Robert Long

Brigadier Robert George Long, (30 January 1937 – 19 September 2014) was a British Army officer who was the last Colonel of the Royal Hampshire Regiment. Early life Long was born on 30 January 1937 in the military hospital at Alipore, outside Calcutta, India. He was the son of Robert Herbert Long, Adjutant of the 7th Rajput Regiment. During the War, his father was captured while serving in Corps HQ in Malaya, and spent the war as a prisoner of the Japanese. His mother, Margaret (née Culshaw) worked as a cypher clerk with Force 136, the British clandestine organisation in Burma. In 1944, aged seven, Long was despatched back to the UK on board the SS Strathmore, and spent much of his childhood living with relatives in Fareham. He was educated at Sherborne School before taking a National Service Commission, and subsequently went up to Brasenose College, Oxford where he graduated with a Fourth Class Honours degree. During his time at Brasenose, he organised a cricket tour to Corfu in response to a plea from John Forte, the honorary British vice-consul on the island. Military career Long was selected for officer training during his National Service and attended the Officer Cadet School at Eaton Hall in Cheshire. He was commissioned into the Royal Hampshire Regiment, and served in Germany. On graduation from Oxford he took up a management trainee position with an oil company, but became disillusioned and applied to rejoin his regiment with a regular commission. 1st Battalion Royal Hampshires were then serving as the West Indies Garrison Battalion, where Long joined them as a platoon commander. His first action came in suppressing riots in Georgetown, British Guiana, and the regiment was also involved in the relief effort following Hurricane Hattie. He applied for a secondment to the Malaysia Rangers, and served with them in Sarawak Borneo, prior to taking a post at the Royal Military College at Sungai Besi. Shortly after returning to the UK in 1968 the 1st Battalion Royal Hampshires were sent, as part of a United Nations peacekeeping mission, to the Kofinou district of Cyprus, which had been a flashpoint of Greek-Turkish confrontation.