Page 134 - RSDG Year of 2023

132 EAGLE AND CARBINE
Christian Melville recalls that: The death of Her Majesty was announced at 6:30 pm on Thursday 8 September 2022. I was walking home from the Old Town to the New Town in Edinburgh after work listening to the radio when I heard the news.
Members of the Royal Company had all been briefed on “London Bridge”, but only in outline. Whatever we didn’t know, we did know to check the Royal Company’s new online “portal” immediately on hearing of Her Majesty’s death. So we did. As one. And, perhaps inevitably, the portal crashed under the weight of the Members’ keenness to report. It wasn’t until after 10:00 pm that evening that I was able to “log on” and intimate my availability for whatever was to come. At that point, we had little idea.
Updates on the portal, now up and running, developed overnight. I was notified the following morning that I was to stand vigil over Her Majesty in St Giles’ Cathedral as part of the first “Watch” alongside Will Ramsay and Richard MacLure. This would commence immediately after the Service of Thanksgiving to be held in St Giles’ Cathedral at 3 pm on Monday 12 September. We, therefore, had less than four days to prepare. But for what?
Later on Friday 9 September we learned that the Watch would be comprised of three Vigils. Each Watch would last for six hours and be made up of three Vigils of four Archers and one officer, with a reserve Archer on hand to step in if necessary. Within each Watch, each Vigil would be twenty minutes on; forty minutes off to relax, prepare and move
back from the Signet Library to St Giles’ Cathedral; and then twenty minutes on again; and so on.
Rehearsals for the Vigil started in earnest at Redford Barracks on Saturday 10 September and continued day and night under the guidance of the Royal Company’s Drill Sergeant assisted by a cohort from the Brigade of Guards, and all under the watchful eye of the Garrison Sergeant Major.
At midday on Monday 12 September, my Watch met at Redford Barracks to change into uniform and were bussed, with an escort of “blue light” Police motorcycle outriders, via Castle Terrace to the top of the Royal Mile. Two buses were due, but only one appeared. The journey to the Royal Mile was, therefore, memorably cramped, and with little space for bonnets, feathers, bows, and swords... never mind their owners. We debussed less than elegantly in full view of the, now, massed crowds, and, worse, the world’s media; formed up; marched down the Royal Mile to Parliament Square and past the Guard of Honour and bands which were already formed up there waiting for the arrival of Her Majesty’s procession; and then fell out into the Signet Library which was to be our holding area for the duration of the Watch.
The first Vigil of our Watch took post at the four corners of Her Majesty’s coffin as the Service of Thanksgiving closed. She then lay at rest overnight until 3pm on Tuesday 13 September when Her Majesty started her long journey from
A view of Westminster Hall with Lieutenant Colonel Jamie Halford-Macleod (right) on vigil