Page 120 - RSDG Year of 2021 CREST

126 EAGLE AND CARBINE
On another occasion, one of our troops, while out patrolling, reported a beer keg in the bushes at the side of a minor road. Beer kegs were the most common form of bomb and, being metal, caused considerable damage when they exploded. On arrival the troop leader and I walked up the road to look at this possible bomb and noted the alarm clock on the top of the keg was ticking happily away. On this occasion, we did not saunter back but ran as fast as we could. Not very professional, I am afraid. The EOD team arrived and eventually defused what was possibly a real bomb, but then had difficulty recovering it from the ditch at the side of the road. We tied a rope to the bomb and tried to pull it out using a landrover. The bomb was firmly stuck in the ditch but finally came unstuck and flew into bushes on the other side of the road. This meant re-roping the bomb but while we were doing this we noticed that another, much larger, bomb was in the bushes where now the first one was now lying. Eventually both bombs, which turned out to be real, were de-activated but it did remind me what I had been taught in training, that you should always secure the area around a possible bomb before you start work on it. I did not make that mistake again.
There were many other tasks I completed, some with success and many with failure, but overall, my 6 months were a success and I enjoyed most of it.
I went back to Edinburgh again for more R & R and another course at Hythe before going back to Ireland for another six months in the same job of PLO. This tour started in the summer of 1974 with D Squadron, again based at Belfast Airport, while I was as at Antrim RUC Station as before. The major difference this time was the ‘war’ between the IRA on one side and the Ulster Defence Force (UDF) and Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) on the other had escalated and there were some terrible murders across the whole province. For our part, the soldiers were better equipped with CS Gas, rubber bullets and armoured 1 Ton ‘Pigs’, and every day there was a battle of some kind. The bombs were now being placed without any warnings, or alternatively with incorrect warnings and the Bomb Disposal teams were becoming exhausted with as many as five call-outs per day to bombs. Still, we were able to affect several important arrests and many lives were saved due to the Bomb Disposal successes. We did lose some police offic- ers, but the siix months were over very quickly and I returned home to Edinburgh.
Following this second tour as a PLO, I was asked if I would like to go back for a two year tour with Army intel- ligence, but I believed I had done my bit and I therefore declined the posting. Upon reflection I am glad I did.
Amazing Grace: The Musical History of The Royal
Scots Dragoon Guards (Carabiniers and Greys)
Colin Dean
The Musical History of The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards (Carabiniers and Geys), written by Colin Dean was published in 2021 and has been extremely well received. The book which can be bought from Home Headquarters has been reviewed in a number of maga- zines. Below is an extract from a review that appeared in the International Military Music Society’s UK Journal and was written by Charles Gray who gave his permission for it to be reproduced here.
This history, with over 300 pages, gives a wonderful account of five regiments’ musical history embracing a cocktail of military bands (mounted and on foot), drum horses, cavalry trumpets, musical rides and pipes and drums (not all a mix naturally arising in cavalry music). A carefully presented compilation of many glorious photographs and fascinating text provides a chronology generously populated with regimental and associated military history, personality profiles, anec- dotes and detailed aspects of uniforms.
Most space is given to the Scots Greys and Scots Dragoon Guards with predictable - but compelling - coverage of Amazing Grace and the subsequent recording careers of the bands and musicians (of all types) and their successors, including while on opera- tions in Iraq. If you would also expect to see inclusion of Sgt Ewart’s capture of the French Eagle at Waterloo and the regiments’ parts in many other campaign, you will also find wider but related musical content about Kneller Hall, our own Past President Lieutenant Colonel George Evans and famous composers like F J Ricketts and J Ord Hume.
Musical accomplishment is rightly predominant and covers over 340 years from mounted drummers and trumpeters through the creation of military and pipe bands (notable achievers on the competition circuit) to the more recent involvement of rock guitarist Mark Knopfler and a film orchestra in the delivery of tradi- tional and contemporary music.