| Anthony 'Tony' Burnett |
| I Graduated in August 1964 as Falaise Platoon Sargeant. Joined my regiment - Somerset and Cornwall Light Infantry in Berlin. Left the Army in 1967 and had a busy career not really settling to anything for long until moving to the Falkland Islands in 1977. Worked there as an accountant on a big, very remote sheep ranch. Learned to ride gaucho style, to shear sheep, cut peat, etc etc. Then moved into Stanley where I became deputy editor of the local newspaper - The Penguin News - before transferring to the Falkland Islands Broadcasting Station as a senior producer/broadcaster. Ended my time out there as the radio station manager finally returning to the UK in 2000 and moving up to the Scottish Highlands to be with my second wife who is a paramedic in a small town a few miles north of Inverness. Now semi retired I have four grown up children and two grand-daughters. To paraphrase John Denver, it's been a good life all in all. |
| Memories of Tonfanau are mixed - some so clear it could have happened last week. Others murky and vague with the veil of time masking much. As a member of the running club (I became Junior Army mile and cross-country champion while with AAJLR) I was very fortunate to be trained by Lt Peter French and remember much of that side of life in the Camp. My company commander was Major I M Appleton whom I got on with pretty well. |
| On arrival at the Camp for the first time I remember us being greeted by a certain Sgt Faulkner who seemed to me to be 5' 6" of solid starch with healthy helpings of blanco and Cherry Blossom thrown in. He and I got to know each other pretty well during the six weeks I was in R Company - not always to my comfort. A man of his word was Sgt Faulkner. The day before the platoon was to disperse for Christmas leave, having somehow graduated, one of the boys, Kevin Buck who hailed, I believe, from Keighley in Yorkshire, very kindly shaved excess hair from the back of my neck. It would, he said, help me in my Christmas quest to find a girlfriend. Sgt Faulkner, having warned us of the folly of interfering with the military haircuts we all received regularly, promptly marched me to the barbers and ordered my hair almost entirely removed. These were the days long before Yul Brynner and Bruce Willis made being bald cool and even sexy. I had a pretty barren Christmas. |
| Lads I remember with great affection in my time in Falaise Platoon include David May, who became the Battalion Drum Major, Colin West, Chunky Graham, Tom Bell, Bill Sherman, a good footballer who always clasped his hands prayer-like when shaping to head a ball, and many others. I am ashamed to say I kept in touch with none and, indeed, find it hard to remember many of my contemporaries. I do recall one chap called John Hesketh. A steady and reliable young soldier, he joined his battalion when I still had a year to serve as boy soldier. That our profession was really not the game we all rather thought it to be was brought home in brutal fashion when we heard, about two months after he left us, that he had been sent to Cyprus where there was still plenty of terrorist activity, and was almost immediately shot and killed. |
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