Richard Perkins
Richard Perkins's career covers many areas, from military service to publishing. The account below is a snapshot of his life, he has much more to tell than can be written here. He has been making notes for his memoirs and when he gets his recompense, will employ a secretary to get them ready for publication.
Richard Perkins received a King’s Commission in the Royal Marines in 1937 at the age of 19. Land and sea service followed in HMS Iron Duke until the outbreak of World War II. On relinquishing Royal Naval service he joined the Border Regiment and as Signals Officer defended the Kent coast against invasion during the Battle of Britain and the Dunkirk Retreat.
Posted to India in 1942 he was selected in 1943 to join the guerrilla force created by General Orde Wingate and known as “The Chindits”. In 1944 he was engaged in ambush and raiding operations behind the Japanese lines in Burma, and was successful in a race with the enemy to capture the Kyunsalai Pass to the East of Indawgi Lake, N Burma. (Awarded Mention in Dispatches). Read Major Perkins' own account of this event by clicking on Kyunsalai Pass.
Resumed service in India after hospitalisation in Assam following Burmese operations and engaged 1944-1947 first attached and then transferred to Royal Leicestershire Regiment in peace-keeping operations (Bombay and Deccan Plateau) during the Indian – Pakistan Partition disturbances.
After Home posting in 1947 and graduation at Staff College Camberley appointed GSO III at the War office till 1952. Then to Regimental Service in British Army of the Rhine. In 1955 suddenly posted to I Malay Infantry Brigade engaged in anti-terrorist operations in Perak, North Malaya, and flown out at short notice as Brigade Major, with wife and daughter, joining the HQ at Ipoh. Subsequently reposted to GHQ Far East Land Forces, Singapore, engaged information of South East Asia Treaty Organisation.
Invalided from Army “disabled and unfit for further military service” in 1959.
Read the discharge letter.
Read the London Gazette entry of the discharge.
1959 to 1993 several careers including journalism and co-founder of two Association Journals and Managing Editor of the second when aged 76.
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Interests
At this point I want to clarify the urgency affecting my fight for recompense. My concern goes far beyond that which might be expected from anyone just owed money.
The main additional reasons are:
1. I have more than half a life-time’s wrecked work and concepts on hold to express and produce, with no idea now in 2007 how much of the 5 years it will entail even for partial fulfillment, that I may have left.
2. The foregoing may need about half of the recompense, leaving the rest for bequests and charities. (At the moment I can only leave a small overdraft.)
Since John Perry put the squib under the MoD in 1998 my home has become an office and I have for years spent much of my half-pension on telephone calls, emails, stationery, postage and petrol associated with my fight for justice. Therefore I cannot pay my way. Even so, thanks to some 35 Press articles and 7 Radio interviews since 1990, I have lived in a virtual goldfish bowl, and so am proof to all embarrassment regarding what I still hope to do. Since this page is not primarily about my fight for justice it might be the point for some to read no further.
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To any who may be interested in my interrupted ambitions and interests, some of what follows may appear to be the fanciful dreams arising towards the close of a long life. Fortunately I keep very fit and active. My frustrations arise from the wasted years fighting entrenched bureaucracy. If I gain what is owed me by the MoD and Inland Revenue, my first needs will comprise:
1. Hiring an experienced secretary full-time for about 6 months.
2. Quickly finding a Literary Agent for the selection, presentation and publication of a life-time of material in several categories, including those below, plus publishing my poetry, essays, and previous journalism.
3. Developing and presenting to The Home Office in draft a concept entirely valid in the present Prison crisis. It requires a revolution in attitude to the value of human life and its forgotten sanctity. It may take about 50 years or more to bring into being, but needs accepting in principle and starting now. It is to work downwards through the categories of crime, making present practices totally redundant. I first put it to the Leader of the Liberal Party in the Lords 20 years ago. I met her in her study. She read for ten minutes, and was visibly shaken and unhappy about it. We parted. I also put it to Edward de Bono, whom I knew then and have worked with since. He was not shaken. "Yes, it would work,” he said, “but we are not yet ready for it." That was shortly before Information Technology arose. Updated now, it could be introduced on the top-down principle by a “Test” nation, Britain maybe, and so outgrow the old ethos of crime and punishment, both secular and religious.
4. Convincing this Government about the ultimate answer to energy production. Most present theories and practice will I believe dumbfound our future generations. It is the exploitation of the virtually inexhaustible global energy, mostly from under our feet, from molten and hot-rock sources. Yet this is scarcely mentioned in the UK though already being practised in its infancy in such places as Adelaide and Berne and is due for discussion again at the 20th World Energy Congress in Rome from 11th – 15th November 2007. Sadly at the last meeting 4 years ago Britain alone failed to present a single paper for the Geo-thermal Energy Association. I sent an update on it to Tony Blair last year (copies still available on request) but I doubt if he has ever seen it because it was first "fielded" by the Downing Street squad (whom I dub as “The Protecting Veil” -, with apologies to John Tavener). Some genius “protecting” the PM shunted it off to the DTI where it was probably put in a drawer or binned. Meanwhile we are being pushed into the insane and irresponsible nuclear lobby. I need muscle and money and TIME to get my paper considered. (I can email a copy to anyone interested.) Children of the future will laugh at our wind farms, solar panels, tidal traps, bio-fuels, etc, when the answer is always there below us, but may take 30 years to get going.
5. Asked in 2006 about what my personal interests have been apart from the above and creative writing, I replied keeping myself updated on cosmology and the arts. Before that, and until 1999 when eyesight problems arose, my passion for exactly 60 years had been flying British, German, Polish and Rumanian gliders in 3 continents and giving joy-flights to my wife and daughter and later to a Malayan Tungku and the Prime Minister of New Zealand..
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