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My wife asked me what’s happening about all those hundreds of men who went into the Bermuda Regiment, did their time — sometimes a bit extra — and then went on about their lives?

That set me thinking. I reckoned that from 1965 to 2004, the Bermuda Regiment received about 5,800 recruits. That’s the number of men who would have stood in Warwick Camp on that awesome Day One of their Recruit Camp.

Female soldiers joined these 5,800 men, after 1979. Just over 100 servicewomen have served in the Regiment. The number of Bermudians who’ve marched under the cap badge is so close to 6,000 that we may as well call it that.

Sparked by my wife, I began to wonder. Could we all get together — voluntarily of course — at one time in one place? I put the idea about and found great support for it.

The idea? Ask — I stress ASK — all ex-members of the Bermuda Regiment to assemble on a Sunday afternoon, in Hamilton, and create a great big parade of ex-servicemen and ex-servicewomen.

Why? Because if all, or most, or even a lot, of ex-servicemen and ex-servicewomen did come together, they would form the largest single group of Bermudians who share one common and similar experience.

There is nothing else — nothing — on this island of ours that can display such complete and common unity.

If only 3,000 of the 6,000 showed up, formed up, and marched through town, then this would still be the biggest show of common human unity amongst Bermudians that Bermuda will ever see.

I thought that it might be possible to do this on November 27 of this year. But with the annual Santa Claus parade on that day, the next day available was November 20.

With all that I do, moving the idea forward became too much for me and, to put it mildly, I dropped the ball on this one.

So no parade on November 20 or 27, but it can still happen.

In Heritage Month 2006, all ex-Officers, ex-NCOs, and ex-Privates of the Bermuda Regiment, male and female, should assemble at 1400hrs on Sunday May 7, 2006 for a grand March Past. The parade — be it 1,000 or 2,000 or 3,000 or more — should form up at City Hall Car Park and return there.

In the process of sounding out the idea, I realized how the Regiment weaves through Bermuda. You can see this weave in the names of some of the men I’ve asked — Mark Albouy, David Lindo, Derek Ming, Michael Darling, Eugene Raynor, Kim White, Arnold Botelho, John Pitcher, Wendell Hollis, Clifton Lambert, Bill Zuill…

So, May 7, 2006.

Something else….

On my regular Sunday morning perambulation, I saw Bermudiana Road the morning after the ‘rugby crowd’ had held a street party.

At eight in the morning Bermudiana Road showed signs of revelry, but it still looked as if might be returned to its usual pristine state with less than half an hour of labour by Corporation staff.

On Monday morning I checked the daily and found no reports of knifings or fights or ‘mooning’. From that I inferred that the booze-up went well.

The rugby crowd is heavily non-Bermudian and generally assembles and disperses without significant trouble.

One of the concerns expressed about the City Farters’ — sorry, Fathers’ — plan to make Reid Street a pedestrian only avenue and to try to encourage people to come into town and stay and chill in town, is that it may attract the wrong people.

The other Monday morning headline about the fight outside Champions shows what can happen.

Bermudians used to assemble for the Easter Parade. Following the 1968 Easter Parade there were riots, and the government of that day banned the parade. Bermudians used to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day with home fireworks. The Government of that day thought that this was leading to vandalism, so they banned Guy Fawkes Day and its fireworks. Recently, there were calls to ban Hallowe’en.

For about ten years, Cup Match and the ‘Ag Show’ were the only times that Bermudians of all kinds came together.

Now, with Music Festivals and Heritage Day parades and Christmas Boat Parades, Bermudians are re-learning the art and re-acquiring the ability of peaceably assembling. So, City dinosaurs — despite the Champions incident — get out of your ancient banning mode and move forward.

If all of us ex-Regimental people can stage a grand Regimental re-assembly on Sunday May 7, 2006, we’ll show everybody what a well-mixed, well-behaved crowd of Bermudians really looks like.[[In-content Ad]]

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