British Army
After leaving school in 1937, Secombe became a pay clerk at Baldwin's store. With war looming decided in 1938 that he would join the Territorial Army. Very short sighted, he got a friend to tell him the sight test, and then learnt it off by heart. Serving as a Lance Bombardier in No.132 Field Regiment of the Royal Artillery. He would refer to the unit in which he served during World War II in the North African Campaign, Sicily, and Italy, as "The Five-Mile Snipers".
When Secombe visited the Falklands to entertain the troops after the 1982 war in the islands, his old regiment promoted him to the rank of sergeant – 37 years after he had been demobbed.
Read more about this topic: Harry Secombe
Famous quotes containing the words british and/or army:
“I ... would rather be in dependance on Great Britain, properly limited, than on any nation upon earth, or than on no nation. But I am one of those too who rather than submit to the right of legislating for us assumed by the British parliament, and which late experience has shewn they will so cruelly exercise, would lend my hand to sink the whole island in the ocean.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“An army is maintained for a thousand days all to be used on one morning.”
—Chinese proverb.