The Royal Hong Kong Regiment Drummer--single figure
$52.00

King & Country

Item Number: CHK013

The Royal Hong Kong Regiment Drummer

Standing smartly at attention in his white tropical dress jacket, this drummer beats out a drum roll.

A PARADE GROUND IN HAPPY VALLEY IN HONG KONG

The Royal Hong Kong Regiment (The Volunteers) was originally formed in 1854 as a local militia force funded and administered by the Colonial Government in Hong Kong.
During the age of empire, home defence units were raised in many British colonies with the intention of freeing regular British Army forces from garrison duties to be deployed elsewhere.
When I joined the Regiment in 1980, the RHKR(V) was an essential part of the small British force that remained in Hong Kong, in this case 48 Gurkha Infantry Brigade which, as the name implies, was mostly several Gurkha battalions, one regular British infantry battalion and associated support troops.
Looking back on those happy days, the RHKR(V) was about 800 strong and operated as a Light Reconnaissance Regiment utilizing a large fleet of short and long wheelbase Land Rovers.
The officer corps were approximately 1/3 British (with some Commonwealth officers) while the rank and file were almost exclusively 100% Hong Kong Chinese guys.The main exception to these numbers was the Regimental Band which had a large proportion of Filipino musicians.
The reason for this was that the Philippines is justly famous throughout Asia for the quality of its musicians, and over the years, has exported many thousands of talented musicians to nearly every country in this region to play in dance bands, orchestras, and all kinds of musical groups in nightclubs, theatres and elsewhere.
Hong Kong, in those days, had all kinds of venues that required those talents and the Philippines provided them in abundance.
At the same time, some of these talented players enjoyed making a little bit extra and the Regimental Band provided an additional source of income.
And so as a unique little tribute to my old Hong Kong regiment and to our Filipino musical comrades, here is this little presentation.

Due to be released in JANUARY 2025