OBITUARY (3) – APRIL 2015 JORUNAL
GILLARD
Former 8644D Sergeant and InPensioner Leonard Charles Gillard, passed
away peacefully as a patient of the Margaret
Thatcher Infirmary at the Royal Hospital
Chelsea, on the 8th January 2015, just twentytwo days before his 94th Birthday. He had been
ill for a long time. Len saw nearly twenty-three
years of varied service between 1937 and
1967 with both the ‘Terriers’ and the Regular
Army and was ‘badged’ variously Royal
Regiment of Artillery, Royal Army Service Corps (RASC) and RMP.
Born in 1921, in London, Len first joined the Territorial Army (TA) Royal Artillery
(RA), just 16 years old, on 3rd February 1937, and served with 366/92 Field
Regiment RA. He was embodied into the Regular Army on the outbreak of War
serving with various ‘gunner’ units until his posting in 1941, to Egypt to join 188/67
Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment RA, based near Cairo. In 1942, the Regiment was
moved to Calcutta in India and was then deployed forward to Assam and finally into
Burma. In 1945, he was posted to 50 Reserve Regiment RA stationed in Bad
Oyenhausen in the British Occupied Zone of Germany, remaining there until he was
returned to Woolwich to be demobbed.
In 1947, Len moved to Toronto, Canada where he worked in a supermarket; quite a
novelty for a ‘Brit’ as only 10 small ‘super market’ type stores then existed in the
whole of the UK, but he returned to England shortly thereafter and immediately
rejoined the TA, serving: for 21 months with the RASC, before moving to the RMP
Volunteers for a year and then back to the RASC for a further two.
In 1957, Len returned to RMP and completed nearly 10 years service with the TA
earning the moniker of ‘Len the Pen’ along the way supposedly owing to his superior
clerical skills, which he deployed when serving with Brighton Detachment, 253
Provost Company (Volunteers). In civilian life his employment was as varied as his
Army career and included coach driver, security officer, postman and service with
the Corps of Commissionaires.
After his wife died in 2006, Len became very lonely so in 2009, he applied to enter
the Royal Hospital, achieving coveted In-Pension status in July 2010. He took a
year’s break, becoming an ‘Out-Pensioner’, in July 2012, but then re-entered in July
2013. At the time of his death Len was the President of East Sussex Branch RMPA
and he was also a member in good standing of both London and North America
Branches.
His funeral was held in a packed Chapel at the Margaret Thatcher Infirmary on 29th
January, with his son David as the principal mourner and Colonel John Baber MBE,
National Chairman RMPA, and WO1 (CRSM) Summerhayes representing the
Association and the Corps respectively. The Standards from London and Kent
Branches, together with a phalanx of red-jacketed comrade In-Pensioners and
scarlet-bereted RMP veterans filled all 70 plus seats. With Len’s death, the RMP
and WRAC (Provost) cohort at Chelsea is reduced to 10.
The Regimental Secretary.