Image: Royal Bermuda Regiment Sergeant and US Marines Sergeants 1989

Description: Sergeant Peter Aldrich of the Reconnaissance Platoon of the Bermuda Regiment (now the Royal Bermuda Regiment) explains the workings of the General Purpose Machine Gun to Sergeant Paul Moose, a team leader in Bravo Company of the 2 Reconnaissance Battalion of the United States Marine Corps at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina. Although both Sergeants, the two do not share the same ranks or roles. In the British Army and Royal Marines infantry, a Sergeant (NATO rank OR-6) is the rank normally held by the Second-in-Command of a Platoon. In the US Marine Corps and the United States Army infantry, a sergeant (NATO rank OR-5) leads a fire team of four men, a role performed in the British forces by a Lance-Corporal (OR-3) (as second-in-command of a section and commander of its delta fire team). Section Commanders in the British forces are normally Corporals (OR-4). The Royal Bermuda Regiment is a part-time unit of the British Army tasked primarily with home defence of the tiny British Overseas Territory of Bermuda, where a reconnaissance sub-unit would seem superfluous. Despite this, its predecessors (the Bermuda Militia Artillery and the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps) sent contingents to the Western Front during the First World War and to fight in North-West Europe, Italy, the Far East and elsewhere during the Second World War, and the regiment's training ensures it is capable of an expeditionary role. Due to the limited landmass and high population density of Bermuda, much of the Royal Bermuda Regiment's field training takes place at Camp Lejeune. This partly results from the proximity of North Carolina, the nearest landfall to Bermuda at 640 miles (ensuring close historical ties with Bermuda having been settled accidentally in 1609 by the Virginia Company as an extension of the future North Carolina's northern neighbour of Virginia, and the Province of Carolina having been established by the settlement of Charleston by settlers from Bermuda under William Sayle in 1669), and partly from a close relationship built up between the Royal Bermuda Regiment and the US Marine Corps, which had maintained detachments to guard the United States Navy bases in Bermuda from the 1940s to the 1980s (the US Naval Air Station Bermuda Annex, Naval Air Station Bermuda, and Naval Facility Bermuda). The US Marine Corps handed its guard role to US Naval Air Station Bermuda Police and withdrew from Bermuda several years before all of the United States Naval bases in Bermuda were closed in 1995.
Title: Royal Bermuda Regiment Sergeant and US Marines Sergeants 1989
Credit: The Globe. Used to illustrate the article Bermuda recce team recon Lejeune, by Lance-Corporal E.V. Walsh, published in The Globe on 20 April, 1989. Original caption: SO THAT'S HOW IT WORKS-Sgt. Peter Aldrich, Bermuda Regiment, points out one of the regiment's weapons to Sgt. Paul Moose, team leader, Bravo Co., 2nd Recon.
Author: United States Marine Corps (Lance-Corporal E.V. Walsh)
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No