Owen Humphrys
I have yet to see a convincing justification for mucking all the Regiments about.
With proper management at the top, it should be possible to adjust the workings of the Arms Plot (e.g. longer tours for Armoured Infantry) without removing proud Regimental status.
The old Scottish Division could quite easily have increased the numbers of officers and SNCOs who exchange cap-badges for career reasons.
They did it quite well pre-Cardwell, in the wicked days of Purchase!
I heard yesterday that the formation of the new RRS is being brought forward to St Andrews Day this year.
Incidentally, I found an interesting remark about the Arms Plot this morning.
The Col Commandant of the King's Division, and former Col of the Green Howards, Sir Richard Dannatt, wrote last December:
"the three battalions in the Light role will still move, so that no one gets more than three years in Cyprus".
I think that reinforces my point that there is no need to end Regimental independence for the sake of the Arms Plot.
Here is a poem commissioned by me and printed in the Scotland on Sunday newspaper in December 2004.
Keeping the Watch
U. A. Fanthorpe
England
2004
Always awake. That's the job. Always.
Not dozy nightwatchmen, who shout on the hour
All's well! It never is. The Black Watch,
Awake at all the hours there are, know better.
Mopping up after the Old Pretender,
Endlessly eyeing choleric disarmed clans,
Here they go, another branch of the great tree,
Rooted in history, sprouting in present air,
Linked in brotherhood by the red hackle,
The dark plaid, the wars. Slipstream of tradition
Dockets their honours in places far from Scotland -
Fontenoy, Seringapatam, Waterloo,
Tel-el-Kebir, Mons, Ypres, Passchendael -
And so on, grim sweet tally of lives, of deaths
In endless foreign fields.
They did, they do
So much. The stoic wives, the anxious children.
We need their watchfulness, all the world over.
Don't put them down
