Photo of troops in Newport prompts more information

Photographs we published on September 6 of troops marching through Newport, kindly submitted by John Pullinger of Gurnard, has prompted Alan Williams to get in touch with further information.

He says the photos are of the Isle of Wight and Tidworth Regiment, formed in 1959 with the amalgamation of the Royal Berkshire Regiment and the Wiltshire Regiment. The amalgamation parade took place at Albany Barracks, Parkhurst when Field Marshall HRH Prince Philip, Colonel-in-Chief of the Wiltshire Regiment, presented Colours to the 1st Battalion of his new regiment. Many of the ‘old and bold’ from the former regiments were present.

The regiment amalgamated again in 1994 with the Gloucestershire Regiment to become The Royal Gloucestershire, Berkshire and Wiltshire Regiment.

Alan doesn’t know exactly when the pictured march through Newport took place, but the absence of batons on the rifles indicates it may have been a ‘freedom march’. He is a keen re-enactor and the photo above shows him in a 1959 uniform of the regiment with his wife Sylvia in A.T.S. uniform. It was taken at the 60th anniversary of the formation of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Royal Regiment at Hayling Island.