Queen's Badge Recipients - The Boys' Brigade Archive Trust Museum

Queen’s Badge Recipients

To celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II and her patronage of The Boys’ Brigade we have created a page featuring pictures and stories from Queen’s Badge recipients.

Since 1952 thousands of Queen’s Badges have been presented to members of The Boys’ Brigade and it is the stories from these award winners we want to use to commemorate 70 years of service by the Queen.

You can be a part of this special item of ‘BB’ history by sending a picture and a few words explaining your award to archive@boys-brigade.org.uk

Information

What we NEED FROM YOU:

1. A clear photograph ideally showing the recipient of the award holding either the badge or certificate. This can be a current photo, or one taken when the award was presented.

2. The recipients ‘BB Story’ either as a text document (200 words) or a 2 minute Audio file (MP3 preferred format). The Audio file can be recorded using you phone and sent to us as a voice note.

3. Send the photo and ‘BB Story’ to archive@boys-brigade.org.uk for use on the Virtual Museum.

For further information about this project, or to learn about additional ways to support the work of The Boys’ Brigade Archive Trust, please email archive@boys-brigade.org.uk

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King's Badge

Queen's Badge

Queen Elizabeth II

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Built By Kobault.

John Daglish- 5th Swindon

The completion course was a full weekend. There were two of us from the 5^th Swindon company that would be traveling up to Hemel Hempstead on the Friday night. It’s probably fair to say that we didn’t quite know what to expect from the weekend, but we had enjoyed years of going on Junior and Company camps before, so we were pretty confident that we would be able to deal with anything that the officers were going to throw at us. Our confidence was short-lived after the first night!

The start of the weekend was very normal. Welcomed at the door, showed our room for the weekend and given what our activities would be. It all seemed like it was going to be pretty fun. Archery, air pistol shooting. The kind of activities that older teenage boys would love. The main opening activity though would take place on our first night there. It was already dark by the time we were all set for the first activity, which we thought would just be a night hike. We had been split up into 4 teams from companies from all over the place but quite a lot of the lads were from London. Each team was told to get into a different vehicle, as we had to drive out to where we were going for the walk. The drive was probably about half an hour. Totally dark, and not knowing where we had gone or which direction we had gone in we reached the drop off point. Our drop off point. The other teams were starting from their own grid references it seemed. So, we understood quickly what was happening. Each team were given a map, a few bits of paper with questions on that we had to answer on the way back, but the main thing I remember was the information that throughout the weekend, there would be points on offer for whichever team got back to the lodge first, because this was a BB event and there is always a competition!

All of those skills learned on Friday nights, at our regular BB evenings, would suddenly be tested. The information that we were not provided with as we exited the minibus, was where we actually were! We were expected to work that out for ourselves. It was probably 11:30 at night, and the enormous head-torch my mum had insisted on buying for camp proved to come in rather handy that night. It filled our path ahead with enough light that we could spot most of the things that would give us the clues we needed to find our way forward!

We worked our way through the questions that we were given and were feeling pretty good about ourselves as we reached the last few questions. It meant that we had done ok!! We found where we were on the map and plotted the right route back. We found ourselves in a bit of a built-up residential area when we heard other voices… Nobody anticipated that 3 of the 4 teams would converge onto the same street right at the end of the course, at the same time. Footsteps started to build. Fast walks became runs. Runs became straight-up sprint finish footrace down a street. Four teams of teenage boys all yelling at each other and trying to get across the finishing line first! The residence of that street probably knew that Felden was going to be full up after that night. Luckily, that was the only time we had to leave the sight that weekend!

It was pretty much straight to bed when we got back, even though we were all fairly pumped up from our late-night athletics. Team four wasn’t quite so lucky with the navigation, as the other guy from our company came in in the early hours a little while after we had all got back!

It’s one story from a host of tales from experiences in the Boy Brigade. I feel like I’m blessed to have had the opportunity to do all of the things that the BB allowed me to.