Page 99 - Bugle Autumn 2014

Officers’ Mess
Last year the Officers’ Mess closed
for Summer leave, riding the wave of Paderborn’s festival season. There’s nowhere else where Eurovision-quality music can sound out quite as freely as in Germany, eased, of course, by the fastest flowing beers ‘vom fass’. We bade farewell to two upstanding officers: Captains
Doug Pigot and Ben Cottenden; both are doubtless bound to carry the ‘Rifles Charm’ into ‘The City’.
2nd Lieutenants Theo Bossom and James Cantrell joined the Mess during the Autumn, alongside the returning Capt Harry Harrison who took on the post of cross-country team captain with QM Tech on the side. They arrived just in time for our belated Salamanca Day, consisting of, amongst other things, one of the finest curries ever cooked on a BV. There’s no hospitality like armoured hospitality. This
The Officers’ Mess returned from Summer leave one company
at a time, to meet in the usual corridors at Alanbrooke Barracks and exchange tales
Capt Iain Hardman, the Jockanese Rifleman, whose broad accent and impressive General Melchet volume is dearly missed
was also an opportunity to send off a long- standing stalwart
of the Mess, Capt
Iain Hardman, the Jockanese Rifleman, whose broad accent and impressive General Melchet volume is dearly missed.
of ladies who had
either bizarrely resisted
the ‘Rifles charm offensive’, and it can
be offensive, or who were now with the new-found love of their lives, drawing them back to England in every way similarly to their last beau. Luckily there were plenty of top training dits to spin from the preceding manoeuvres in Canada and Bavaria, of note Maj Jim Bates finding his WARRIOR capable of 86kph cross
country (anything goes
when you find yourself
the wrong side of the
prairie from the O
Group RV).
The Officers’ Mess Christmas Ball held on 7 December 13 was a cosy affair,
with somewhere near 80 close friends getting through somewhere near 180 persons’ worth of booze. The dance-off went the way of the field officers on this occasion; Majors Damo Flanagan and Eoin Carson’s double act stole the show in an
unrepeatable display of rhythmic genius; bigger shapes are better and discord is the new harmony. Christmas saw the Battalion take 4 weeks respite, to really unwind ahead of the MST conveyor-belt
continuing, but not before 2nd Lieutenants Rich Makepeace and Tom Reynolds had joined us, fresh from PCD: the final infantry subalterns to make it to Helmand. We also bade farewell to Captain James ‘Python’ Pither who had also succumbed to the fatal attraction of ‘The City’.
Plugging a gap, and a whole bunch of good technical radio stuff, Captain Chris Haussauer joined us in January from the Royal Corps of Signals, taking the post
of RSO, which we believe stands for ‘Regimental Sleeping Officer’, as he puts in
On 19th September,
when the Mess was
finally full, we sat down
to dinner with the Worshipful Company
of The Wax Chandlers, to offer our very genuine thanks for their charitable support (there definitely wasn’t any angling for a way into ‘The City’ from any corner of the room). On a serious note, The Wax Chandlers are very generous supporters who take every opportunity to visit us in less glamorous environments, their principal concern being the welfare of the Riflemen.
somewhere near 80 close friends getting through somewhere near 180 persons’ worth of booze
The Officers’ Mess enjoys some traditional German beer pong
some impressive hours on the cot-bed. On a serious note, we’re glad of the expertise brought into the fold from all cap-badges that make up the Manoeuvre Battle-group, if nothing else it will make for one quirky knees-up when it’s all over.
The Mess closed abruptly, following April’s send-off Mexican-themed fancy-dress ball, a date to forget. We’ve struggled ever since to pin down an accurate record of what actually happened, few things are certain; there were Mexican wrestlers, a bouncy castle and some mariachi band music. Captain Ed Richardson, our newly arrived Operations Officer, took to the Karaoke with aplomb; it seems nothing warms up such
a select crowd quite like 1990’s boy band crooning with interpretive dance.
THE RIFLES
FIFTH BATTALION 97