RAA Liaison Letter 2025/2026 Edition 11 To all young officer’s, SNCOs as well as JNCOs and Gunners if you have not contributed to the Gunners Fund, I would encourage you to consider doing so. To paraphrase President John F Kennedy … ‘Ask not what the Gunners Fund can do for you, but what your contribution can do for other members of the Royal Regiment.’ Please don’t be a late bloomer in coming to the party to financially support the ‘Gunners Fund’ and consider contributing now to support all the ‘Good Things’ the fund is doing for members of the Royal Regiment. I appreciate there are tugs on your funds from many directions within the Regiment starting with your Battery Funds. You do not have to become a life subscriber if that does not suit your situation, a small financial contribution helps. I congratulate Lieutenant Chhai Ung from 20 Regiment for choosing to become a Life subscriber in August last year. I encourage other young officers to follow the example and support ‘your’ Royal Regiment. Sword cabinets Under construction Most readers will recall that to mark our 150th Anniversary the Royal Regiment was presented two artillery swords to mark the occasion. The first was the ‘Captain General’s’ sword presented by the late Her Majesty Queen Elizabeht II and the second was the ‘Royal Artillery’ sword presented by the Master Gunner Saint James Park Lieutenant General Andrew Gregory on behalf of the Royal Artillery. The RC agreed the swords would be displayed with the new Queens Banner in the Regimental Officers Mess. To do this it was necessary to have two sword cabinets constructed. After some delay the construction has started and will be completed this year. The boxes are being made from the wood of the old Queens Banner transportation box leaving the patina on the external side of the box which has the story of its journey. This idea came from WO1 Tony Hortle during his tenure as RMG. The concept was agreed by the RC executive. There is an article on the story of the sword box construction elsewhere in this edition. Defunct Defence Library Books A few years ago I became aware from the Puckapunyal Defence Library librarian that it was too close. At the time she was unsure what would happen to the contents of the library. On a subsequent visit she asked me if I would like to take any of the books for the School of Artillery. Appreciating the value of paper especially military related books, I accepted her offer and over a couple of days I selected a range of books and journals and transported them to my office. I was careful not to appear greedy as I assumed other people such as the School of Armour would come and take books as well. I am unsure if anyone else ever did but I was surprised at the recent Kilmore Historical Society annual bookfair when I came across a wet first edition set of the Winston Churchill’s ‘History of the Second World War’. This set is advertised for sale for as much as $300 on the internet. I turned over the front cover of the first volume and there it was stamped “Defence Library Service Puckapunyal”. How the set got there is anyone’s business but the only conclusion I can draw is that most of these defence library books were disposed of with little or no understanding of their intellectual worth or financial value. No doubt there are second-hand book shops around Australia rubbing their hands with glee at the bargains they secured at a defence library disposal sale where the booked were dumped. If I knew this was going to be the “final solution” for the Puckapunyal library book’s I would have taken a lot more than I did for the School of Artillery. As a footnote the lady at the sale in Kilmore gave me the set of ‘wet’ books for free, which I have had much pleasure in learning how to dry the volume’s without destroying them. Missing Regimental Trophies The search for the missing Regimental Trophies goes on but has slowed to a crawl. I have received some very useful research on the background of two of the trophies but no leads on as to where they may be currently residing. I suspect that they are in a unit or sub-unit trophy cabinet, walked past every day and no one is aware of their significance to the Royal Regiment. A fate even worse is if during one of the many unit and / or sub-unit upheavals that have taken place over the years, they have been ‘taken’ by a well-intended individual for safe keeping. Within the Reserve there have been many changes, disbandment’s and amalgamations. I suspect this is the case of the Heath Trophy.
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