page_title: Bermuda Garrison
section_title: 1945 to 1957
hierarchical_section_title: Bermuda Garrison / 1945 to 1957
caption_attribution_description: English: One of two 6" RBL (BL 6 inch Mk VII gun, built by Vickers, on Central Pivot Mk II mount), with two 9.2" Rifled Breech Loaders (RBL) (BL 9.2 inch Gun Mk X) coastal artillery guns visible in the background, at the defunct St. David's Battery (also known as the Examination Battery), on Great Head, the larger of the two heads which compose St. David's Head, on St. David's Island, St. George's Parish, Bermuda, in 2011. This battery was historically manned by soldiers of the Regular Army's Royal Garrison Artillery, and its part-time reserve, the Bermuda Militia Artillery, as well as the regular Royal Engineers and its part-time reserve, the Bermuda Volunteer Engineers.
context_page_description: The Bermuda Garrison was the military establishment maintained on the British Overseas Territory of Bermuda by the regular British Army, and its local militia and voluntary reserves from 1701 to 1957. The garrison evolved from an independent company, to a company of Royal Garrison Battalion during the American War of Independence, and a steadily growing and diversifying force of artillery and infantry with various supporting corps from the French Revolution onwards. During the American War of Independence, the garrison in Bermuda fell under the military Commander-in-Chief of North America. Subsequently, it was part of the Nova Scotia Command until 1868, and was an independent Bermuda Command from then 'til its closure in 1957.
  From the 1790s onwards, the garrison existed primarily to defend the Royal Naval Dockyard and other facilities in Bermuda that were important to Imperial security until the HM Dockyard was reduced to a base.
context_section_description: Following the war, the BVE and BMI, as well as the Home Guard, ceased to existed. The BMA and BVRC were both demobilised, reduced to skeleton staffs. Both were quickly built back up to strength in 1951, and conscription, which had been used during the war, was re-introduced for both units (the BVRC suitably being retitled simply Bermuda Rifles), although the conscripts served on a part-time basis, whereas wartime service had been full-time for the duration. The last coastal artillery, the Examination Battery on St. David's Head, was removed from use in 1953, and the BMA converted to the infantry role (but remained nominally part of the Royal Regiment of Artillery). The last Imperial Defence Plan was issued the same year. After that, the local units no longer had a role under Imperial defence planning.
  The Regular Army component of the garrison continued to include a full infantry company of 250 soldiers, plus a variety of atts and dets (attachments or detachments from others corps, such as the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers). A company of the Gloucestershire Regiment (the Glosters) was posted to Prospect Camp in 1947, but this was sent to British Honduras the following year in response to a Guatemalan threat of invasion. Three Bermudians who had served in the BVRC during the war (Bernard L. Martin, Robert Wheatley, and Vernon Smith) re-enlisted into the Gloucestershire Regiment during its posting in Bermuda and subsequently took part in the Battle of Imjin River, during the Korean War. The Glosters were replaced by a detachment of The Highland Brigade in 1949.
  In 1951, it was announced that the Royal Naval Dockyard would be closed, with much of its establishment withdrawn immediately. The process of running the naval base down would stretch over the rest of the decade (though part of the base, HMS Malabar, would operate 'til 1995). In November, 1952, it was decided to withdraw the Regular Army garrison, too, which was completed by 1 May 1953. However, during the Bermuda Conference of the 4th to 8 December 1953, the Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, met with the US President Dwight D. Eisenhower and French Premier Joseph Laniel in the colony to discuss the security of Western Europe. A detachment of the Royal Welch Fusiliers had to be brought in for the period of the conference. The concerns of the Government of Bermuda and other interested parties were put to the Prime Minister during his stay in Bermuda, and as a result 'A' Company, 1st Battalion, Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry (1 DCLI) arrived to resume garrison duty at Prospect Camp in 1954.
  The decision to continue the garrison was reconsidered in 1957. When Churchill had visited in 1953, the British Army had numbered over 400,000 soldiers, but the 1957 Defence White Paper called for the end of National Service, and the reduction of the Regular Army to 165,000 professional soldiers. Given the much smaller size of the army with the resultant difficulties in meeting its obligations, the high cost per man of the Bermuda Garrison, and the presence of the two part-time units that would remain in Bermuda (and which were capable of absorbing the responsibilities or the regular detachment), it was decided to withdraw the DCLI and all other regular soldiers (other than Permanent Staff Instructors and other attachments to the territorial units and the Aide-de-camp (ADC) to the Governor) from Bermuda by the end of May. This was despite strong arguments in the House of Commons for the retention of the Garrison by Bermuda-raised Denis Keegan, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Nottingham South, and Frederic Bennett, MP for Torquay. A Company DCLI reunited with E Company, which had been posted to British Honduras, and both were returned to England. The Officer Commanding A Company, Major J. Anthony Marsh, DSO, a Second World War veteran of the Special Air Service, took permanent residence in Bermuda after leaving the Regular Army, retiring from military service in 1970 as a Lieutenant-Colonel, commanding the Bermuda Regiment (a 1965 amalgam of the BVRC and BMA).
  
caption: One of two 6 inch RBLs, with the two 9.2 inch RBLs visible beyond, at St. David's Battery, in 2011
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS 450D", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2011:09:02 16:32:56", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "2252", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "13778", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4922", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/250", "EXIF FNumber": "10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Unidentified", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "200", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2011:09:02 16:32:56", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2011:09:02 16:32:56", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "8", "EXIF ApertureValue": "53/8", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "18", "EXIF SubSecTime": "91", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "00", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4272", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2848", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "13646", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "2136000/439", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "356000/73", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Padding": "[]", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "4140"}