It’s that time of year again, the most prestigious competition of the year the Surrey wing drill and banner competition 2009. 261 Squadron pulled out the all the stops for one of our best results for many years!

On the Saturday the drill team went down to the squadron to work hard on uniform and making sure the drill was perfect for the next day’s sequence.  Many hours of hard work went into the uniform including polishing, ironing, de-fluffing and moulding berets and late Saturday evening all the uniform was finished and ready for the competition the next day. An early start down at the squadron and a couple of practices later we were ready to set off to Aldershot army base for the competition.  Everyone was on a high, but nervous at the same time and many months of hard work was about to come into practice. 

We arrived, got into uniform and then we were straight on for the inspection and drill sequence.The adrenaline was pumping round your body and everyone was extremely nervous, yet excited. We went on and performed amazingly and we now had to wait for the results to be released and to find out if we had made the final.  In the meantime the Banner party took part in Surrey Wings first Banner competition and performed extremely well.

The results were announced by the wing warrant officer, Warrant officer O’Neal.  We had made it into the final, along with 1924, 328 and 1034 squadrons. The final was extremely tight and everyone was nervous as expected.  The results were released by the West Area officer Sqn Ldr Blundell-Pound and the results were as follows:

Uniform – 261 Guildford 3^rd, 1924 Shirley 2^nd and 328 Kingston took 1^st place

Best NCO Drill IC – 261 Guildford 1^st for FS Chelliah

Banner Drill Competition – 1924 Shirley 3^rd, 323 Epsom & Ewell 2^nd, 261 Guildford 1^st

Banner Bearer - FS Clarke Team - Sgt Morton, Cpl Ings, Cpl Mainardis & Cdt Novell

Overall Drill Competition – 328 Kingston 3^rd, 261 Guildford 2^nd, 1924 Shirley 1^st

DI – FS Chelliah, Team – FS Clarke, Sgt Morton, Cpl Armes, Cpl Ings, Cpl Mainardis, Cpl Toghill, Cpl Stevens, Cdt Brown, Cdt Byfield, Cdt Chelsom, Cdt Hutton, Cdt Novell, Reserves – Cdt Cottrell & Cdt Veryard

The trophies were presented by Wing Cdr Xavier and it was a huge honour to collect the awards.  This know means that our squadron will go to the region competition later in the year to represent Surrey Wing and as winners of the banner drill competition our squadron will be the Surrey Wing banner party at events for rest of the year.

Well done to all the cadets for all their hard work and commitment including practices and weekends, as well as to the staff for training and help over the weekend.  It is an incredible result and one we hope to maintain for next year.