Bermuda Regiment Honorary Colonel Eugene Raynor has been obsessed with the military most of his life.He was three years old during the Second World War. His father, who was serving with the Bermuda Militia Infantry (BMI) at the time, brought home a rifle during a break.“He rested it against the wall and said ‘don’t touch that’,” the 70-year-old stated. “I stood on guard next to it for about an hour. I never touched it, but I sure did examine it with my eyes.”He wanted to be in the Army like his dad, but he would have to wait until he could march in uniform. He did wait, but impatiently. At five years old he snuck into the Cub Scouts at Grace Methodist Church, even though the starting age was six. As a teenager, in 1962, he signed up for the Bermuda Militia Artillery (BMA) cadet programme, even though entry age was 14 and he was three months short of that age.“When I finally got to fire a rifle as a cadet, it was interesting,” said Col Raynor. “We were firing Lee Enfield .303 rifles. They weighed about nine lbs and I must have weighed not much more that. It was painful in the shoulder because it had a serious recoil and pushed you back off the firing point if you didn’t have your toes dug in. We mastered it, sore shoulder or not.”The BMA cadet programme was the start of life long involvement with Bermuda’s military. He has been a captain of the Bermuda Regiment, spent 18 month as Governor’s Aide-de-Camp in the 1970s, and has been Commanding Officer and Lieutenant Colonel of the Bermuda Regiment. Now he is an honorary Colonel.“I am in attendance at various functions,” he said. “At one time or another the Governor will call on me for advice. I also serve with the Defense Board. It keeps me in the play, but I don’t have an active role with the Regiment. I am effectively retired and I drive a taxi at this stage.”He said one of the things he had trouble dealing with when he first joined the Regiment was all the nicknames floating about.“The Corporals were normally addressed as ‘Corporal so and so’, but anyone else had a nickname,” Col Raynor said. “There was ‘Jungle Bunny’ and ‘Burnt Peanuts’. We had ‘Mr Minks’. We called him ‘Mr’ because he was older. They called me ‘Corporal Cow’s Tail’. That was because I was usually the last one getting out on parade. The reason for that was I was making sure that all of my people were out before me. The other sections called me that, but all my people were on parade and some of their people were still coming out, so we laughed it off.”Col Raynor said during his years with the Bermuda Regiment, he enjoyed the field training the most.“We had lots of opportunities that came up over the years,” he said. “Whether it was local or abroad, the field training was the way to go. I ended up training with the Bermuda Regiment in Jamaica, Canada and England.”The highlight of his service was six weeks spent training with a battalion in Kenya, which he described as “a real eye-opener”.“It was expanding on what we were taught in our confined programme in Bermuda,” he said. “It was most enjoyable and worked out well.”The Bermuda Regiment has always been a focus, but he also did a number of different things in his working life including automotive body repairman, insurance salesman, liquor salesman, administrative assistant for a finance company and accounting clerk at a couple of construction companies.At one time, while on assignment as Commanding Officer of the Bermuda Regiment, he was also working for his certified general accounting designation. This was sometimes challenging as he had to produce assignments while in camp, sometimes in North Carolina or Jamaica.“I had to produce an assignment and get it date stamped and in the mail by a certain time for it to be accepted,” he said. “This was sometimes difficult, but for the most part I was successful at that.”Over the years Col Raynor has seen several generations of young people come through the Bermuda Regiment. He said people haven’t changed, but their habits have.“I think we have got to a state where we almost abhor toughness,” he said. “We get it every year — people crying about having to join the Bermuda Regiment. Really, it is a Boy Scout camp. People complain about the sergeants swearing at them, but if you get on a school bus these days the swearing is worse than what comes from any of the sergeants.”He insisted he rarely swore at the people he was in charge of, but instead tried to use humour.“At times you want to be expressive about something, fine, but swearing at someone to belittle them is a no no,” he said. “If I was to go at someone, everyone else is going to end up laughing because I would put humour into it. I had a knack for twisting things to make a joke out of the worst situation. The person would laugh and straighten up. That worked pretty well.”To celebrate his 70th birthday he had a big party organised by his children. In attendance were many of his earliest friendships from his childhood growing up on Dockhill in Devonshire.“In 1946 when the trains left I was living there and I watched for most of the day while they pulled up the rails going through Dockhill past Devonshire Recreation. Very few people today remember that Palmetto Road was the railway track more than anything. There was a little road that went alongside it. The train is a very clear memory to me.”Over the years he has won many medals including the long service medal Efficiency Decoration with a bar awarded to him after 15 years service as an officer. He also received the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Medal and was made a member of the Order of the British Empire military grade.He has also been heavily involved with St John’s Ambulance Brigade and has been Assistant Commissioner and twice served as Commissioner. Four years ago he was given the Commander Brother of St John award.