Page 8 - RSDG Year of 2023

6 EAGLE AND CARBINE
PREFACE
Brigadier BP Edwards OBE The Colonel of the Regiment
2023 was a remarkable year, and a year in which the Regiment was stretched and challenged. You can read all about it in this year’s wonderful magazine. But the highlight of the year was surely our participation in the Coronation Parade for our new Colonel-in-Chief, His Majesty King Charles III.
We decided that to formally record our Regiment’s role in the transition from Her Late Majesty the Queen to our new King, we would gather all related articles in this one magazine. As Colonel of the Regiment, I had the privilege of a role in all three elements; Edinburgh, the State Funeral and the Coronation Parade.
We will all have memories of where we were on the day Her late Majesty’s death was announced. Pippa and I were on our way to Edinburgh and had just stopped in Moffat. I was called to represent the Regiment in the Scottish Houses of Parliament for the Motion of Condolence led by Nicola Sturgeon, and afterwards at a reception I met the new Queen who on learning whom I was simply stated ‘Oh she did so love your Regiment’. Those few words capture so brilliantly the relationship we were blessed to have had, and it was the second time that the finality of the situation began to set in. The first was when her Late Majesty’s coffin was driven up the Royal Mile for a service in St Giles Cathedral. Because we were required to be in the Houses of Parliament in good time, we all stood right at the gates to see the car and the King, his sister and brothers step out accompanied by The King’s Bodyguard for Scotland (Royal Company of Archers) and the Guard of Honour for the slow walk up the hill.
Edinburgh was packed, yet the city was strangely silent. And in St Giles Cathedral our Regimental Secretary, Jamie Erskine, represented us, as well as a few regimental Archers, some of whom had already stood a vigil. You can read about their role in their own article.
My memories of the state funeral all hinge on the midnight rehearsal in a chilly dark London. The ethereal nature of the event, the echoing of the drums, and the hushed tones all around were quite something to be part of.
On the day of the State Funeral, I was honoured to be joining the Armed Forces Senior Officer Contingent for the service in Westminster Abbey. We sat by the East Door, not 20 yards from where Her late Majesty’s coffin would be placed, and watched as royalty and dignitaries from
Coronation Day – Buckingham Palace Gardens
around the globe filed in for the service (we did have to be there about 3 hours before the service began!).
As the service closed, we were gently hustled outside, gripping our swords (it had seemed somewhat incongruous to have them with us in the Abbey) against clashes and clangs to form up in Parliament Square just in front of the Household Cavalry mounted squadron and some 100 yards behind the Regimental contingent. As we were joining a parade laid out in reverse order of precedence, I was in the last rank of the main body of the Senior Officers with the Service Chiefs directly behind me, then the horses.
Marching on the day proved a real challenge. Somehow, we had worked well together in the night rehearsals, but come daylight competing with bass drums echoing down Whitehall made keeping in step especially tough and it was not until we reached the Horseguards parade square that things settled down.
The parade headed, at funeral pace, to Wellington Arch where we fell into a tight formation on the grass looking