you and all the others not listed I will never forget and I hope no one else will.

With roaring engines, airplanes were passing by and silken canopies were falling from the sky

Click here to enter the next stage of my life with the army-------------- What I did next