Lieutenant Colonel JP Brooke

Lieutenant Colonel J P Brooke

A personal military history for the DLOY

01 Sep 22

My military service goes back a long way, and I joined the army as a regular when I was 18 years old. My first taste of soldiering was the 1st May 1983 when I arrived on the Royal Armoured Corps potential officers course at Cambrai Barracks in Catterick to find or see four troopers being beasted outside the guardroom. It was a bit of a shock because I thought it was all going to be smart uniforms and elegant drinks parties. I passed the course, passed RCB (as it then was) and was sponsored to go to university on a bursary. In 1987 I attended the standard graduate course 873 at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and the following spring 1988 I was commissioned into 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards.

I served in Germany and then out on Gulf War 1 (where coincidentally I was in the next tent to 2Lt Ralph Assheton as he then was) following which the regiment arms plotted back to Tidworth. I left the regular army after five years and joined what was then called the ‘field sports and country house weekend set’ or in other words the regular army TA pool of officers. Each regular regiment had a pool or allocation of six spaces for former serving officers in this club. The theory was that there would be ready made and current watch keeper pool should regiments ever go to war. This was disbanded in February 1999 a couple of years before it was really going to be needed on Op TELIC, or Gulf War 2. February 1999 was, I thought, the end of my military career.

Six years later in March 2005 Major John Eastham TD very kindly invited me to the Red Rose dinner. We had met professionally and it was a very kind invitation to another military person in the North West. I sat next to someone I vaguely recognised who was also wearing a Gulf War 1 miniature medal who turned out to be the next commanding officer of the RMLY, Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Assheton (as he then was). We got talking and it took him about five minutes to persuade me to ‘come and have a look’ at the regiment that he was about to take over command of. I was ripe for the plucking. The Red Rose dinner was on a Friday and the following Wednesday saw me searching around the back streets of Wigan for Kearsley House, the home of D Squadron RMLY. I found it eventually and a very smart soldier asked to see my ID. I happened to have in my wallet my 1993 ID card which was pink card and completely different to the modern ones but he gave it a good old look and went inside to report the terrorist at the gate. I was let in.

The smell on walking into Kearsley House was provocative – the armoury doors were open as was the hatch into the SQMS stores. The smell of newly oiled weapons and that mothball chemical smell of the QM stores had the hook right into me and it was all I could to do stop myself shouting ‘where do I sign.’ By the time I had arrived, a few days after meeting him, the commanding officer had by then taken over and he introduced me to the Squadron Leader, Major Rob Hartshorne. On Friday that week I was in the back of a Landover on the way to a regimental exercise. I had had to search every nook and cranny of my farm to find enough uniform and equipment in order to be able to go out as I had not officially joined the TA by that stage but there started some of the most fun times I have had in nearly forty years of soldiering.

I found D squadron to be full of the most likeable and able officers and soldiers I had ever met. There was a combination in those days of a healthy through put of soldiers who had been on Op TELIC and those who had yet to deploy. Some of the post Op TELIC soldiers were still wearing their desert combats which was a good idea because it became aspirational for the others. I served as Rob Hartshorn’s second in command for eighteen months and when he kindly and finally relinquished command in December 2006 I took over as Squadron Leader and was promoted to Major.

My time as second in command of the squadron was really great fun and enabled me to get ‘down and dirty’ in the field, learn about the main battle tank Challenger 2 (as it was this beast that the squadron and regiment would crew in time of war) and really immerse myself in regimental life. The mess across the regiment was well established and contained a lot of great characters.

Matters became slightly more serious when I took over as Squadron Leader as operation TELIC had given way to Op HERRICK and we were preparing our first soldiers to go away to Afghanistan. Fortunately, we had no casualties across all the tours we deployed on unlike many TA or reserve units. While I was Squadron Leading, Lieutenant Colonel Johnny Brooking RDG took over from Lieutenant Colonel Ralph and the regiment seemed to change gear upwards as other Squadron Leaders arrived to lead the other squadrons, Greg Harrison in A Squadron, Marco Bulmer in B Squadron and Rupert Collis in C Squadron, all four of us are very firm friends to this day. A natural competitiveness began to assert itself between the squadrons and collective training with all squadrons onto the same exercise became the norm. We also had some significant regimental events such as the freedom of the City of Wigan, officers study weekends at the then Duke of Westminster’s shooting estate at Abbeystead, gunnery camps, drinks parties and the like. Annually we still had and continue to have the quite excellent Red Rose dinner, guarding the trophy at Aintree for the Grand National, cavalry memorial parade, annual gunnery camp, regimental reunions and officer’s mess functions. While I was squadron leading I attended the regular and TA combined arms tactics course (‘CATAC’), designed for young majors who were about to subunit command. It was for regular and TA, armour, infantry, reconnaissance regiments and army air corps. This comprises a week in the classroom talking about tactics and then a week in the field courtesy of the demonstration battle group at Warminster.

Towards the end of my time as Squadron Leader I got into a conversation with a Squadron Leader in the King’s Royal Hussars, based in Tidworth. We started counting and it turned out that I had spent more time in the turret of a Challenger 2 in the two years I had been squadron leading than he had whereas I was a TA officer and he was a regular. He marched off in indignation to speak to his commanding officer.

All too quickly my life at regimental duty came to an end and having been selected for TA staff college in the summer of 2009, as well as being lined up for one of the best jobs for a young staff officer in the TA, as deputy joint regional liaison officer (DJRLO) for 143 (West Midlands Brigade). I handed over command of the squadron to Major Toby Gaddum, latterly my second in command, on 2 March 2009. I knew once I marched out that I would never go back to Wigan as a serving officer and having made my farewell and thank you speech the previous Sunday evening on return from a regimental exercise I found myself unable to speak with a totally constricted throat due to the emotion of the moment. I just turned smartly to the right, drove in my right heel, saluted smartly and marched out.

My TA career then took a very different turn. As the DJRLO I reported to Lieutenant Colonel Guy Chambers (late the Rifles) in Copthorne Barracks, Shrewsbury (now demolished). I had been a staff officer before in the regular army but this was something new. I had always assumed that army officers and soldiers wore green uniform and drove around in armoured vehicles but this was something else. Resilience was the second pier of British defence policy and the military aid to the civil community and the civil power purple book was our bible. We were supposed to be the choice of last resort in the event of some civil emergency. My primary task was to act as the primary point of contact for the West Midlands Police in the centre of Birmingham and I was quite proud taking the train in my green uniform from Shrewsbury to Birmingham New Street Station and walking the half mile across the city attracting some strange looks from the local community to go to regular meetings with the Police. I was in the front line of organising the party conference for the shortly to be Conservative Government and the next year the Social Democratic and Liberal party conference.

In the summer of 2009 I attended TA staff college at Shrivenham. Whilst I had hit a highlight soldiering at regimental duty with the DLOY / RMLY, academically this was also a highlight of my whole professional career. I learnt more about the military in the three weekend, two week residential course (with a lot of homework) than I had done in six months at Sandhurst and other courses. For example, (“what is the Royal Artillery for?”) was a question that I had always often asked myself and I THEN found out. We were in the same college with all three services plus marines and servicemen and women from other countries and it was a remarkable exchange of news and views.

When I finished my two year tour as DJRLO I was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and took over as SO1(V) in 5 Div., then also in Copthorne barracks. Sadly, the disbandment of the regional divisions followed, and then the regional brigades reported directly into the central hub at Aldershot. Living and working in North Wales and reporting into Aldershot was going to be a bit of a stretch and when my time as SO1(V) 5 Div. finished that was my last day in green uniform, late summer 2011.

The story, however, was not over. Several years later after the trauma of the disbandment of the RMLY (in 2014) and working abroad for an international law firm and so not being able to take up any of the command appointments that had been dangled before my eyes I was in the Cavalry and Guards Club minding my own business and I received a tap on the shoulder from someone wearing a grey suit that I had never met before. My immediate reaction (being a cavalry officer) was “oh no what have I done now?” But he asked me was I interested in joining the Honourable Court of Gentlemen at Arms. This (I now know) is an institution founded in 1509 when King Henry VIII had decided that he wanted a personal bodyguard to accompany him to meetings with the French. I now know who had put my name forward but I was selected and Her Majesty was graciously pleased to appoint me to her personal bodyguard, my first duty being presented on appointment in May 2018. I will serve until my 70th birthday on 4th June 2034.

The army, regular and reserve, has been a significant part of my life and made my character what it is today. Joining the TA in 2005 was a good reminder of the values of integrity and moral courage that all military people, indeed all people should aspire to and make their mission statement. It enabled me to reset my professional life and, in a nutshell, I have never looked back.

JPB