Corporal Simon Rogers {Dodge} -

I was born in Northamptonshire in 1981 and had a strict upbringing so I knew I was destined to join the Army. I joined The Parachute Regiment in 1998 -  I was going to join my local regiment but after growing up with images of the Falklands and Northern Ireland I decided to join the PARAS, not to my parents approval.

After Phase One training at Litchfield I was awarded Best Recruit.

Catterick was a different pace of life, learning our trade and not ironing our clothes or doing locker layouts. On finishing Phase Two our Platoon 639 joined 640 and 641 to go straight to 1 PARA.

We all passed off the square and said our goodbyes to our family and got on a Chinook to West Frew airfield Scotland to join 1 PARA on their final 5th Airborne Brigade exercise. On the ground running as they say, day two on the exercise was a 40k tab into a 4 hour attack on the Isle of Jura - nice!!!

I moved to 2 PARA which was a great move and ended up in the Assault Engineer Platoon after coming best student on that course. I blended in well and took to the constant NI deployments that we kept filling!!! (It seems Patrols Platoon couldnt be bothered to do theirs!) I went through the ranks quite quickly and found doing Junior Brecon (SCBC) one of the better courses.

I enjoyed the exercises in Belize,Kenya,America,Oman, and Canada. The tours we did such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Macedonia, Northern Ireland were all great experiances which shall never be forgtton.