Page 91 - The Royal Lancers Chapka 2019

REGIMENTAL JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL LANCERS (QUEEN ELIZABETHS’ OWN)
For the first time since the end of the Second World War the Army has again a rather esoteric unit in its Order of Battle. The last time around there were two Allied units, the Monuments,
Fine Arts and Archives Branch and the Art Looting Investigation Unit (an all United States unit of the Office of Strategic Services), which have been reincarnated as today’s ‘it does what is says on the tin’ Cultural Property Protection Unit (CPPU).
This year we ran the Unit’s first Special to Arm course at South- wick Park in Hampshire. It was Eisenhower’s D-Day HQ and still has on the Mess Anteroom’s wall the map of the routes into the landing beaches. Amongst the twenty plus students were the 8 CPPU officers with CPP officers from Austria, Australia, France, Italy, the Netherlands and the US along with officials from UNESCO, Interpol, NATO, the Carabinieri, Metropolitan Police and 1st Military Police Brigade. The course taught the students how to apply CPP in higher level headquarters plan- ning processes and added in tasters for further study on subjects such as support to Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Relief, illicit CP trafficking, first aid for CP, resilience, targeting and CP war crimes. Immediately following the course, the United States De- partment of Defense announced that they would establish their own CPP Unit and the French and Australians look to be head- ing in a similar direction – Defence Diplomacy in action.
Within in the first month after the course CPPU officers were attending NATO conferences, briefing the Metropolitan Police War Crimes Network, delivering pre-United Nations deploy- ment training to the Irish Defence Forces and kickstarting a military CPP network at UNESCO in Paris. Over the coming
Gen Sir James Everard, Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe
years the Unit will deliver CPP training, support Defence En- gagement and Partners Across Government and, on operations, deliver pre-deployment training, support targeting and liaison at all levels, support operational planning processes, advise com- manders and staff, investigate, record and report CP issues from any theatre and cooperate with the civilian authorities responsi- ble for safeguarding CP.
In 2020 the Unit will continue to recruit and train itself through attendance at a legal course on the Hague Convention (1954), a training weekend in Edinburgh Castle, supporting the delivery of the US CPPU’s initial training course and participation at a NATO CPP conference while looking towards operational de- ployments as well as...events, dear reader.
Of course, not a year goes by without your reporter managing to squeeze in some overseas OHMS travel. Bumped into Gen Sir James Everard at NATO, was the Military Representative in the UK Delegation to a UNESCO and ICRC conference in Geneva, attended the Carabinieri Unit for the Protection of Cultural Heritage’s 50th Anniversary conference and walked to Austria, the US – well, their London Embassies – and the Com- monwealth (Secretariat, at Marlborough House) for a lunch and two conferences.
If you want a flavour of what we are about, watch the movie Monuments Men. I see that George Clooney bloke in the shav- ing mirror every morning though, surprisingly, Her Ladyship has booked me in for an eye test.
TJGSP
Deliverance
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