RAA Liaison Letter 2024 - 2025 Edition

RAA L I A I SON L ETTER – 2024 – 2025 E D I T I ON C ANNON BALL S UP PLEMENT 139 COLONEL RONALD NEVILLE GAIR By Bob Lowry Introduction Colonel Ronald Neville Gair, known as Neville, was one of several foreign officers recruited by the Australian army in the early 1960s to fill the officer ranks of a force rapidly doubled in size for the war in South Vietnam. Virtually every unit that served there had several foreign platoon and company level commanders and staff officers - mainly from the UK but also several from Canada, Rhodesia, and New Zealand. Neville was recruited into the Royal Australian Artillery on 16 January 1964 and served until his retirement in 1985. He had prior service in the South African and United Kingdom armies, was a qualified military light aircraft and helicopter pilot, and had a number of challenging and interesting postings during his service in the Australian Regular Army. South Africa His mother’s family had migrated from England to South Africa in the 1820s and his fathers from Scotland in the late 19th Century. Neville was born in Uitenhage, South Africa, on 22 December 1930. His father died in 1939 from the effects of being gassed during his service in WWI. His father, and after his demise, his mother were wine merchants. He had four siblings and was brought up in comfortable circumstances. Although they lived in town many of his extended family and family friends were farmers, so he spent much of his youth in the country riding horses, hunting, swimming, and fishing. Despite being physically impaired with rheumatic fever as a child he eventually became a passionate Rugby Union player and follower from his school years. He matriculated in 1948 and was employed by a large engineering company as an office worker but was quickly promoted to buyer of the inputs required by the business. Growing up in the war years left him with a “burning ambition” to serve in the forces, preferably as an aviator but his application to join the air force was rejected. Instead, he was drafted into the Active Citizen Forces joining 5 Field Regiment, South African Artillery, based in Port Elizabeth in 1949. He found the training easy as he had served four years in the school cadets. He also applied for admission to the South African Military College but failed to gain entry because the new Afrikaner government was intent on reducing English dominance of the defence forces and other organs of government. United Kingdom With a military career in South Africa stymied he decided to seek better prospects in the UK. He arrived in March 1951 and tried to fulfill his childhood ambition to become a pilot. However, the RAF had a six month waiting list so with Neville Gair and Sally Alderson