"Unprovided with original learning, uninformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a blog”
They don’t tell lance corporals such things, so God knows why we were sent to Thailand. But by the 1960’s it was clear, even to the dimmest of diplomats, let alone thicko lance corporals, that the South East Asia Treaty Organisation, of which Thailand was a founder member, was dead in the water. There had... Continue Reading →
Training to become a military photographer involves a fairly lengthy attachment with the Royal Navy. In bonnie Scotland no less. On the windswept flatlands of the Scottish North Eastern Coast. Lossiemouth. It was a Royal Naval Air Station and almost brand spanking new, with the most outstanding buildings and facilities, massive state of the art... Continue Reading →
I was just turned 15. We drove to Blackdown, me and my father, from Viersen, in Germany, where my father was a warrant officer at a massive Ordnance depot thereabouts. In fact I had signed on at that Ordnance depot, sworn in before my father’s Commanding Officer. So I knew what the Royal Army Ordnance... Continue Reading →
We had an advantage over Depot and barrack based troops.At the Singapore Headquarters of Far East Land Forces, set in rolling parkland near the botanic gardens, there were employed a dozen or so white women, daughters of serving officers.White women in Singapore were truly the holy grail of every soldier’s sexual fantasies. Somewhat stupidly we... Continue Reading →
Kuching. Purely upon the basis of my exemplary war service with the fabled Laundry and Bath Unit, I was singled out for advanced training as a cinema projectionist with the AKC, which I think means the Army Kinema Corporation (and confirms their spelling is as bad as mine.) The course involved two weeks at an... Continue Reading →
One of the great purposes of this book, all eight hundred and ninety six pages of its slightly smaller than breeze block size, is to fall, with all its ponderous weight, upon the poorly sourced, idiosyncratic 64 page pamphlet of John de Courcy Ireland's The Sea and the Easter Rising. It does so with a... Continue Reading →
An old school photograph showing my brother Patrick McGuiggan, (sitting in the centre holding the class identifying blackboard), always the most photogenic member of the McGuiggan family, at Toton Primary school in Nottinghamshire sparked a fond tale of revenge....’ In the rear of the photograph is the school Headmaster. Sutton. He was a fairly brutal... Continue Reading →
In Norway, I was tasked to make training film of military equipment operating under winter warfare conditions – short clips of, for example, modified grenades that didn’t sink into the snow, sledges adapted for transporting anti-tank weapons, winter engine covers for helicopters and so on. Cold intense work involving a lot of contact with different types of... Continue Reading →
Gibraltar. There was an old Sherman tank to the rear of our crumbling block of flats. It served as the centre piece of a children’s play area. It was wonderful. Of course the tank’s open hatches had been welded immovable, and you couldn’t swivel the turret, or raise, or god forbid, fire the guns. But... Continue Reading →
Written by a Welshman, from the valleys, about a Welsh soldier, also from the valleys, who died from gunshots from her own weapon while on guard duty at the railway gate of Deepcut garrison, perhaps more commonly known to the soldiers who served there, as Blackdown. As a piece of theater it is at once,... Continue Reading →
Returned from front line service in Borneo, already wearing my hard won GSM medal ribbon, and now a hard-bitten decorated veteran of the laundry and bath unit, I launched myself with unbridled enthusiasm onto the fleshpots of Singapore. The rich cultural heritage of a noble island race was as nought to the likes of me... Continue Reading →
For a dead English soldier it really doesn’t matter whether the foreign field in which you finally rest is in Flanders or in Dublin. At least it shouldn’t. But scattered across Dublin cemeteries lie the forgotten remains of the young men of the Sherwood Foresters Regiment who were slaughtered on Dublin’s Streets during the... Continue Reading →
Unity Flats was the rather ironic name given to a brutal 60’s style complex of catholic apartments, planted, more in hope than expectation, at a junction close to the Protestant Shankill Road. By the late 60’s when the Catholic civil liberties agenda had erupted into inter-community violence, it was quite possibly one of the most... Continue Reading →
A. A. Dickson Captain, 2/7th Battalion, The Sherwood Foresters 'A Duty to Execute', ( This is Captain Arthur Annan Dickson of the Sherwood Foresters Regiment. It is the only known photograph of a British Officer who commanded one of the 1916 execution parties at Kilmainham Gaol. What is not known, with any precision, is which... Continue Reading →
In the bowels of the old Shire hall worked the unseen unsung servants that kept the ancient complex clean and who would break their backs shovelling coke into the great boilers deep in the cellars that warmed the courts and offices and public spaces of the busy crowded and noble building. Low paid and of... Continue Reading →
Peter McGuiggan, my grandfather, worked at a colliery in Gateshead. He was, according to his marriage certificate, a putter, that is a man working underground hauling baskets of coal from the hewers to the wagons that were then pushed and pulled to the mine shaft for from where the coal was hauled up to the ... Continue Reading →
The Pencil portrait of Private Christopher Coleman, from Cobh, County Cork, made by his wife. The first week of September 1916 and the 16th Irish Division are engaged in the bloody advance across theSomme. At the village of Guillemont , men of the 7th Leinster Regiment manage to pass through the shattered village and secure... Continue Reading →
Broadsides - A collection of bits and pieces 