Queen's Badge Presentation

On the morning of Wednesday 17th July, I, Samuel Constable, found myself overlooking the historic St James’s Palace in London. This in itself is, of course, quite unremarkable as it happens to be something many people do when they visit London. However, in my case I had the privilege of thinking something relatively few of those people get to think when they gaze upon the magnificent walls and turrets of one of the most significant Palaces in British history – I was going to be in there that afternoon.

Allow me to explain – the previous September I had completed my Queen’s Badge Completion Course in Exmouth, to be presented with the badge in public at the beginning of this year. On that day in July I was to be presented with it again – this time by HRH Prince Andrew, The Duke of York.

I travelled to London by train on the Tuesday with my Father, luckily choosing a carriage with functional air conditioning which is more than could be said for the other half of the train (or indeed my colleagues some years previously – see May 2011 BB West) and we arrived at Paddington Station around 6:30pm and quickly found the surprisingly nice looking hostel where we were to spend the night. After getting our room and quickly unpacking we headed out and spent the evening exploring London and taking in the sights. After an enjoyable tour of the most famous attractions of the city we returned to our room, watched a little TV over a nice cuppa and then had a surprisingly good night’s sleep.

The following morning we handed back our room key around 11am and trialled our route to the Palace (good thing too – we got lost the first time). After an enjoyable lunch in a small café I changed into my uniform at Westminster Abbey (I was allowed to – I didn’t break into the Abbey just to change) and headed back to the Palace with a group of the other Boys who had been selected for the same privilege. As all 50 of us filed into the Palace with our invitations and our proof of ID we handed our Queen’s Badges in and prepared to meet the Prince. We all lined up against the wall of one of the more impressive rooms in the palace as various guests filed in and a number of young ladies came around with plates of very posh-looking food.

Some minutes later everything went quiet. We all took the hint, jumping back into the line, which had become rather blurry over the time between us being assembled and that moment. His Royal Highness walked slowly up to the raised platform at the end of the room, leaned into the microphone and said, quite calmly, “Okay, you can all breath again now.” This was followed by a collective sigh as all those of us who had not realised we had been holding our breath suddenly and unanimously exhaled.

After a series of rousing, inspiring and humorous speeches from the Prince and various Brigade officials we got down to the presentations. Each of us was called up by name and Company (I noticed I was the only one from the West of England and Channel Islands District) to shake hands with Prince Andrew as he handed us back our badges in shiny, new, specially engraved boxes.

A few more speeches later it was time for the formal reception, during which two major things happened. Firstly, we were given the chance to mingle with the Prince who chatted with each of us about our badges and life in general and, secondly, the young ladies with the food took the hint and substituted the Earl Grey and mozzarella bites for fruit juice and chocolate brownies.

After His Royal Highness left several photos were taken and we were given the opportunity to look around the Palace on the understanding that if a room was locked we couldn’t go in. We go to see the Throne Room, the armoury (strictly no touching allowed) and various rooms of portraits, several of which any GCSE History student could instantly recognise. The building was beautiful and the day had been an amazing experience. When, 8 hours later, the train pulled back into Redruth, there was nothing I would rather have stayed awake thinking about than the whole event, especially since, as a direct result of my staying awake on the train, there was nothing that could have stopped me from going to sleep when I finally hit my own bed at around 1am the following morning.

Samuel Constable, Sgt – 1st Redruth Company