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 144 supporting infrastructure. Apart from the satisfaction of facilitating the work and training of the garrison his most coveted award here was the presentation of a set of candelabra inscribed “To the Colonel, from the kids of Puckapunyal”. The award was for his role in convincing the engineers with community support to build a BMX track. While on the Chief of the General Staffs’ exercise in Western Australia, the CGS asked him what he would like for his final posting to which he replied something overseas would be nice. Consequently, his final posting was as Defence Attache, Manila, The Philippines, 1982-1985. In these latter years of the Ferdinand Marcos regime, military assistance was a politically charged issue, not helped by the murder of President Marcos’ opponent Benigno Aguino as he stepped off a plane in Manila on 21 August 1983. More immediately, a Joint Staff College tour had to be rapidly reprogrammed when the mayor of Zamboanga, another Marcos critic, was murdered on 14 November 1984, the day before he was due to meet the course. Neville was greatly assisted by the Japanese and US military attaches in keeping abreast of the political turmoil that toppled the Marcos regime in February 1986, but he missed this climactic event because of contracting dengue fever in late 1985. He returned to Perth to retire from the Army. He was then employed as General Manager of the Pastoralists and Graziers Association of WA 1986-1989. Thereafter he became the Honorary Secretary of the Royal Commonwealth Society of Western Australia 1990-1995 and serviced as Colonel Commandant of the Royal Australian Artillery, Western Australia, 1991-1995. Sources: An unpublished memoir ‘People & Places: A story of half a life’ covering his South African and UK life. Unpublished record ‘More People and Places’ by R.N. Gair recorded by Tegan Montgomery, Perth WA, July 2023. Several Central Army Records Office documents. Author’s personal communications with the subject. Sally Gair (nee Alderson) 1933-2017 Sally was cosmopolitan, vivacious, gregarious, and a touch quixotic. She and Neville were inseparable, complemented each other, and were gracious and entertaining hosts. They were the perfect fit for postings requiring social interaction within the army, between the services, and with foreign forces and the civil community at home and abroad. She was born in Egypt (where her father (Morris) was a cotton grower and stepfather (Alderson) an engineer. Sally spent her primary school years in Alexandria before being sent to boarding school in the UK for secondary schooling. She spoke German and French and had a smattering of colloquial Arabic. Omar Sharif was a fellow student along with members of the Greek royal family. Because of family and school connections she invariably knew of someone or serendipitously met friends and acquaintances wherever they travelled or were posted. She ran weekly swimming lessons in Selarang and loved practical jokes. On one occasion she attended the Selarang garrison wives’ swimming carnival at Changi billed and exquisitely disguised as the fictious Lady Wentworth-Brewster to open the carnival and present the prizes. On arrival the wives gathered while Sally began to express her gratitude for the invitation at which point a clumsy passing waiter seemingly accidentally pushed her into the pool. The unwitting 1 RAR lifeguard went to her immediate assistance and could not understand why she momentarily resisted being pulled from the bottom of the pool leaving the wives not knowing whether to laugh or gasp in horror.