The Daily Telegraph

Academy Sergeant-major Raymond Huggins

Warrant officer who oversaw thousands of Sandhurst cadets

-

ACADEMY SERGEANTMA­JOR RAYMOND HUGGINS, who has died aged 94, was one of the most outstandin­g warrant officers of his generation in the British Army.

The only son of a publican, Raymond Pearse Huggins was born in Stockport, Cheshire, on March 22 1928. His father had served in the First World War and was called up for the Second. He was in the Royal Army Service Corps and worked on Pluto, the oil pipeline under the English Channel, for the Normandy campaign.

Huggins was only nine when an aunt took him to see a Guardsman on sentry duty outside St James’s Palace. “That did it for me,” he said afterwards. He left school at 14 and, aged 17, he enlisted in the Grenadier Guards and did his basic training at Fox Lines, near the Guards Depot, Caterham, Surrey.

The war in Europe was over but training had altered very little and he remembered a drill sergeant rapping on the tin hats of recruits with a poker to simulate the blast from grenades.

In 1946 he joined the 4th Battalion Grenadier Guards in Hamburg. Much of the city had been destroyed by heavy bombing. One of his tasks was to guard the SS camp staff of the former concentrat­ion camp at Neuengamme.

After the battalion was disbanded, Huggins was posted to the King’s Company of the 1st Battalion. He represente­d his regiment at rugby, fencing, swimming and water polo and, in 1950, he was the regimental lightheavy­weight boxing champion.

He saw active service in Palestine on internal security duties and, among other postings, he served in Libya, Berlin and the Cameroons. In 1966, on being promoted to Warrant Officer Class 1, he was appointed regimental sergeant major (RSM) of Old College, Sandhurst.

He subsequent­ly served as RSM of the 2nd Battalion at Wuppertal and Münster, western Germany. He then turned down the offer of a commission; it was so unusual that the regimental lieutenant-colonel asked to see him alone and pressed him to reconsider.

Huggins, however, held his ground. “Well, tell me what you do want to do!” exclaimed the exasperate­d CO.

Huggins asked to be posted back to Sandhurst as the academy sergeant major, and during the following 10 years, nearly 5,500 cadets passed through Sandhurst.

A towering presence during drill, with a hawklike eye that missed nothing and a voice that carried to the furthest corner of the parade ground, he had considerab­le charisma. He also had a lively sense of humour, and while insisting on the very highest standards, he always maintained that soldiering should be enjoyable. When asked to sum up his Army career, he replied: “Ninety per cent fun and 10 per cent character-building.”

He retired from the Army in 1980 and moved to an apartment at Blenheim Palace, where he became deputy administra­tor and, subsequent­ly, a most impressive toastmaste­r. His wife Sheila served as Blenheim Gardens secretary until they both retired in 1993 and moved to a cottage on the estate. After his wife died, he became an inpensione­r at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea.

In 1973 he was appointed MBE (Military) and the following year he received the Meritoriou­s Service Medal.

Raymond Huggins married, in 1952, Sheila Vaughan, a civil servant and a former Wren. She predecease­d him and he is survived by their son and three daughters.

Raymond Huggins, born March 22 1928, died May 13 2022

 ?? ?? His career was ‘90 per cent fun, 10 per cent character-building’
His career was ‘90 per cent fun, 10 per cent character-building’

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United Kingdom