Fifty years.

A brief moment in time.

Fifty years.

Fifty-years ago this week forty young men of 409 platoon passed out as paratroopers from Browning Barracks, Depot the Parachute Regiment, Aldershot. Except for one soldier (John Walsh 21), we were all seventeen or eighteen years old. There was a week before I too would become eighteen.

With few exceptions we had spent the past two years in Junior Service as Infantry Junior Leaders or in the Junior Parachute Regiment Company, so we were already young professionals. For twelve weeks we slept soaked to the skin in the forests of South Wales at the Parachute Regiment Battle School, practised live firing assaults, battled a fictitious enemy, and fought among ourselves, until one fine day we were sent to Abingdon to learn military parachuting. Eight jumps advancing from simple four man ‘sticks’ up to sixty-four men with full equipment leaving the aircraft at half second intervals. The final drop was at night from eight hundred feet. On completing this course, we were presented with our blue parachute wings to wear proudly on our right shoulders.

Before joining our battalions, we attended our passing out parade. Families came to watch as we marched past the rostrum to Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries, the march of the Airborne Forces. Weeks later many of us were patrolling on the streets of Northern Ireland.

Forty young men, private soldiers with no other qualifications who served their country and then went on to greater things. We fought in the Falklands, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, some died, many went on to other achievements. Many university degrees, one Lord Mayor, one Lt Col, and several Warrant Officers. Writers, social workers, councillors, family men. All high achievers in one way or another. We are all now sixty-seven or eight. Our lives were built on foundations we laid in the military half a century ago.

We are still in touch, we have a chat online or a coffee in a café when we pass though town. We all regard our service as a positive experience, no regrets. We wear our berets and wings with pride on Remembrance Day. Our lined faces show their age but, in our minds, we are still eighteen and it was only a brief moment ago.

Utrinque Paratus.

Robin Horsfall

409 Platoon 1975