Page 160 - RAPTC Number 102 2018/19

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RAPTC MUSEUM
Mr E Dawson – Museum Curator
The RAPTC Museum has two purposes, firstly to commemorate the history of the Corps and Army physical training, secondly to chronicle the work carried out by the current cadre of RAPTC officers and instructors. Both strands will be explored across the current year.
2018 saw the Museum mark the centenary of the end of World War One with an exhibition on the Army Gymnastic Staff during the Hundred Days Offensive, the final push that ended the War. 2019 marks another major landmark, being the 75th anniversary of the landings at Arnhem during World War Two.
In September 1944 the First Airborne Division attempted a daring manoeuvre to seize the strategic bridges across the Rhine; an attempt that ended in bloody failure with the shattered remnants withdrawing a week later. Accompanying the parachutists were twenty-seven of their APTC instructors who had chosen to follow them into battle. Only five of these men were to regain Allied lines.
The Museum will be marking this anniversary with a special display that tells the story of these instructors. It will feature objects belonging to several of the men, including WO2 (CSMI) Norman Jones, whose family recently made a wonderful donation of his medals, jumpsuit and personal documents. The exhibition is scheduled to be held in the Museum from September 2019.
Prior to that, the Museum will be launching an exhibition exploring the current-day issue of how sport prepares soldiers for the battlefield. Games and sports have always been an integral part of the RAPTC instructor’s arsenal; helping build teamwork, fitness, esprit de corps and the drive to win. Games such as boxing and football date from the Nineteenth Century but a wide array of different sports are now played, all of which help forge the modern soldier.
Exploring this will be a key theme of the exhibition, which forms part of Sporting Heritage and the Armed Forces, a two-year joint initiative between the military and sporting worlds. It will feature images and objects from the RAPTC and several different
Corps and sporting museums, as well as current-day material from serving soldiers and the Army Sports Control Board.
The exhibition will open at the RAPTC Museum in August 2019 and after a two-week residency will travel to several other military and sporting museums and community venues across the south of England, including REME Museum and RLC Museum. This
is aimed towards gaining maximum exposure to help develop a wider understanding of the role
of sport in the Army and
the ties that link it to the training carried out by RAPTC instructors.
Through these twin celebrations of the
old and the new,
the Museum will
showcase the great achievements wrought
through Army physical
training that have been so effective in the past and are proving equally successful in the present.
Jump suit worn by Norman Jones
1936 Olympic cap worn by WO2 (CMSI) Maurice Edelston APTS