ARTICLES
Flagstaff House, Seremban
T
ON GETTING OUR ROYAL TITLE AND OTHER MEMORIES
he group photograph on the inside back cover of this Journal was taken at Wellington Barracks in 1959 on the occasion of the Regiment being granted the title of Queen Elizabeth’s Own and now contains only one living British 6 GR officer – me. I was only there thanks to the generosity of Major General Brigade of Gurkhas, Jim Robertson, whose ADC I was. Another invitation of great generosity arrived in my computer 60 years later from Duncan Briggs who invited me to attend the 6 GRRA reunion and AGM in November 2019 to help celebrate that unique occasion. So, after all that time of silence from me, I attended. I am so glad I did. In 1959 the Malayan Emergency was still on, albeit victory was not far off. 17th Gurkha Division had been
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the centrepiece of the defence of Malaya for six years and there were two years to go before peace was declared. In my time as ADC we lived in Flagstaff House, Seremban, where the architect of the victory, Field Marshal Gerald Templer was an occasional guest. What a fascinating guest he was and what a fascinating time I had. We often flew in a Pioneer of the Army Air Corps piloted by Roger Hulton-Harrop (I think from the 14th/20th Hussars), an aircraft capable of landing and taking off on 100 yards of runway in theory. It took us to most of the British and Gurkha units still clearing the jungle of Communist Terrorists (CTs). We once visited wretched Gurkhas in a leper colony and shook hands without fingers.
