Page 6 - QDG 2022

4 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards
Commanding Officer’s Foreword
It gives me great pleasure to offer a brief introduction to this excellent Regimental Journal for 2022. And I would do my predecessors a disservice were I not to open with the time-honoured refrain: it has been a busy year! The pages and pictures herein tell the tales not only of a regiment recently returned from oper- ations, but also of one already back in the saddle and at a canter, gazing to horizons new, to further challenge and sport. I should emphasise that while this volume may appear uncommonly well-endowed in terms of wordcount, it is in fact but a snapshot of this busy year; a fleeting taste of the time, effort, blood, sweat, and tears invested by the British Army’s finest men and women into the fabric of our communal history. And I would wager that few years have been as frenetic and as varied as this last. The euphemistic and oft-whispered catch- phrase ‘good busy’ brings smiles of stoic forbearance from troopers and squadron leaders alike; both, I sense, appreciate that we emerge from these continual commitments as better soldiers and tighter teams. I am daily humbled by the devotion and professional steadfastness of our people and cannot thank them enough for their efforts. I would only add that ‘busy’ as we may have been, this year has been a tour de force of what this regiment can accom-
plish. As the Colonel of the Regiment intimates in his Forward to this edition, your regiment is in fine form, replete with soldiers, and is very much aligned to both the Army’s main effort and key purpose. Our people are an embar- rassment of riches; these pages testament their accomplishments.
We stand at 400 people;
in that, we have 14 women,
37 commonwealth
soldiers, 6 professional
sportspeople, 41 officers, 13 Warrants, 211 NCOs, and countless Tprs. As a Light Cavalry regiment we are the smallest combat regiment in the British Army’s Order of battle. But our size brings oppor- tunity, as it enables us to be more ready than any other regiment in the division. A terrible and hackneyed phrase, but we are excellent value for money. In fact, our General Officer Commanding recently commented that the QDG were his most usable and most used regiment; quoted at a time when we had a squadron in Kuwait, the better part of two squadrons in Texas, a squadron in Norfolk, and the battlegroup headquarters deployed in
Canada. Indeed, at one point we had 91% of the regiment deployed on operations or training, a
statistic most regiments and battalions would, I think, be jealous of.
But what’s been keeping us busy? At this point last year the Regiment was deep in the sands of Mali on Operation NEWCOMBE, where Col Hugo and the team were flat-out managing a decid- edly successful tactical enterprise in W Africa; there is much devilish detail in the Squadron articles to follow. Upon returning from Mali in the summer of 2022, we found ourselves transitioning from the 1st Division (focused mainly on defence and international engagement) to the 3rd Division, the Army’s Warfighting division. And we couldn’t have joined the
warfighting division at a better time. The war in Ukraine has put more focus on the Army’s warfighting capabilities than has arguably been the case for 30 years. The context this presented the Regiment with was one of real opportunity; to prove our worth as long range, wheeled recon- naissance specialists within a heavy armoured division.
Importantly, we’ve not only joined a different division, but are also now at the forefront of the Army’s newest Brigade, the Deep Recce Strike Brigade, which brings three formation reconnaissance regiments (HCR, QDG and RL) together with the core elements of the former Artillery and Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance brigades. This sees the QDG at the tip of the UK’s armoured division, with its airpower and artillery at
Our people are an embarrassment of riches;
these pages testament their accomplishments.