In a Guardsmans Boots

When he was just eight years old, Paddy Rochford enrolled at Dublins Royal Hibernian Military School, where he was taught how to be a soldier with the British Army, like his father. Soon afterwards, in 1922, he and his fellow pupils were evacuated from Ireland, a land torn apart by civil war. Across the sea in England, Paddy joined the Third Battalion of the Coldstream Guards as a drummer boy, with postings to Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace, the Bank of England and the Tower of London, where