Dear Anne,
My thoughts and prayers for You and your Mammy and Daddy.
I pray also that you will find the strength and faith to bear your burden. God's will seems very cruel sometimes but everything is done for a reason. It is always worse for those who have to sit, watch and wait. Your Dear Daddy is thankfully unaware so you have to bear the pain instead of him. May God Bless you and your Family.

Kind regards and Best Wishes,
Johnboy

Google is a great provider for the info when we are stumped!

Copy of a bit about Les Dawson

When National Service time arrived he joined the army to get away from his frustrations in electrics. He became a gunner in the tank regiment.
Les was thrown in the guard house for being drunk and disorderly, but got out as there was no one else to play the piano in The Sergeants' Mess.

Good on 'yer Charlie.
As you were the "Oracle" last year, are we getting a pay rise on our pensions ???

I have heard that it's 3%. I hope that I have heard correctly. State pension is also going up by 3%

If that's so, there goes my exotic holiday for another year!
I shall have to be consoled with a couple of weeks in "Mein Garten"

Great banter Gentlemen, good to see your site is alive and well. Only civvies do not understand what a tank regiment is.
The Royal Tank Regiment is and always will be the Royal Tank Regiment. Well done on your 100 years and congratulations to all those who served with THE Royal Tank Regiment, the best in the world.
As for the rest of us who were either Cavalry, Hussar, Lancer or Dragoon Guards. If we had tanks, we were a "Tank" regiment, not RTR but a tank regiment. We know what that means but civvies don't. RTR had Ferrets, Saladins and Saracens, does that mean they were not Tank Regiments ? Of course not. What we all were were Royal Armoured Corps, the best Armoured Corps in the world.
No mistake about that. The best trained and proven in battle from World War One right through to Afghanistan.
Numerous battles fought and won, numerous lives saved by Professional AFV Crews whose integrity and expertise knows no bounds.
That is why I am so proud of you all, my Brothers-in-Arms,
who taught me what made us tick and hopefully I passed on
to my contemporaries.

An update on the JLR RAC Veterans Club. Everything was on-track and going well until I tried to register the site only to be told that "JLR RAC Veterans Club" was a registered domain name that I could not use. Oh yeah ! Watch this space.
Have a great weekend everyone.
Kind regards,
Johnboy

It was The Bays.

Good morning all, while cycling for the papers I had a memory flash back, as I'm sure lots of you have from time to time; this one was due to the frosty morning and clear blue sky and thinking back to queuing outside the cookhouse for breakfast with lots of steamy breath and, at times, a wonderful duck egg blue sky then the moment was lost as the doors open and the stampede to the hot plate took precedence.........stomachs over beauty I suppose .........

Watched the Les Dawson memory show and came across this.
Les Dawson played the piano for the officers mess on "Cambrai Day" because it was such an important day for a tank regiment like the Queen's Dragoon Guards and that it is celebrated by all tank regiments.

Sorry to inform you but the Queen's Dragoon Guards are not, and never have been a tank regiment. They're an armoured cavalry unit, which means that they were trotting along on horses during the Battle of Cambrai and didn't switch to tanks until circa 1939, that of course was before the 1st King's Dragoon Guards and the 2nd Dragoon Guards (Queen's Bays) amalgamated in 1959 to form the Queen's Dragoon Guards.
Only the Royal Tank Regiment celebrate Cambrai Day - because they're a "tank regiment".

I think he may of played in the 8th RTR as he was a National Serviceman with them

I could stand to be corrected. I was under the impression he served in the Queen's Dragoon Guards.
Still better than being in the Infantry though !!!

Les was a Bay in his National Service days.