MEMORY JOGGED AGAIN..

Tomorrow our eldest granddaughter celebrates her 21st birthday and we`re looking forward to seeing her on her big day.   And it reminded me once again of my own 21st birthday which was spent in bizarre circumstances.

During my two years of National Service I had been posted to an armoured regiment - the 10th Royal Hussars (Prince of Wales Own) a cavalry regiment, don`t you know, with a long and proud tradition.   I wasn`t sure they ever got used to the change from riding around on horses to riding around in tanks, armoured personnel carriers, scout cars and the like and I was never quite sure why I had been `selected` to join their ranks.

But then my 21st birthday shed some light on it.   The Shiny Tenth must surely have been the only regiment in the British Army with the masochistic tradition of denying any 21st birthday revels by placing those National Servicemen, whose birthday it was, on guard for the night.   And so I found myself in the middle of Luneburg Heath in the wilderness of north west Germany with the sole responsibility for guarding the regiment`s fighting machinery.  What guaranteed the security of all those tanks and other weapons of grievous bodily harm was the fact that I was expected to protect and guard them by means of a pick axe handle and a whistle.

It was an interesting time - the heightened tension concerning the Berlin airlift, the cold war warming up a few notches - and so my stewardship of the regiment`s stuff was clearly a huge responsibility but I`m pleased to report that, thanks to my trusty pick axe handle and whistle, the threat of any incursions from the eastern bloc hordes came to nothing.  

And so our granddaughter`s own big day tomorrow has jogged my memory of that  night 53 years ago....but I know that tomorrow will be by far the more satisfying.