Will the parachute regiment be disbanded?
Such rumours go around from time to time. Let us look at it like this. The last time the Parachute Regiment actually went into battle leaping from planes in a war was at Arnhem, I think. When I joined the British Army at age 15 in 1957, my troop Sargent was a veteran of Arnhem and he was shot before he hit the ground and out of it, hidden in a barn by a Dutch farmer at considerable risk, etc. So, to sum up a bit. Here we have one of the world’s most famous military regiments, the Red Devils, the Parachute Regiment of the British Army; among the most feared and respected troops anywhere in the world. So, in a strange way, we have a Parachute Regiment which is not used as it was originally intended, to land by parachute behind enemy lines and so forth. . . . My own opinion for what it’s worth is that scrapping the Parachute Regiment will be one hell of a big mistake. Having such a regiment allows ordinary soldiers an opportunity to improve their original situation by training up and join
