Page 138 - RSDG Year of 2023

136 EAGLE AND CARBINE
to have had The Queen as our Colonel-in-Chief, we would start the parade south of the Cenotaph on Parliament Street, right outside the Red Lion pub, directly behind the band of His Majesty’s Royal Marines. In a quirk that might not have been immediately apparent, this would be done in such a way that, once we had turned about and once the procession was underway, we would march in reverse order of precedence – the result being that those regiments which are more senior are closer to the gun carriage bearing The Queen’s coffin.
On arrival at Pirbright we were reunited with the rest of the detachment and shown to our accommodation block for the next week – one in a sea of similar blocks housing troops from across the Army and contingents from various Commonwealth realms. Filled with some trepidation, we were also introduced to our drill instructors, drawn from across the Household Division and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. If one were being uncharitable, one might suggest that massed arms and foot drill are not ordinarily counted amongst the strengths of our regiment, but in our instructors we had a mercifully understanding bunch who were well aware of the extra work they were going to have to put into those of us not of a Blue Red Blue persuasion.
The instructors set about this work with a great deal of patience and good humour, but it would be remiss of me not to also point out that the troops put in a huge deal of effort across our week in Pirbright to make sure that their bearing, turnout, and individual drill was up to the required standard. The week consisted of seemingly
interminable loops of a route that had been marked out to resemble the distance of the procession, with the gym standing in for Wellington Barracks, the NAAFI for Parliament, an open 18x24 for Horse Guards Arch, etc. This would prove to become a fairly tedious affair over the following few days, stomping around the same route in different orders of dress for different levels of rehearsal, but as the detachment commander I did come to enjoy the sense of freedom that comes with spending all day shouting words of command at the top of my lungs. Wandering around in the open air all day, screaming incoherently. British Army of lunatic asylum? What’s the difference?
The pinnacle of the rehearsal experience (or nadir – experiences may vary!) was the final, full-dress rehearsal in the dead of night in London. This involved departing Pirbright at c.1930hrs to travel to the underground carpark at Wellington Barracks in classic ‘hurry up and wait!’ fashion. What followed at c.0300 was what I can confidently say most of us found to be a totally surreal experience. Marching the full length of the procession, in the dead of night, in a totally deserted capital, watched only by binmen, the police, and a few members of the public hardy enough to forgo a night’s sleep to watch the spectacle up close, a few valuable lessons were learnt. First and foremost, one certain member of the detachment who will remain nameless learnt just how long we would be out ‘on the ground’, and the importance of making sure that – while conducting good personal administration to stay hydrated – one wasn’t carrying around excess liquid. The less said about how this lesson was learnt the hard way,
The Marching Detachment marches out to our forming up point at the Red Lion