GBA Lunch

The 6 GR Table: Duncan Briggs, Michele Pettigrew, Bob Richardson Aitken, Flit Whitehead, Paul Pettigrew, Sophie Shoesmith, John Mackinlay, Ria Briggs, Anthony Vosper, and Rachel Mackinlay

GBA MEMORIAL SERVICE AND REUNION LUNCH

8 June 2019

The GBA Reunion begins with a service I digress. The Service this year was approximately in the Royal Memorial Chapel in the 29th (!) we have attended during our married Sandhurst. This Chapel has played a life. To be honest my main reason for going is to see huge role in the lives of the Officer old friends throughout the Brigade. However, the Cadets and their instructors but it has also played a service itself is also hugely important, especially role in this “Wife Of’s” life! We have had two family when the Brigade is involved in war. It allows us to weddings in the Chapel, firstly in September 1967 acknowledge the sacrifice many have made in the my father, who was then Commander of Old College, service of the Crown. The best years are when no married my beautiful stepmother, Christine De names are read out. Jenner, the youngest sister-in-law of the Adjutant (Giles Allan, Irish Guards). Three years later in July After the final blessing we all process outside the 1970 John and I were married there. As we left the chapel towards the sound of a Gurkha piper playing Chapel, George Mackenzie piped us out and Michael beside the memorial to the fallen soldiers of the Whitehead and Tom Blackford formed a Guard of British Army. The Padre is joined by a Hindu Priest and honour for us! a Buddhist Lama and Christian, Hindu and Buddhist

Enjoying bhat: Jon Titley, Ray Pett, Libby Fisher, Dai Hitchcock, Marie Pett, David Bredin, Trisha Hickey, Carole Horsford, Mrs Dammarbahadur Shahi, Dammar Shahi and Gary Ghale

prayers are said and sung and wreaths are laid before the statue.

Following this moving tribute we gather for drinks in the Indian Army Room (which was the original Chapel in bygone times) and we have time to embrace special friends – and eat some delicious Aludam. This year 172 people attended the lunch, of whom 33 or thereabouts were from 6 GR. After years of formal seating plans I like to play a game we’ll be sitting. Our table showed the strength of Gurkha family connections: Mani (a son of the 10th and 7th) and Sudha (a daughter of the 10th), Helen and her son Brian Hickey (a son of the 6th), Tina and Charles Blackmore (Charles’s father was in GTR) and a charming friend of theirs, John and me (also a daughter of the 10th). The highlight is the Chairman’s address, a chance to find out exactly what has happened, what is happening, and what may happen. At Buckingham

of “pot luck” – last ones in, and no idea with whom Palace 60 years ago on 10 June 1959 a party of serving and retired officers and soldiers from both the 6th and 7th Gurkha Rifles witnessed, in the presence of Her Majesty The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh, the granting of their Royal Titles to their respective regiments – as the 6th Queen Elizabeth’s Own and the 7th Duke of Edinburgh’s Own Gurkha Rifles.

We also learned that RGR would celebrate 25 years of service to the Crown on July 1 and were pleased to hear of awards to several serving officers and soldiers. However, the best was saved until last – the momentous news that the Brigade was expanding by 80% for the first time since the early 1960s. How marvellous is that?