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The Paras - The Inside Story of Britain's Toughest Regiment. John Parker
Читать онлайн.Название The Paras - The Inside Story of Britain's Toughest Regiment
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isbn 9781782190509
Автор произведения John Parker
Жанр Биографии и Мемуары
Издательство Ingram
Since the campaign, as always happens, people have been examining the way it was conducted and H’s role in it. There have been some stinging things said about him. You don’t like the criticism and I think you would be pretty unfeeling if you did, but if you have faith and believe in the person, then that is what is important. You don’t like it being said, so you try to rise above that. In this country it is inevitable that anybody who is held up as a hero or held in high esteem will be targeted by people looking to see if they have feet of clay, looking to bring them down. I think it is a shame because I think people in this country wish to have people to look up to, and always looking for a downside, a bad side, is a shame. Most of the criticism has come from people who were not there, the armchair strategists who sat safely at home and from the comfort of their armchairs began to analyse H’s strategy, to find fault with it. But unless you were on the ground and in the throes of war, which is a pretty disorganized business, how can you say what people were doing was wrong?
The criticism made the boys cross but it did not shake their faith in what H did. They believe he did what he felt he had to do at the time. They had reached a difficult point in the battle and H would not make somebody else do something he wouldn’t have done himself. He led from the front. There is an argument that a CO should not be doing that, but when it got to that point of the battle where he felt things were becoming bogged down he felt that if nobody else was going to do it he would have to. He did it and, I would argue, that was the turning point. There had been many rumours that he was going to be awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross. When it happened we were all very proud, terribly proud, but he would not have been impressed with himself; he would have been impressed with his battalion and what they had achieved. Even though the boys were proud they also had to live with it. It is quite tough having a famous father who, on the one hand, is a national hero and on the other is criticized from time to time. It is all very difficult to take on board. It is then even more difficult when you follow your father into a career, which they both did: both joined the Army.
Luckily, with a name like Jones, people don’t always know who they are. It is very difficult living up to your father’s reputation and people’s expectations based on his reputation. Then there is the criticism. They either have to stand up for him or take it on the chin or whatever. It is not easy. It was no surprise to me that they were going to go into the Army. It was not because of what H did. It was always destined. Before H died David was going in. The only thing I didn’t know was what regiment they were going to join. I thought David might join the Parachute Regiment and Rupert the Devon and Dorsets. In the end they both joined the D and Ds. I never tried to stop them. You support your children in whatever they want to do and as far as joining the Army is concerned, I think it is a marvellous tradition and a marvellous occupation for those who want to do it. I always loved the spirit of the Army, I loved everything it stood for. I still do. It gives me a buzz, but I think I have an old-fashioned vision of it now. The Army has moved on.
When David graduated from Sandhurst there was a great feeling of pride and one of regret that H was not there to see it. I shed a tear, but I think H could well have been there in spirit. Rupert toyed with the idea of going into the Paras but then decided against it. David, in his uniform, was the spitting image of his father and terribly like him in a hundred and one ways. All the ways he acts and behaves are H all over again. They served together in Northern Ireland and that was a little worrying, but I was more worried when Rupert went to Bosnia. I was worried more then, I don’t know why, but I was. He was terribly involved in what was happening around Mount Igman and I remember being dreadfully worried then. I got myself in a real state about him. It was probably because it was always on the news and they kept saying that they were going in to do this, that and the other, and I thought: ‘I’ve been here before… I don’t think I can take it again.’ As far as Northern Ireland is concerned I had been there before, I had lived there during one of H’s tours of duty and I could understand it more. Bosnia I couldn’t understand and I didn’t enjoy him being there at all. By this stage I was no longer an Army wife, but just an ordinary Army mum.
I got involved with the Falklands Families Association about two years after it was formed. A group of relatives formed it on the Cunard Countess on their way back from visiting the graves in the Falklands the year after the fighting. Sadly we are now a much smaller band than we used to be: some people have died, others’ lives have moved on and they don’t want to know any more. But I think it has given a lot of people support and friendship and for all of us – particularly myself – it has shown that there are other people out there who have the same experiences, the same emotions, the same problems you have, and you know that you are a band of people with a common understanding, a comradeship, and that is very important. The vast majority of those who joined were parents because the vast majority of those killed were young people who were not married. Some have never recovered from the loss of their children. It is very hard for women and children to be widowed and left without a father, but I think it is toughest of all on parents because you never get over the loss of a child. I always feel that your child is your investment in the future. It is a little bit of you you leave behind and to lose one is a shattering blow.
H’s VC is at the National Army Museum in Chelsea on what they call permanent loan. It still belongs to the family and we can get it back any time we want. The reality of it is, what is the point of me having it here in the house or having it in a bank? There is no point. It is much better having it somewhere where people can see it, and there aren’t many places where it can be properly looked after. I go to see it occasionally, but it doesn’t bring back any particular memories of H as it came to us after he died. He never held it, it was never part of him. We are proud of the ethos and all that goes with being a Victoria Cross holder.
Even in this age of high-speed air travel, nerves jangle for most mortals at the very thought of boarding a plane, let alone jumping out of it when it is in the clouds with only a flimsy canopy to stop one’s body crashing back to earth with potentially fatal consequences. The idea had been around long enough, from Greek mythology to Leonardo da Vinci’s sketches of a man dangling from a hollow pyramid. So let us go back in time for a few moments to recall the origins of the Paras.
As early as 1783, statesman and scientist Benjamin Franklin, then the American minister in Paris, had some sort of vision of airborne armies being dropped into battle after hearing news of the first manned flight in a hydrogen balloon by the Frenchmen Jacques-Alexandre-César Charles and Nicolas Robert on 1 December of that year. They took off from fields on the outskirts of Paris, rose about 600 metres and drifted more than 40 kilometres from the city. These early developments in balloon travel immediately began to attract the attention of forward-thinking military men and others fearful of invaders from the skies. Within the year a French balloonist, Jean-Pierre Blanchard, and an American doctor, John Jeffries, made the first balloon flight across the English Channel. They took off from Dover and landed near Calais two hours later. Blanchard also made the first balloon voyage in the United States in 1793 and before the end of the decade another Frenchman, André-Jacques Garnerin, made the first parachute jump from a balloon over Paris, using a canopy with rigid spokes. Those early experiments of jumping from balloons would remain a pertinent, if precarious, part of the training of the pioneers of modern parachuting from the early days of the Second World War, serving as a prelude to actually diving out of aircraft. Colonel Alan Wooldridge remembers