Page 74 - The Royal Lancers Chapka 2017

72 REGIMENTAL JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL LANCERS (QUEEN ELIZABETHS’ OWN)
Defence’s ‘one deep’ Cultural Property Protection capability
‘We have consulted international partners on best practice and have tasked the Army with establishing a cultural property protection unit,’ said the then Secretary of State for De- fence, Sir Michael Fallon MP, in Parliament in November 2016. As the Army Headquarters officer responsible for gathering such best practice and for the establishment of this unit, my fingers stopped on the keyboard when I heard these words. ‘ Well,’ I thought, ‘I’ve made a few phone calls and I’ve sent a few emails, but I haven’t really consulted our international partners on best practice. And, when the Secretary of State is questioned again in Parliament, there had better be something worthwhile for him
to say....’
So began a year of nine international visits to Allies to under- stand how they delivered Cultural Property Protection (CPP) in their Armed Forces. It started with the Austrian Armed Forces in Vienna, a visit which included the Officers’ Ball in the Hof- burg Palace, followed by a second visit when I went back in the summer to attend their CPP course. Then it was off to the Royal Netherlands Army in Utrecht, to the Carabinieri in Rome a cou- ple of times, 10th Mountain Division Light at Fort Drum in up-state New York, UNESCO in Paris and again for the French Army at the Ecole Militaire and, finally, to Koblenz for a NATO Conference called Coping with Culture – tho’ ‘coping with cof- fee’ might have been a more apt title.
In between this ‘best practice gathering’ I dashed out to PJHQ to brief their targeting team on CPP, attended a British Council dinner at which Tim Loughton MP said that both he and the
Dr Laurie Rush, Major General Walter Piatt – Commanding General, 10th Mountain Division Light – and Lieutenant Colonel Purbrick in General Piatt’s Headquarters at Fort Drum, New York
Foreign Secretary wanted to join the yet to be established Army Reserves CPP unit, and I was invited to the House of Lords for a reception for those involved in the passing of the Cultural Prop- erty (Armed Conflicts) Act 2017 – which ratifies the Hague Con- vention (1954) and its two Protocols, which obliges the Armed Forces to establish the CPP unit.
I was invited to give briefings on the Army’s CPP work to the Police Heritage and Cultural Property Crime Conference, to the World Heritage Conference at Ironbridge and to the All Party Parliamentary Group for the Protection of Cultural Heritage co-chaired by Lord Renfrew and Robert Jenrick MP. The De- partment for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) have this year established a Cross-Government Cultural Diplomacy Working Group, which I was invited to sit on, and our own Military CPP Working Group, which I chair, has had to move from the Board- room of the V&A Museum to an even larger room at the Na- tional Army Museum for our thrice annual meetings, such is the level of interest in this area.
Alongside this excitement I have been sitting at my desk at Army Headquarters bashing out staff work which has included the Implementation Order and Concept of Employment for the CPP unit, the new MOD CPP Policy, the Joint User’s Require- ment for geo-spatial CP data, the development of a CPP Special to Arm course and the multiple permissions for the CPP unit to wear the UNESCO Blue Shield on its uniforms. With regard to the latter, the Hague Convention obliges those involved in CPP to wear the Blue Shield. DCMS – the UK Authority – gave the
Lieutenant Colonel Purbrick with Oberleutnant Dr Anna Kaiser at the Officers’ Ball in the Hofburg Palace, Vienna