interview
Island Life - April/May 2011
Danny pictured with Skiborne squadron on Northern Norway / USSR Border 1979
fell over the rifle would hit you in the face,
shooting activities. So he began as a student
so you learned to stay up on your skis!”
at the Staff College, and returned as an
The real reason they were there was far
more serious – patrolling the Russian border,
instructor at the same Staff College.
He also commanded his regiment in Verden,
with the unit’s job to provide radio operators
Germany, home of the Hanoverian horses,
for internal communications detachments
and was invited back several years later
that included the United States, Canada,
to a massive estate for a wild boar shoot.
Italy, Denmark and Norway.
His guide was a man who in the days of
“We were there very much as a deterrent,
East Germany had escorted such infamous
but our back up communication was
characters as Cuba’s Fidel Castro, ex-Russian
hand-speed ‘morse’ back to the US – that
president Leonid Brezhnev and former
was our stand by link in case of a nuclear
Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu around
attack, which we knew if it were to happen
the estate.
would happen very quickly. So interesting
Danny also spent four years in the Far East
times,” reflected Danny, whose unit did
with the Gurkhas, starting off in Malaya,
a similar job on the Turkish border in the
then moving to Singapore and Hong Kong.
summer, in red hot desert conditions. “There
It was after he returned to teach at the
were wild tortoises everywhere and the lads
Staff College in Camberley that he was
used to paint Union Jacks on their backs.”
head-hunted by a large multi-national
He served back in this country as Company
company. “That was when I decided to leave
Commander back at Sandhurst, teaching
the Army, and of course I missed it. Perhaps
cadets and riding out every day, as well as
I shouldn’t have left when I did, but vanity
being very much involved in the fishing and
allowed me to follow this head hunter.
Visit our new website - www.visitislandlife.com
39