Page 95 - The Royal Lancers Chapka 2018

REGIMENTAL JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL LANCERS (QUEEN ELIZABETHS’ OWN) 93
Lieutenant Colonel TJGS Purbrick welcomed as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries by President Gill Andrews
Lieutenant Colonel TJGS Purbrick and
Chelsea Pensioner Arthur Curry fought with the Irish Hussars Battlegroup during the 1991 Gulf War – very old soldiers
General Sir James Everard presents his DSACEUR coin to Lieutenant Colonel TJGS Purbrick at the National Army Museum
British Ambassador Jill Morris presented Brigadier General Fabrizio Parrulli, Commander of the Carabinieri’s Unit for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, with the Cultural Property Protection Unit’s Blue Shield and her Residency in Rome
Commanders in Venice, to the Defence Intelligence Agency at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling and the Military Cultural Heritage Action Group at the Smithsonian in Washington and, with the Minister of State for the Armed Forces, Mark Lancaster Mem- ber of Parliament (who is also my Deputy Commander in 77th Brigade), to a conference in Rome at the Ambassador’s Residen- cy. I was due to brief a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization workshop in Kabul and the Minis- try of Defence let me complete the full training package – I am
now a marksman with a pistol and hit the 300 Club for the final round of Personal Fitness Assessments, get that – before they turned the trip off.
I’ve met with some mad philosophers (still can’t work out what they were discussing but the post-match dinner was good) and with the Commonwealth Secretariat, did a radio interview with the Victoria and Albert Museum, briefed The Times and Tel- egraph, met with the Royal Household and Historic Royal Pal- aces, ran a cultural property protection conference with United Kingdom Blue Shield and suggested to the Victoria and Albert Museum that they organise a conference on risk mitigation for heritage institutions in advance of armed conflict (they did, I’m now banned from the Victoria and Albert Museum).
I was lucky enough to catch the Colonel-in-Chief’s eye in Her Majesty’s Birthday Honours. When I received the date from the Palace, shock-horror, it clashed with one of my many overseas ‘tours’. I rang the Palace to find out about Royal Command and three-line-whips. Not a problem, I was told, plenty of other dates. “Ooooh”, said I “...So...when is Keira picking up her’s?”. When the courtier had stopped laughing, I found that I was off to the Palace in December, with Keira. For those not familiar with film star Keira Knightley, in the words of Sir Kenneth Branagh dur- ing the movie Jack Ryan, she is “incredibly beautiful” and who am I to disagree – cultural property to be respected and protected.
TJGSP
Lieutenant ColonelTJGS Purbrick became BFF with Keira Knightley when he received the OBE from HRH The Prince of Wales
Lieutenant Colonel Edwin Maes, Head of the Dutch Armed Forces Cultural Property Protection Unit, and Captain Dr Anna Kaiser of the Austrian Armed Forces with Lieutenant Colonel TJGS Purbrick
at the National Defence Academy in Vienna
Lieutenant ColonelTJGS Purbrick wearing the Hague Convention’s Blue Shield for the first time at Army HQ