Sherborne CCF Royal Artillery

Potticks House : Summer 1964.

I love the pose don't you ?!

CCF stands for Combined Cadet Force. Every public school had one
and I was a useless soldier.

This photo was taken at home and I was undoubtedly pissed off as I had just completed two weeks of valuable summer holidays incarcerated in an army barracks somewhere in Devon where real soldiers put us through our paces.
This proved to be a fruitless task.
On a Night 'Op' an entire maneouvre was abandoned when Cadet Marsh lost his glasses in the field of battle .A large, red faced and infuriated regimental sergeant-major , moustache bristling with frustration, scoured the land with his torch for the elusive specs. We never found them.
I was left bewildered and partially blind for the rest of the course.
This gave me some indication that a career in the Forces was not impending.

I never even made it to lance-corporal , but back at school we did have a healthy collection of Playboy magazines stuffed down the barrel of the 25 pounder field gun (medium sized weapon of mass destruction). This was the only memorable perk of being in the Royal Artillery.