Edition 65

As a valued supporter, we are pleased to bring you up-to-speed with a weekly round-up of activities from RMA – The Royal Marines Charity and the wider Corps Family.

This week, everyone seems to be hitting the road – the much-awaited Band Tour is about to start; we’ve fundraisers out and about doing all sorts of fantastic challenges; you can sign up to join some of the Royal Marines’ crack snipers; and we share news of yet another incredible drug bust – all of which inspire us all to keep working as hard as possible in continuing to support our very deserving Royal Marines Family.

Thank you as always for your continued support.

To subscribe to receive our weekly round-up to your inbox, please click here


“Wow! What a day!”

We are delighted to announce the three main corporate sponsors of our 2023 Guildhall Dinner in London on 8th November – Patron Capital is again Headline sponsor;  Edgar Brothers has signed up as Event partner, and Olympian Homes is sponsoring the evening’s Champagne. 

Two of our Ambassadors, Jon White (right) and Joe Winch (middle), accompanied by Tom Wilson, RMA – The Royal Marines Charity Director of Development, delivered Commando Mindset Training to Igneo Infrastructure Partners at The Vineyard Hotel, near Newbury in Berkshire last week.

The day’s training was attended by all 45 European staff members of Igneo and was a great success. Hamish Lea-Wilson, Partner of Igneo IP commented: “Wow! What a day! Interesting and useful. Emotional but not harrowing. The team was fully engaged throughout and really enjoyed it. Thank you for the honesty and for sharing your expertise. Contrary to my initial view, the programme was very relevant for our team and the daily pressures we all face.”

Tom Wilson added, “We are extremely grateful to Igneo for their support to RMA-The Royal Marines Charity. We know from past experience that applying the relevance of the Royal Marines and their mindset through this kind of training can add enormous value to a business environment.”

In the year to date, our Health and Wellbeing team has processed 506 welfare and benevolence grants totalling £594,653, three to various partner organisations towards travel costs for two D-day veterans to visit Port en Bessin, France, Hasler NSRC clay pigeon shoot, and 60 to serving personnel and RM veterans, covering everything from grants of under £100 for counselling and therapy sessions, essential household goods, and hospital travel costs.

Our Addiction Intervention team has 26 new cases on its books; and 55 beneficiaries have been referred to the Veterans Mental Health Referral Pathway.

In addition, the RMA Membership team has supported 153 funerals, including sadly those of three D-Day veterans.

Mission complete!

Huge congratulations to serving Royal Marine, Keiron Prosser (third left) and his magnificent ‘On the Hoof’ team. They successfully completed their gruelling four-day challenge – tackling Le Chemin De Liberté (Freedom Trail), unsupported.

They hiked 80km (50 miles) from southern France across the Pyrenees’ mountain region into northern Spain, on what is regarded as one of the hardest wartime escape routes – and on crossing the French/Spanish border commented, ‘Mission complete’!

Keiron was also fundraising for RMA – The Royal Marines Charity to recognise the support given to himself and his family since his son was born with life-limiting muscular dystrophy in 2011. He has so far raised the absolutely terrific sum of around £5,000 (inc Gift Aid) – our enormous thanks. His JustGiving page is here.

It’s all in the running!

Great North Run

Our Fundraising team was out in force last weekend to support and cheer on all our wonderful runners taking part in the Great North Run. This is the largest half marathon in the world, taking place annually in North East England and run between Newcastle-upon-Tyne and South Shields. 

Fundraising manager Vicki Drinkwater said: “Our cheer station at the 8-mile mark was fun! And what an amazing day – and how very grateful and proud we were of our team of charity runners who pounded the streets in the blazing heat to complete the race, sharing their success with Sir Mo Farah who was running his final race.

The amount raised for our Charity is sitting at just over £6,607 (without gift aid) so a huge thank you to all who have supported our charity with their incredible efforts!” 

Run For All

A little farther south, in Middlesbrough,  ‘non-runner’ Matt Welch (pictured left) recently took part in the 10K ‘Run for All’ in memory of his ‘amazing grandad, Syd Aitkins, finishing under his target time and raising over £400 (including gift aid).

“This was a huge challenge for me and it was tough at times,” said Matt. “I could barely run for the train a few weeks earlier – but my training went well although it was tough at times (with a few tears), I was committed to completing this for my Grandad, a proud Royal Marines veteran, and a charity close to his heart, RMA – The Royal Marines Charity.”  Thank you so much – what a hoofing achievement!

Ironman Wales

And to mark the 75th anniversary of the Royal Marines Reserve, and after over 130 gruelling hours of training, Chris Kedward – an Officer with the RMR –   completed Ironman Wales in Tenby, beating his target of a sub 14-hours by some eight minutes and raising over £900 for our Charity – a brilliant result, and huge thank you!

He swam 2.4 miles in jellyfish-infested sea; cycled 112 miles around the Pembrokeshire countryside with over 8,000ft of climbing; and ran a total distance of 140 miles in four hilly circuits around the town.

“What an amazing day it was,” he said.  “The weather was unseasonably warm and calm, which was great on the swim and first lap of the bike circuit, but it got a bit too warm after that, leading to some painful cramping on the run.  Considering over 300 failed to finish (the weather being a big part of that), I’m very happy!”

Still heading steadily south

RAC patrol Lee Wingate from Portsmouth is now over half-way into his quest to become the first person to run unsupported from John O’Groats to Land’s End (JOGLE).

Having had little sleep, he has made a lot of ground in the past week In attempting to create a new world record for this famous route’s toughest category. He has now passed the half-way point of his 860-mile or so journey.

It was in Moffat on Sunday evening (10th September) – a designated ‘dark sky’ town in Scotland – that he shed some particular personal demons and  took what he refers to ‘as the most important picture of my whole journey’ (above left), before crossing the border into England.

In explaining why, he posted: “Two years ago my pram broke in Queensferry and I turned it into a rickshaw and dragged my overweight pram all the way up Moffat; it was -6c at night, my shoulder had gone solid from being in one position holding the pram all day, but I was determined and moving.

This part of the route is also constant incline for 15-20 miles so it was tough. But in that weather at night I wanted to get close to Moffat and camp there. The back wheel broke off. With no way of fixing it, I had to push the pram to the side and take what I wanted of value then had to break the news to the family I was running for, that I couldn’t carry on.

It was one of the worst experiences of my life and has affected me the last two years in a way.  Today I managed to get there, and it was like a weight lifting off me.”

You can join us in keeping track of Lee hereHe is raising funds for RMA – The Royal Marines Charity in memory of his grandfather who was a Royal Marines Commando.

Exclusive ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ experience

There are just 16 exclusive places up for grabs for next year’s intensive three-day Sniper & Close Quarter Battle Experience being held at RM Condor in Arbroath (Scotland) between 14 – 17th May.

It is a unique and deeply involved opportunity to get up close and personal with Royal Marines that include some of the most highly-trained snipers in the world.

This full-on experience is unavailable outside of specialist military units and the days are jam-packed with rigorous training and coaching in fieldcraft, camouflage and concealment and with firearms and night vision optics with lots of live firing practice in the field – each participant is also inserted into a fully trained team of Royal Marines for a simulated hostage rescue;. and all this is rounded off with a magnificent full traditional Regimental Guest Night!

To register, or for more information, please e-mail the Charity’s Relationship Manager, Scotland – Nick Holloway  [email protected]

Reality cheque!

The Redwing Pub in Lympstone, Devon recently raised a whopping £570 for the Charity from a series of quiz nights.  Quizmaster Roger Riggs presented a cheque to our Fundraising Manager Vic Drinkwater last week.

“We are incredibly grateful for the show of support from one of our local pubs and its patrons and thank all who took part and generously chose to support us!” 

Inaugural Band Tour hits the road!

The fabulous Massed Bands of His Majesty’s Royal Marines – including the world-famous Corps of Drums – are headed to Nottingham for the first of five concerts of their first-ever Band Tour of UK cities. In aid of Royal Navy and Royal Marines Charities, the majority of the much-awaited concerts that also include those in  Manchester, Leicester, Liverpool and Gateshead, are almost all close to being sold-out! Limited last-minute seats may still be for sale here.

This is the first time that regional audiences will have the opportunity to enjoy this musical spectacular on the scale only ever before seen at the Massed Bands’ annual sold-out performances at the Mountbatten Festival of Music in London’s Royal Albert Hall.

For production manager, Royal Marine Band Colour Sergeant Claire Walsh (above)- who is Nottinghamshire born and bred – this concert will be a special moment with family, friends and former school-buddies all planning to be in the audience. You can read more about Claire here.

 Regretfully, the first Band Tour concert in Cardiff scheduled for tomorrow had to be cancelled at short notice as St. David’s Hall was last week temporarily closed due to additional checks for Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC).  A representative from the RM Band Service said: “We were really looking forward to performing to a near sell-out venue and apologise for any inconvenience and disappointment this has caused.”

 St. David’s Hall will be contacting all ticket holders direct.

RMs help scupper more drug runners 

The Royal Navy reports that a Royal Navy warship has seized more than a tonne of cocaine – worth more than £140m on the streets of Britain – following a successful operation against drug traffickers in the Caribbean Sea.

HMS Dauntless, a Portsmouth-based warship hunted down a drugs-running go-fast and seized 1,230kg of cocaine, deploying her Wildcat helicopter, Royal Marines and a US Coast Guard team to stop and search the smugglers’ boat.

In a second operation in the Caribbean Sea, the ship supported other US Law Enforcement Agencies in tracking a suspicious aircraft flying from Venezuela, and alerted ground forces who seized a further 550kg of cocaine.

As HMS Dauntless continues its counter narcotics operations in the Caribbean, it stands as a symbol of the UK’s dedication to safeguarding the region and combating all forms of illicit trafficking: and ‘is making significant strides in disrupting transnational criminal organisations and protecting the lives of countless individuals affected by the drugs trade’.