Gail Francis-Tiron’s Post

Transcript

Hello everyone, I'm back again. Gail Francis-Tiron. I'm the Event Venue Manager and Coordinator at Wright Tech Media, and I'll be the person involved with the events that we're going to hold at the World War 2 tunnels once the project comes off the ground. In the meantime, to whet everybody's appetites, we have tunnel tales and who better than to tell us another tale? But this one is nothing to do with tunnels, but it's about himself. And I've got Pete Jackson here, my friend, he's an ex army veteran, ex Warrant Officer and Chief Tunnel guide, amongst many other things. Pete, what brought you to Gibraltar? Because you are a fantastic Gibraltarian as far as I'm concerned, very, very vital person. in our community, ohh thank you Gail. I mean I originally came to Gibraltar, soley for an 18 month posting. I came here 1989 to teach, to continue to teach in air defence missile system to the Gibraltar Regiment at the time a shoulder launched missile system. erm, I fell in love with this place before the plane touched down. I couldn't believe what I was seeing and I���d not travelled far in my life apart from horrible places, erm Northern Ireland, not saying Northern Ireland is horrible. I was going to say be careful what you say, whoever is listening���.. ����The job I was doing across there was analysis, very stressful. So to come across here, seeing this wonderful Rock protruding out of the Bay was just amazing. It was not long enough after I landed. I was fortunate enough to sit down for dinner next to a gentleman who you all know, Tito Vallejo. Wonderful Tito, yeah. Tito asked me what I did, what my hobbies were, and I said ohh I���m into caving and his immediate thing was what are you doing tomorrow? And I said, well, the wife���s not arrived yet, so I'm on my own. I'm living in the mess in town, so whatever you like. And he took me to lower St. Michael���s Cave, absolutely blown away by the Cave. They said what are you doing tomorrow? I said whatever you like. And he took me into the World War 2 tunnels, so within Within 72 hours of arrival in Gibraltar I've seen lower St. Michael���s Cave and the World War 2 tunnel system from Maida Vale to Catalan Bay and absolutely absorbed what Tito was telling me and it became a bit of a an infection. I found myself looking for every scrap of military history that I could find as well as visiting as many caves and tunnels as I can get myself into. So it was down to Tito to have sowed the seed for me staying here, I was due to go back, in 18 months. I was supposed to go back to the Royal Artillery. Umm. I was offered a job when the regiment at that time was rerolling from a partially artillery partial infantry regiment. Which regiments are we talking about? The Gibraltar Regiment it was. We had an air defence troop, a gun battery headquarters and an infantry company, and the regiment was rerolling fully infantry and at that time the commanding officer asked me if I���d stay on and join the Gibraltar Regiment, which I went home. I left three pieces of paper out on the table and wrote on the top of each piece of paper. Gibraltar, Germany, UK for and against in columns and set to my my lovely wife. If you think of something that is favourable or unfavourable about either one of these, just write here in the column so we can get some sort of handle on what would keep us here. And we ended up with two pages of what was good about being in Gibraltar as opposed to everywhere else. And this seed was sown, and here we are, we we left. The artillery, remained in Gibraltar and continue to do so. So were your children born here, born in the UK? My son was born in UK before we came across here, so we came in with a little toddler. Peter���s now 39. My daughter Rachel our middle one, she was born in Royal Naval Hospital here on Valentine's Day in 1990 and my youngest daughter Georgina was one of twins. Because she was Leslie was having twins she had to go back to UK. Unfortunately things didn't pan out the way we would like, so we lost Victoria. But Georgina, she's. she���s flown the coop. She's living in the UK, a special needs teacher in north of England. Uh-huh, uh huh. I love it when I hear people from overseas. Although you are from UK and we're all the same. We're all British as we know. But when you come here and Gibraltar feels special. And did it feel special mainly because it was so military at the time? Or was it because of the unique features that Gibraltar has? It was for me, it was just the openness that you could and people say you get claustrophobic in Gibraltar. I've never felt claustrophobic on the Rock. There is so much to do and see and back then remember the Upper Rock that is now a nature reserve was mostly in military hands. That's right. And you were restricted in certain areas where people can go, well, having a military ID card. And because I could go up there, I could get on to the top of the Rock and see these sites. In fact my command post and the audience was right up at Rock Gun at the very northern tip. And the view from there is, as you know, is stunning. So to stand up there and say, you know, well, welcome to my office. So it's very special. And the office now is Lord Airey, isn't it? Lord Airey���s Battery because we are very lucky that to have you Pete because you've done so much for Gibraltar and it's the restoration of its military artifacts amongst many things. And I I know because I do follow you on Facebook, Pete's Projects and so like that we know exactly what work you're doing and you're doing fabulous. Sterling work there both there and at O'Hara's Battery because of you we we do have a lot of our military installations are still going. Well thank you. I mean it's. I hate to see these things rotting away. I joined the army when I was 15 1/2 and the first thing I trained on were 25 pounder field guns. Before moving on to other pieces of equipment. And yes, we did restorations and stripped downs and work on those guns. But to come to Gibraltar and find that part of the job involves gun salutes on 25 powder guns, right? So it was for me right back to my start and give me that, It brought some nostalgia about there will be bad between guns again and I just stayed with that. I ended up actually that was ended up as the battery Serveant Major of Tolson���s battery which performed the salutes for a while. They then brought in the one on five light gloves and these old 25 pounders were sort of retired and became gay guards. Ohh just left in the garage. Some of them fell into rack and ruin and we were very lucky to get the support required to turmoil those around and it���s being displayed in the 100 Ton Gun But That���s the stars as probably bitten off a bit more than one can chew on their own up at Lord Airey���s Battery. But I could see it had been left since the 1970s and there was a rat infested hole underground. So what I've been doing is working at it. One, to try and stem the flow of rats on to it and restore and revive the equipments within it. Thank you for listening to part one of Pete Jackson's amazing story and why he came to Gibraltar and his life in Gibraltar over the few last few years, or quite a few years. It's such a long story and so interesting that we thought we���d continue in Part 2, which I'll be posting very soon. Thanks for listening and we'll be back again.