Former Bermuda Regiment soldiers were reunited to help celebrate the 40th anniversary of its first overseas exercise.

In October 1968, a 28-man group spent four weeks in Jamaica with 'A' Company of the York and Lancaster Regiment, part of the British regular army, who were there for an introduction to jungle training.

The training time was spent working in the rough terrain presented by the thickly forested hills around Berridale, in Portland.

The soldiers lived in a tented camp at Folly Point, just outside Port Antonio, where, during the rainy season in an area that receives more than 100 inches of rain a year, the tented camp soon became a muddy swamp where it was said that only strong discipline and a stronger sense of humour kept the soldiers going.

Of this pioneering group of men on the exercise, known by the British Army as Exercise Sane, three went on to make Bermuda Regimental and Bermuda national history; and one went on to high rank in the Church.

Lieutenant Eugene Raynor became the first black Commanding Officer of the Bermuda Regiment from1980 to 1984; Private Alvin Daniels became Captain Alvin Daniels and later the first Bermudian Aide-de-Camp to a Governor from 1973 to 1975, and Sergeant Larry Burchall became the first Bermudian Regimental Sergeant Major from 1978 to 1980.

Going on to high rank in the Church was Corporal Calvin 'Skippy' Ball now Bishop Calvin J P Ball, Church of God (Washington State).

Coming from Bermuda and working with the platoon was Company Sergeant Major Alan 'Boopsie' Burrows, a Bermuda Regiment pacesetter and trail-breaker in his own right and British Warrant Officer John Selby who today is a red-jacketed pensioner at Royal Chelsea Hospital, but who in October 1968 was on attachment to the Bermuda Regiment as the its Regimental Sergeant Major.

Other Bermuda Regiment members in Jamaica but not at a celebratory service at St. Peter's Church, in St. George's, were: Gerald Bean, Edward Burchall, Allan Caines, Oliver K Darrell, John Deshields, Harold Dowling, Dennis Hassell, Glenn Ingham, J Looby, David Patterson, David Rowntree, Russell Seymour, Averylon Simons, William Todd, Peter Wilson, Creswell Williams.