A belated invitation accepted!

The garrison church of St Michael and St George is a well-known landmark in the heart of Aldershot Garrison. With its foundation stone having been laid by Queen Victoria in 1892, it has a long and proud history of serving the pastoral needs of countless thousands of troops, both British and Commonwealth, who have found themselves based in Aldershot. Originally dedicated to St George, the church adopted its second name, St Michael, in 1973 when its use was passed to the Roman Catholic community in the Garrison. It is the Cathedral Church of the Roman Catholic Bishop to the Forces.

The church has long been the spiritual home of the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC) and the Royal Corps of Transport (RCT), housing the books of remembrance of both corps, as well as their memorial chapel. Until the mid-1970s, it was also the corps church for the Army Catering Corps (ACC), which at that point transferred its allegiance to the Royal Garrison Church of All Saints. In the early 1950s, however, the ACC had erected a memorial plinth within St Michael & St George to house its Book of Remembrance commemorating the Corps’ fallen of the Second World War. Although the ACC no longer regarded the newly-named church of St Michael and St George as its corps church, it proved impractical to move the memorial plinth. For this reason, it remains in situ along with a Book of Remembrance, a page of which is turned during the celebration of Mass each Sunday. A similar act of remembrance is undertaken with the RASC and RCT Books of Remembrance.

To accommodate the requirements of the Roman Catholic liturgy, the layout of the sanctuary area of the church was amended in the 1970s to incorporate a new altar to enable the priest to celebrate Mass facing the congregation. At this time, both the RCT and the ACC were invited to support the installation of their respective corps badges within the sanctuary floor to mark their long-standing relationship with the church through the RASC. Whilst the former accepted the invitation, for reasons which are unclear, the ACC appears to have declined! A recent major refurbishment of the Cathedral Church, especially of the sanctuary area, provided an ideal opportunity for the ‘absence’ of the ACC to be corrected.

In December 2022, during a short, but meaningful service conducted by the Dean of the Cathedral, Father Nick Gosnell (himself a retired Army padre), the newly-installed ACC badge was unveiled formally by retired ACC Warrant Officer Class 1, Pat Watmore, a regular member of the Cathedral’s congregation. In attendance were a number of retired ACC members as well as Major General Seumas Kerr CBE, Chairman of the RLC Heritage Committee, and Lieutenant Colonel Steve Yafai, the RLC Regimental Secretary. The small ceremony therefore marked a somewhat long-overdue acceptance of the initial invitation to install the ACC badge within the Cathedral sanctuary! This was made possible by the generous support of the Royal Logistic Corps Association.

8 L-R: Lt Col (Retd) Steve Yafai, Pat Watmore, Maj Gen Seumas Kerr CBE, Lt Col (Retd) NR Shepherd