Page 135 - RSDG Year of 2021 CREST

John Croy Dick
John – also known as Ian – Dick was born on 12 May 1937. In his youth he was a talented drummer who was Stirlingshire Champion Solo Drummer before being called up for National Service in July 1958. He did his training with the 16th/5th Lancers at Catterick where he was selected as the lead- ing trooper of his intake. He then
joined the Royal Scots Greys in Munster and was with them until he was demobbed in July 1960. Although he only did two years, his pride in being part of the regiment, the skills he learned and the connections he made lasted a lifetime.
On joining the Regiment he became an armoured car driver and was a marksman in the Shooting Team. He combined these roles with being a drummer in the Pipes and Drums with whom he became the lead drummer. This was during a particularly busy period that saw its band combine the rigor of military life with the glitz of music halls, the Edinburgh Tattoo and the recording studio. The band’s many entertain- ing public performances were played out against the more serious backdrop of post-war Germany, where the regiment was stationed with the British Army of the Rhine. As well as regular duties, the band was called upon regularly to perform at ceremonial NATO events and to parade through local towns.
In early summer 1959, the band went on a major UK tour and recruitment drive. Under the musical direc- torship of Mr Douglas W Turner – known as “Curly” – the Pipes and Drums and Highland dancers performed at venues across the country. Moss Empire theatres were dotted up and down the country, and The Royal Scots Greys became the main attraction in a series of popular variety show style appearances. Joining the band were local acts such as girls’ choirs, along with a regular ‘cast’ including a dance troupe called De Vere’s Debs, the Manetti Twins – “Continental Comedy Acrobats” – and Canadian comedian Fran Dowie, said to be the “man women love to hate”.
The tour took in the Empires in Liverpool, where the local paper gleefully reported several romantic rela- tionships were struck with girls from a local choir, as well as Newcastle, London, York and the Birmingham Hippodrome – just a few of the many venues.
A memorable stop would have been appearing in front of the notoriously savage Glasgow Empire audience, where performers had been known to faint rather than
EAGLE AND CARBINE 141 go on stage, followed by a night bedded down in the
city’s Maryhill Barracks.
The bandsmen received glowing reviews, despite ear- lier suggestions in one Glasgow newspaper that bring- ing a pipe band to Scotland was rather like taking coals to Newcastle.
It was good experience for their biggest event that year, alongside more than 600 performers in what at that time was the largest gathering of massed bands to ever appear on the Esplanade of Edinburgh Castle.
The Edinburgh Tattoo was then called the “Scottish Command Military Tattoo” and featured the Royal Scots Greys alongside bands from the Royal Scots, the Royal Highland Fusiliers, the Canadian Guards, the King’s Own Scottish Borders and the Seaforth Highlanders. Later John would recall the terror of marching night after night over wet and treacherous cobblestones and the evening when, as he crossed the drawbridge for the grand massed bands finale and with all the lights up, he felt his drumstick slide from his hand and clatter on the ground below.
The band’s next step was to enter a London record- ing studio to make the first of several recordings for a new label, Top Rank. The band’s records during John’s time included “Scotland’s Pride” which featured a photograph of the entire band on its sleeve.
John had been promoted to Lance Corporal in 1959, and his National Service may well have continued had he not already met his future wife, Helen. He returned to Falkirk in July 1960, where the couple married six months later.
John’s commitment to service continued as a Royal Armoured Corps Army Emergency Reserve until January 1964 when a new life beckoned in Australia. Having taken advantage of the “£10 ticket” scheme – and sharing one of the flights to Australia with The Beatles - the couple settled Down Under. John, a mechanical fitter, worked with tractor giant Massey Ferguson and sugar cane producers in Queensland, until the couple returned to Falkirk in 1972.
John was the engineering workshop manager at ICI/ Zeneca Grangemouth when he retired.
Although he did not return to playing drums, he kept in touch with the Scots Greys news and was thrilled to attend a reunion held in Dunblane in the late 1990s. While his time with the Scots Greys was relatively fleeting, he was extremely proud of his connection with the regiment and regarded his National Service as