Warminster 1976-1978
On 25th August 1976 the battalion occupied Battlesbury Barracks, Warminster, Wiltshire taking over from the Royal Irish Rangers as the demonstration battalion for the school of Infantry and British Army.
The Support Company was detached to Netheravon. In addition the battalion maintained the demonstration platoon at the school of infantry establishment in Brecon.
During this time the battalion was directly involved with the introduction into service of a completely new weapon system They were equipped with the MILAN (the abbreviation for ‘missle leger anti-char’) , an anti tank guided missile introduced into service to replace the wombat 120mm recoilless anti-tank gun.
The battalion spent the next two years carrying out all aspects of Infantry drills, the only distraction came when the firemen went on strike.
On the 2nd August 1979 the battalion handed over its responsibilities to the Infantry Demonstration Battalion, which assumed responsibility for all of the School of Infantry commitments
The following Regimental Journals were published whilst the 1st Battalion was in Warminster
The following Farmer's boy was lost whilst the 1st Battalion was in Warminster
Private | HAVARD R F | 08 November 1977 | UK |
The final months of 1977 saw an ever worsening situation in the fireman’s union dispute with the government of pay and conditions of service. As a result the battalion were deployed on Operation BURBERRY, which brought about the only semi- operational commitment by the battalion during its tour of duty at Warminster.
In December ‘A’ and ‘B’ Companies were ordered to deploy to Scotland and carry out fire-fighting duties. ‘A’ Company went to Glasgow and Lanark, and ‘B’ Company went to Greenock, Kilburnie and Preswick.’B’ Company remained there for five weeks tackling ninety four fires.
On every call-out each team would be accompanied by a patrol car from the Strathclyde police. Soldiers from the detachment at Queenslie tackled major rooftop blaze in Glasgow which tested them to the limit.
In the first twelve days of operations they turned out to 68 alarms, resulting in 40 fires having to be extinguished. False alarms with good intent amounted to seven, and there were nine hoaxes.
This was a good experience for the young soldiers, even allowing for potential local violence such as the threat offered to one of the teams after extinguishing a fire at a house when a young boy said 'Which team do you support Rangers or Celtic? Tell me or I'll bash you'.
Because of this deployment the Ferozeshah parade was cancelled and the Colonel-in-Chief, HRH the Prince Phillip who was due to take the salute instead visited the companies in Glasgow.
In January 1978 both the companies returned to Wiltshire.