If you watched the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations over the big Bank Holiday weekend you will have witnessed the significant role our Armed Forces played in supporting one of the nation’s most impressive and iconic events of modern times. The festivities joined the nation to recognise Her Majesty’s 70 wonderful years of service to our country as well as The Queen’s support for British troops as Head of the Armed Forces.
Events such as these don’t happen overnight and weeks of military rehearsals took place at Brunswick Camp in Surrey, which is often used as a base to prepare for high-profile state events. Bobby Walsh, Facilities Supervisor at Brunswick, takes us behind the scenes.
“Preparations on camp for the Jubilee celebrations began back in April 2022 with the rehearsals for the Royal Windsor Horse Show. One of the UK’s largest shows, the event takes place in the private grounds of Windsor Castle and features a number of exciting military displays including The Musical Ride of the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment, The Mounted Band of the Household Cavalry and The Musical Drive of the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery. Some 600 soldiers and their horses arrived at Brunswick to rehearse, which was certainly a sight to be seen as the mounted display team performed their various manoeuvres across the parade square!
“This then rolled into preparations for Trooping The Colour, which we support every year, followed by rehearsals for the music festival and main Platinum Jubilee Pageant, which included a military ceremonial parade down the Mall to Buckingham Palace.
Providing Real Life Support to our Armed Forces
“Brunswick is a busy camp, supporting thousands of training days per year, but the team is highly experienced in managing surges in training activity so were able to react at speed to ensure our Armed Forces had everything they needed to ensure rehearsals went smoothly ahead of the main event.
“In total, around 1,500 troops stayed on camp in the lead up to the Jubilee, representing every regiment in the British Army and each of the commonwealth nations. The Landmarc team worked closely with the military’s Real Life Support team to ensure that accommodation was available and cleaned daily and made sure the grounds were maintained to a high standard both prior to and during all events. All this was completed whilst still carrying out our regular inspection and maintenance schedule and reacting to any reported infrastructure failings as and when required.
“Real Life Support also included the provision of a full catering service, with ESS providing three meals a day, seven days a week – that’s over 30,000 meals per week – for everyone who was rehearsing.
New NetCAP accommodation facilities increase camp capacity
“Brunswick has recently seen the delivery of an additional two new double-storey accommodation blocks through the Net-Zero Carbon Accommodation Programme (NetCAP), which we were able to bring online just in time to support the start of the rehearsals. This was significant, because without them, we would have had to accommodate around 200 soldiers at a separate site in Longmoor. With troops required in London for 6am rehearsals, the ability to co-locate everyone on one site massively helped with the logistics for the Army to ensure they could easily get their troops to where they needed to be.
Thank you to the team
“We have a small team here, many of whom are veterans, including myself, so we are always immensely proud to support these events.
“Alongside the preparations for the jubilee, regular training activities continued, supported by our range and training area teams and the BAMS team at Longmoor who worked hard to find alternative accommodation in the area for visiting Units to minimise any impact on training troops. Everyone pulled together and was outstanding, going the extra mile to ensure our Armed Forces were supported and everything went smoothly at this time of national celebration.
“I can’t thank everyone enough for their continued hard work, support and dedication.”