Page 8 - QDG 2023

6 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards
Commanding Officer’s Foreword
As the regimental year draws to a close, I confess that I’ve needed several reminders from the Editor to pen this short forward to his excellent annual journal. I’d been doing some research. And having trawled the annals of our regiment’s 64 years, I was surprised to find that Commanding Officers were not invited to comment on the folio until the very late 1960s (by my reckoning John Lidsey was the first); and that even then, their billets doux ran to little more than a trio of terse paragraphs. My own two page spread in last year’s edition seems bloated in comparison; or do I really have more to say than my illustrious predeces- sors? I should think not. Encouragingly, having read the forewords of all 24 former COs whose valiant editors cajoled pen to paper, I find that we share much common ground. It seems we QDG have always been busy; we have always been the only true purveyors of reconnais- sance in the Army; that our formation headquarters never quite understand what to do with us; and that we’re keen on sport and AT. It goes to follow then that to ensure both brevity and an appeal to those most eminent of the journal’s readership, I’ll stick to those furlongs of familiar ground so well-trodden over the years: ‘busy ness,’ reconnaissance, and sport.
2023 has been an extraordinarily busy year, packed with action from the very start. The efforts of those at RD, F Sqn and the RCA have yet again proven that the Regiment in all its guises is alive and kicking. I would highlight the exploits of Col Guy ‘Beefy’ Deacon navigating his way along the length of Africa as perhaps the most impressive of them all. QDG teams have been to Kuwait to aid the Kuwaiti Army in developing a reconnaissance regiment of their own; to Canada to train the 5th Canadian brigade headquarters before their deploy- ment to Latvia with NATO; to Texas to fight as part of the 3rd UK Division in a computer based exercise; to California to battle across the Mojave desert with an American brigade combat team; to Kenya, the Gambia and Sierra Leone to continue our efforts in training and developing their excellent armed forces; to Denmark to compete in a long range patrols course in truly Baltic conditions; and to Grosetto in Tuscany to rekindle our long held relationship with the Italian Army’s famous Savoie Cavalleria.
Additional to all this were the efforts of A Sqn, who as I write are in the third month of a six month tour in Eastern Poland on Operation CABRIT, based in Bemowo Piskie under the command of an American battlegroup and Polish
the Regiment remains in rude health, is deeply involved in the pick of the Army’s missions and tasks, and continues
to attract and retain incredible people.
Brigade. The nights have truly drawn-in for them, as they brave the cold and snow in support of NATO efforts to deter further Russian aggression. Their daily patrols take them to within sight of the famed Kaliningrad Oblast in the North, and the Belarusian border in the East. A key part in a multinational coalition, their mission is to maintain the integrity of the Suwalki Gap, a task not unfamiliar to many of our comrades who served during the Cold War. Rest assured they are in good spirits and looking forward to handing over to B Sqn in April 24, who will in turn hand over to C Sqn in October 24 to complete our regimental CABRIT ‘hat trick.’
In all this, we continue to serve as one of the 3rd Division’s three Deep
Recce Strike Battlegroups, alongside the Household Cavalry Regiment and The Royal Lancers. Our considerably lighter footprint (both HCR and RL are mounted in AJAX) and operational mobility has enabled us much variety in training, as well as the lion’s share of operations for our Deep Recce Strike (DRS) Brigade Combat Team. BGHQ has spent much of the year proving, with other elements of the DRS, the validity of the Army’s recce- strike concept; and our roulement of three squadrons through Poland has the enabled us to hone our warfighting skills and integrate with new attachments and kit. The essence of what we are building in the DRS is, in some ways, old wine in new bottles. Much of structure and doctrine looks very similar to an FR regiment circa 1990. But there are signif- icant advances in our lethality, in our reach, and our ability to operate disag- gregated from higher HQs. Much of this innovation is enabled by the bow-wave of tech being sent in our direction by the Army HQ, borne to a large degree by the impetus created by the war in Ukraine to resource the Army to ‘fight tonight’ within the very near term. All this, as you will read, is key to keeping us busy indeed.
Needless to say that we have managed, in the margins, to maintain our tradi- tions of sport and adventurous training. We have skied in Verbier, Les Contam- ines, and Serre Chevalier, scuba dived in Turkey, sailed in Norway and canoed in