THE same man who shocked us all on the front cover of the last issue of the Gazette now comes under somewhat closer scrutiny as we remove the cammed battle bowler and rub away the grease paint to find out if he is just another human being.

David Groombridge joined the London Scottish in May 1976, after being introduced by a friend already serving, and six months later attended his Recruits Course at Fort George, Inverness, learning the customary disciplines, as well as the arts of boxing blankets, spit-polishing and generally learning to be smart and soldierly. He must have tried extremely hard, for he passed out as Best 1/51 Highland Recruit, Best All-Round Recruit and Best Shot on the Self-Loading Rifle. The last he claims was beginner's luck, accepting little credit for it, and still maintains today that his marksmanship leaves something to be desired. Nevertheless ability is one thing, skill is another, and he has found himself closely involved with Company Shooting activities ever since, thus ensuring that he gets plenty of practice.

As a trained soldier David found himself performing many activities - including carrying the 84mm Carl Gustav anti-tank gun. or as Platoon signaller with the A41 radio. Most Jocks get to carry one or both of them sooner or later; they are both extremely heavy and useless bits of kit, the only difference with the A41 being that you can often amuse yourself listening to the attempts of others to communicate on them. David will always be grateful to Brian Welsh for showing him that a Sergeant's webbing is always heavier and more uncomfortable than the A41, but then David doesn't smoke, and tends to eat less choccy bars on manoeuvres than does Brian. I first got to know David at about the time ol' Major Hugh Treseder's, brief and illustrious command of the Coy in 1978 and frequently watched him, horror-stricken, doubling with his GPMG at the High Port during Fire and Manoeuvre exercises. Yelling fearfully or perhaps crawling painfully over the sand-dunes at Pendine in South Wales, a magazine of twenty with a live one up the spout, sweating inside his respirator and looking every inch the Model Soldier. 0f course he was younger then, greener and the most willing to volunteer for anything, even skirmishing with an 84mm CG, which really took some doing.

It is not really surprising that by the time David went away to his Annual Camp in Germany in 1979 he was a L/Cpl and 2IC of Cpl Feistead's section, where he succeeded in digging deeper trenches and going out on more patrols than anyone else. Physically he was knackered, like so many others of us with memories of Kevstone. The following year it was the Battalion's Annual Camp in Thetford. David was selected to attend the Junior NCO's Course, or Mad Mac's Drill Academy as it has become known. Along with L/Cpl's Gerry Hatrick, Peter Atcheson and Ken Pudney, he endured a fortnight of square bashing, Methods of Instruction and Advanced Minor Tactics, mentally his most difficult Camp so far. Seeds of disenchantment set in however and at the end of the course David felt that as far as he was concerned, he had been buggered about by too many experts and generally treated less like a human being than he had been on his Recruits Course. Nor is he ashamed to record that he was wheeled into the Course Commander’s office for 'conduct prejuditial'. It may well have been the end of a promising NCO, but fortunately he had the good sense to see things in retrospect and to put some of the less edifying incidents down to experience. Needless to say, he was promoted to substantive Cpl upon the completion of his Course.

Since then David has been a Section Commander for approximately eighteen months in Lt Hirlehey's platoon and 1 further Camp in Germany last year added to an enlarging store of experience and happy memories that will carry him through yet another training year until the next Camp. The TA has taught him a good deal. For instance, he says, it isn't a particularly good idea to get oneself legless at the Bisley Clubhouse the night before you have to participate in a rigorous GPMG shoot. Indeed not! Or, when in Germany and you are looking for a present to take home to the Missus, always take somebody with you who can speak the lingo, otherwise you are likely to find yourself in an extremely embarrassing situation. Ask him sometime. His advice to new Jocks is stick with it for a couple of years and you will find that the memories will more than reward the hardships.

David is an uncomplicated person with a pleasing personality, but quick-tempered at times and is likely as not to call a spade a bloody shovel. Like most good Jocks he puts a lot of time and effort into the TA, and expects as good as he gives. He sees himself as doing a job that is worthwhile provided that the job is realistic and that the training he does is creative, constructive and well organised. He enjoys the responsibilities of junior command provided he is kept sufficiently well informed. Above all, he values most the comradeship that the TA gives him. His ambition is to get into the Sergeants Mess one day and ultimately as high as it is possible for him to get. The idea of commissioned rank has even crossed his mind, but he considers that a lot of changes would have to take place in the Off-jeers Mess before he would have a chance of getting there! Six years on he is still keen, less green than he once was and less likely to volunteer for the unknown. There are plenty of other private soldiers around to do that for him now.

In his spare time, David likes to mess about with the engine of his car, make hedgerow wines and amuse his six-vear-old daughter. He was once active in judo, being a Yellow Belt (?) but let his interest wane when he joined the TA. In Civvy Street, he is a Credit Manager with a firm of London solicitors.