so I joined the British army in September 1984 at the age of 18. I went into the Royal Artillery training depot in south East London at Woolwhich Garrison. I did several months there doing basic training and then was sent to the gunnery school at Larkhill in Wiltshire to complete the basic gunnery crew course. My initial training was on the 105mm Light Gun. An excellent air portable field artillery piece and used extensively during the Falklands war in 1982.

 

After the course I was posted to 49 Field Regiment, based at that time in Thirsk in North Yorkshire. The barracks were an old WW2 RAF  bomber base. We used the 155mm FH70 towed field gun. Much larger than the 105mm I had trained on. It was very accurate but not a good gun to work on and was over engineered. After some training courses and a UN tour in Cyprus, the Regiment moved to Lippstadt in 'West Germany' ( remember it was still call west Germany in those days) as part of BAOR - British Army Of the Rhine. We were now part of the 7th armoured brigade and used an american 155mm tracked M109A2 gun.  By this time I had now transferred to the Observation Parties and was a spotter for the Battery.

 

Life in Germany was very different to the UK. It is difficult to understand now but, there was a real fear of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw pact forces - which of course were enormous! In our area of responsibility, (just west of the Weser river) our direct opposite forces were the Russian 2nd Guards Tank army and the 3rd Shock Army.  There is no question they would have rolled us up fairly quickly, and we knew it. . I left the army after the first Gulf war in 1991