BY ROGER WATSON

My children used to ask me, and sometimes my grandchildren still ask, whether I killed anyone in “the war.” The war they refer to is the First Gulf War, and they’re reminded of it by my medal case and commissioning scroll, signed by HM Queen Elizabeth II, both of which hang in my office.

My usual response to their question is “only by accident.” I served as a medic in Saudi Arabia during the First Gulf War (1990–1991). More precisely, I was a nursing officer, and in those days, male nurses were assigned to the RAMC (Royal Army Medical Corps), unlike female nurses who were assigned to the QARANC (Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps), or “QAs.”

For the record, female doctors were assigned to the RAMC. The distinction between the regiments wasn’t solely based on sex but on whether we were armed. RAMC officers, both male and female, trained with sidearms, while QA officers did not.

My unit, 205 General Hospital RAMC(V), with which I served as a Territorial Army officer, was mobilised for the First Gulf War. We were the final piece of the deployment jigsaw at King Khalid International Airport, Riyadh, before the US bombers and refuelling planes thundered overhead on 17 January 1991 to wreak havoc on Saddam Hussein’s National Guard and military targets within Iraq. We had trained for decades for war in Europe, yet our first outing since World War II took us to the desert as part of British Forces Middle East.

With the Cold War fading into the mists of time, even before our deployment in 1991, plans were already underway to make radical changes to the size and structure of the British Army and our armed forces in general. Options for Change proposed sweeping cuts to the number of men and women in the armed forces, along with necessary reductions in units and even the disbandment and merging of historic regiments. I recall shedding a few tears as my grandfather’s regiment, The Gordon Highlanders, marched off the esplanade at Edinburgh Castle for the last time in 1994.

The rumour mill nearly wore itself out while we were in Saudi Arabia. One rumour was that Options for Change would be put on hold. Surely, we thought, the government would think again now that we were in another war, and it looked like the Middle East would become a new focus of attention. But we were wrong. War and the means of waging it had changed, and it wasn’t long after our return from the Gulf War that 205 General Hospital began to close some of its training centres. It eventually became 205 Field Hospital, later merging with 225 Medical Regiment to form 215 Multirole Medical Regiment.

I left the army soon after we returned in 1991, just before another change took place in 1992 when all nurses, male and female, were assigned to the QARANC. I proudly retained my RAMC status as a reservist, though I knew that if called up, I too would be assigned to the QARANC. At some point, the QAs must have been armed, as one of my daughters, currently a major in the QAs, served in Afghanistan and carried an SA80 rifle.

In November, the RAMC will be disbanded and merge with the QAs and the Royal Army Dental Corps to form the Royal Army Medical Service (RAMS). The new cap badge looks remarkably like the old RAMC cap badge, but instead of In Arduis Fidelis (“Faithful in Adversity”), the motto will simply be “Steadfast.”

This is a sad, but probably necessary, day. We are losing a regiment formed in 1898 that has served in every armed conflict since, and has been present wherever the British Army has been across the world. Only three Victoria Crosses with bars have ever been awarded, and we are also losing the only regiment in the British Army to have had two men awarded the VC with bar: Captain Noel Godfrey Chavasse RAMC and Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Martin-Leake RAMC, both doctors whose disregard for their own safety under enemy fire—not once, but twice—is mind-boggling. The other VC with bar went to a New Zealand infantryman, Captain Charles Upham.

Great men make regiments great. I am sure that there are men and women who will move to the new RAMS in November who would perform deeds like those of Chavasse and Leake if circumstances called on them to do so. I just hope they never have to.

Roger Watson is a Registered Nurse and Editor-in-Chief of Nurse Education in Practice.