1970
1st Bn The Royal Green Jackets
No shooting competition due to move to Celle and BAOR commitments.
2nd Bn The Royal Green Jackets
Bisley
One of the tragedies of life in B.A.O.R., is that time on the ranges is difficult to obtain, as ranges are as scarce as available time, and the Infantry do not have absolute priority in the use of the main ones. However this may be rectified in the future, and so enough has been said on this subject.
The Rhine Army Small Bore Championships were entered, as much as anything else in order to keep our potential Bisley team in some sort of practice throughout an exceptionally severe winter.
| Armoured Brigade Stage | Winners (easily) |
| BAOR Championship | 3rd |
| Individual Championship | 5th Sgt Clarke |
After classification in March, a number of individuals were selected to practice for Bisley. After a trial show at Sennelager a team of sixteen went to the Rifle Depot in May to train in earnest. Once again we are most grateful to The Depot, not only for their hospitality but also for the range bookings made on our behalf.
Several friendly training competitions were held against: The Depot, 10th Gurkhas and 3 Royal Anglians, who are the British Team for the CENTO Meeting.
We knew from the start that The Worcesters and Forester's team were extremely strong, and that we should have to be on our top form throughout to have a hope of beating them, as they had won The KRRC Cup, for the previous two years, and had a virtually unchanged team.
Bisley
| Stage One - Army Hundred Cup (entries 628) | 2nd |
Our team was shooting well in The Roupell, Whitehead and The Association Cup at this stage :
| Sgt Bissett | 11th |
| Sgt Robb | 12th |
| Sgt Clarke | 19th |
with six others placed in the first 100.
At the same time as Stage 1, the SMG XXX (entries 361) Stage 1 was fired. Sgt Clarke did well to enter the Second Stage in 14th place, he then shot even better to end up 4th.
| Parachute Regiment (SMG) Cup | 6th |
| Worcestershire & Lindley (GPMG) Cup | 2nd |
It was clear by now that 1 WFR had an unassailable lead in the KRRC Cup, and we were determined to be runners-up.
| The Small Arms Cup | 6th |
| Britannia Trophy | 4th |
| KRRC Army Championship | 2nd |
However these results were good enough to retain our overall position.
There were 9 members of the team in the Army Hundred. Those nine did not include W02 Smith and Sgt Brooks our two Queen’s Medallists (who were sent to the Butts with lots of good barracking from the other butt markers).
Individual Rifle Championship - entries 628)
| Sgt Bissett | 11th | LCpl Lloyd | 38th |
| Sgt Robb | 19th | Rfn Edwards | 47th |
| Sgt Winkworth | 22nd | Cpl Clifford | 69th |
| Sgt Clarke | 27th | Cpl Dowling | 81st |
| Sgt Stanger | 31st |
| The Methuen Cup | 4th = SASC |
However it must be worth the effort to send a Battalion Team to Bisley, despite the fact that it removes many key people from the Battalion at the busiest training period of the year: only thus will the shooting tradition survive.
3rd Bn The Royal Green Jackets
This year due to training and commitments, the nearest we got to sending a team to Bisley was to run the CENTO (NISHAN) Rifle Meeting, so a Bisley Team was out of the question.
The Rifle Depot
The Depot shooting team achieved spectacular success at The District Skill at Arms Meeting and at Bisley.
The team for Bisley was:
QMSI Patterson, W02 Conway, Sgt Notley, Cpl Dorey, Cpl Andrews
and the following eight trophies were won outright:
| Minor Unit Championship | SMG Team Match |
| Minor Unit Small Arms Match | Royal Ulster Cup |
| Staff & School's Match | Roupell Cup |
| Worcester & Lindley Cup | Pistol 30 |
The absence of some of our permanent staff for several months of build-up training has been justified to some extent.
Sergeant Alan Notley meanwhile won the British Biathlon Championships and the British Open 15km, a double he previously achieved in 1966. He then went as Captain of the British Team to compete in the Scandinavian, the Swedish and finally the World Biathlon Championships with varying degrees of success against very strong competition. As seen above, after all that, Alan still made it back to shoot in the Depot Team.
Sgt Alan Notley - thinking ‘ this is better that Chilcomb range anyday’
4th (Volunteer) Battalion The Royal Green Jackets
Bisley (TAVR
1970 has seen a fresh effort to create a shooting team in the old GreenJacket tradition. A large number of young soldiers, many of them very promising, have joined and under Lieutenant A. Darell-Brown WTO and Lieutenant Les Airey, Team Captain.
A fair measure of success has been achieved. At Bisley the outstanding achievement was that of Les Airey himself, who has triumphed against a serious illness and won the Queen’s Medal for the T&AVR.
Lt. Les Airey being chaired off the ranges by his team-mates after winning The Queen’s Medal
His success somewhat overshadowed the other results, which nevertheless showed great promise for the future. They were as follows:
| China Cup | 2nd |
| Quarter (Queen Mary) | 2nd |
| Rapid Aggregate | 2nd |
| SMG Match | 2nd |
| Pistol Match | 2nd |
| Wessex Volunteer | 4th |
At the London and Middlesex Meeting in September, the team again did well:
| Elizabethan Bowl | 1st - Lt Airey |
| SMG Match | 1st - Rfn Sandes |
Finally, The Festing Trophy, presented by The Field Marshall, originally for the competition between The London Rifle Brigade and the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers (TA) took place at Newcastle in October between the London Companies of 4 (V) RGJ and Northumberland Companies of 5 (V) RRF.
The result was a highly successful social occasion and incidentally the return of the trophy to London after a win by 4 (V) RGJ in all but one match.
The Oxfordshire Royal Green Jackets Battalion ACF
The Battalion again entered two teams in ‘The Watts Bowl’ Competition at Bisley, in which our ‘A’ team took third place. Two teams are entered for the Inter Services Cadet Meeting in October.