Great to here of that reaction on the trains. My expereince has been varied - I travelled from Reading to way up North on R&R by Virigin (First Class) last year in desert DPMs and was reasonably well-received, but on several occasions (as posted elsewhere) I have been ashamed by Service personnel (invariably Army) travelling Standard Class on the train - drunk, loud and 'larging it'. On one occasion I asked the guys to settle down - it was about 1730 on a busy train - they were drunk and outdoing each other with stories from Helmand, much to the annoyance of other passengers. To their credit they sobered up pretty quickly when they saw my ID card, but it shouldn't have to come to that.

I fight prejudice agaisnt the Services almost daily but we are often let down by our own people (I can certainly think of times that I should not have been allowed out in public!) and can understand why some companies are wary of servicemen en masse. But why change traditions of behaviour in the Services that go back hundreds of years!