Addressing The Issue . . .

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: ADDRESSING THE ISSUE : Ranch owners identify their cattle. : If you haven’t had the 35th’s red hot branding-iron singe your smouldering rump, then you don’t belong in our herd. : Simples. : Period. : Same with the Queen’s shilling. : The human race, as we know, originated from slime. (No change there, then). Over the ensuing millennia the amoeba crawling up out of the primordial swamp consequently turned out to be our forebears; and over the years there has been many a colourful Royal Sussex swede-basher who has lent confirmatory strength to the theory that as a species it is most definitely from slime that we have been borne. (Joke: ha-ha). : Everyone has to start from somewhere. : Thus it was that in 1701, in Belfast, at 3.00 0’clock on a Wednesday afternoon (they were going to have it in the morning, but it was raining) the Earl of Donegall raised the 35th Regiment of Foot. Since then . . . : The 35th fought under General James Wolfe at The Battle of Quebec, where on Thursday 13 September 1759 it 'sorted' the Roussillon Grenadiers of France. The vanquished Roussillon boys wore pretty white plumes fluttering in their headgear, which our lads victoriously plucked and shoved into their own as souvenirs. Thus the ‘Roussillon plume’ (a ‘senior’ feather) became incorporated in both our cap and collar badges, going on represent our most precious fashion accessory down the years! The Roussillon Regiment’s standard also bore the golden French fleurs-de-lys emblem, hence — having captured it — we were thereafter to attract the soubriquet Orange Lilies. : As part of the then Childers Reform the Royal Sussex Regiment was then formed, in 1881, from the 35th and the 107th Bengal Light Infantry (transferred from the Indian Army in 1860). : Three centuries down the line ‘They’ then decided that our presence was no longer needed. After 300 years loyal and honourable service to Crown and Country, on 31 December 1966 the Royal Sussex Regiment had the lid firmly closed on us. Because we still stood proudly erect at the time, our lid needed hammering down hard before the final screws could be applied, but holy shit, who’d ever have believed it! Having fielded 23 battalions of warriors in WWI — a third the strength of today’s entire British Army — we were amalgamated with the Queen’s Royal Surrey Regiment, The Royal Kent Regiment (Royal West Kents and Buffs), and the Middlesex Regiment (Duke of Cambridge’s Own), to form the Queen’s Regiment, which was later, on 9 September 1992, amalgamated with the Royal Hampshire Regiment to form the present Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment (Queen’s and Royal Hampshires) named for Diana, Princess of Wales, aka ‘Camilla’s Marauders . . .’ : . . . and it is of marauders of which we now speak. : There are still a few of us resolute (i.e. belligerent and ‘bloody minded’ we-won’t be druv) Old & Bold Royal Sussex and Queen’s men hobbling about the place, proudly disporting our by now well-smoothed cap-badged berets, orange and blue ties and fading breast-pocket insignia — and of late we have been given cause to become a bit miffed. For years our principal pastime has been to lay bets on who’ll be Last Man Standing? Who, in his late 90s, will go down in possession of the Regiment’s waning wealth and heritage, a fist no longer good for pokey-drill clasping our bona fide treasurer’s closing-down cheque, ascending to Valhalla at the wheel of Von Arnim’s staff car like Dick Van Dyke in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, its back seat packed with the family silver and in good old Royal Sussex tradition the Lord knows what other opportunistically purloined goodies jammed in there as well . . .? : . . . if it should happen at all (which is debatable) that is when the time might be more decently appropriate for these Johnny-Come-Lately ‘I wannabee a soldier’ newcomer upstarts, who weren’t ever born when we were disbanded, to muscle-in and form a Royal Sussex Orange Lilies Remembrance Society. Not to arrive (as they have) like poison gas on the wind, uninvited and unelected, to announce their unwanted selves and squat prematurely like cuckoos in our nest, then presume to ride along on our and our forebears’ years of legitimate service and feats of arms, usurping our presence and ethos before we’re even dead and in the ground: and in the meantime dictatorially imposing newly dreamed-up, alien, civvy-type protocols and procedures! The situation is as bizarre as Russia invading Ukraine and thinking it acceptable: grossly offensive and very, very rude. Cheeky chappies. Just who the hell do they think they are? Just what the hell do they think they’re up to, barging in and trying to lay spurious and specious claim to chunks of our hard-won history and presuming to adorn themselves with it by wearing our regalia? Usurpers’ missions are to de-stabilise, undermine, overthrow and then take control of the status quo. Status quo (not the rock band) is when conditions are as we’d like them to stay. So no; not on. No other club in the land would countenance putting up with such nonsense as is now going on. Need their ears boxing, that’s what. Time is long overdue for their insidious creeping and crawling-in across their self-constructed pseudo committee tables, to be neutralized. Their presumptuous incursion must be repelled. Totalled. Neckties have been used to hang people before; why not an orange and blue one? Queen Juliana and General Sir ‘Bolo’ Whistler will be turning in their graves if this farce is allowed to continue. : So who will now clasp the Royal Sussex’s big stick and wield it smartly, rearranging a few people’s kneecaps to face the other way? : Discuss. : To quote Sir Winston Churchill’s war-time cry (Honorary Colonel of the Royal Sussex Regiment’s Cinq Ports Battalion) — : ACTION THIS DAY! : Enough! : End of. : MAG: 1 Pl ‘A’ Coy 1RSx Kohima Camp Korea/Moorish Castle Gibraltar 1956-59. : Aug 2022.

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