Royal Green Jackets

So the wise move was to be back away and cut my losses.

Now, before I was a Builder, I was a member of the British Army in a regiment called the Royal Green Jackets.

And they had trained us that the best way to proceed when confronted with aggression is to meet it swiftly and with much more violent aggression.

So without even thinking about it, I started to move forward with the full intention of dropping this idiot quickly and painfully.

General Sir Nick Parker, KCBCBE, is one of the most experienced and thoughtful seeing the British Army leaders of his generation by others' opinions.

He commanded the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Green Jackets, 20th Armoured Brigade.

He served in Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Northern Ireland, and became the COO, really, the Commander-in-Chief of Land Forces, led the military response to the London 2012 Olympics, and particularly around the security venue crisis, and later advised on Ukraine defense reform and chaired REACT disaster response.

Jeremy, great to have you on the podcast.

presentation of how people were going to do what they could with what they had and be ready to adapt.

And I suppose if there's a thought, if one was taking this to a wider community, it's doing what you can do best with what you've got and being in a position where you still have capability to adapt that is probably a key takeaway.

Yeah, and I've always been fascinated looking back in military history, and I know you have a good study of it, back where particularly the Peninsula Campaign, where your regiment, the Royal Green Jackets, and Waterloo and various other things, were learning the art of, I suppose, manoeuvre warfare, operating in front of the main regular troops, thinking for themselves, thinking soldiers, just doing things a little bit different.

What did the Royal Green Jackets, now the rifles, give you that stayed with you to this day by way of mindset, thinking differently, and that might be relevant for leaders listening who are in their businesses trying to develop their own leaders and managers?

I thought, poignant, poor grandma and grandad.

At the time he was killed, he was attached to the Royal Green Jackets as they progressed up Italy.

He had been commissioned into the Hamsters, the Royal Hampshire Regiment, but was later attached to the Light Infantry.

This preferment meant he was in the advance through Italy.

The reason our paths have crossed is because of the fact we're both Reifman.

We were both in the Royal Green Jackets roughly at the same sort of time, but in different battalions.

And there was a slight crossover, but we never actually served together.

And... through your connection and Sarah's connection with the Always a Rifeman programme, you're very aware of the work that we've been doing regimentally to try and help veterans and serving riflemen and their families deal with some of the complexities of military life.