92 Barry Azzopardi
Over the past 58 years Barry Azzopardi has come face to face with drug cartels in deepest America, shared his sleeping bag with snakes and spiders in the Belize jungle, gate crashed a beach wed- ding in San Pedro and been put in a military jail for climbing over an army fence to see his future wife. Now in his mid (to late) years, Barry has chosen a quieter way of life and spends his hours weeding, mowing lawns and putting up sheds for homeowners in Dartmouth and Kingswear. Steph Woolvin went to meet him….
B
orn and raised in Eastbourne, Barry admits he didn’t have a huge amount of money when he was younger. He could often be found feverishly
searching the streets for glass lemonade bottles to sell. When he was 16 and was told ‘to get a career’ he didn’t have high aspirations. “Our careers guidance wasn’t up to much to say the least! We were sent out one afternoon and told to come back with a job or at least evidence we had tried to get one. My two mates and I went to the pub opposite the local Territorial Army branch. After a couple of drinks we popped over to the recruitment unit, picked up a few leaflets and filled in some forms – just to look willing!” Barry didn’t think anymore about it until a couple of weeks later when his army start-up pack arrived in the mail! “I didn't realise I had actually signed up! But I thought I’ve got nothing else planned and I could always leave if I hate it - 40 years later I retired from the British Army!” Barry started his training in Bassingbourn near Cam-
bridge. He moved through the ranks from Private to Corporal (admitting he was the ‘shouty’ type of corpo- ral you see on films, but only when the situation called for it). He travelled around the world to Germany, Denmark, Northern Ireland and Gibraltar: "One of my favourite postings was to Belize in Central America - it all went on there and you had to keep your wits about you. We were based in the jungle and had snakes and spiders as bedfellows.” He says the mosquitoes were the worst part; often causing nasty infections after laying their eggs under the men’s skin. “We worked with the Special Forces out there and pretended to
We were
mingling with the ‘Mr Bigs’ of Miami - dressed in white suits and drinking rum!”
be the enemy for their training. But we also did drug patrols along the border and we set fire to marijuana fields planted by large-scale drug growers. The fumes released were so strong another set of troops had to come in to carry us out! Back home it was known as the land of dope and glory! It was cut throat out there – people were regularly killed by the drug barons after trespassing on their territory.” Despite all that Barry says he was having the time of his life. He had money in his back pocket, friends, and was seeing parts of the world he would never have dreamed of visiting. “One night we gate crashed a wedding on the beach in San Pedro. They were actually surprisingly happy to have 100 squaddies turn up! They thought it was a laugh and treated us like royalty. We were mingling with the ‘Mr Bigs’ of Miami - dressed in white suits and drinking rum!” It wasn’t long after his time in San
Pedro that Barry met wife-to-be Dawn back in Blighty at Tidworth Army camp in Wiltshire. Dawn was visiting the NAAFI to see her sister who worked there. One day she bumped into Barry, their eyes meeting over a cup of tea, and they hit it off instantly. She soon secured a job at the camp and lived-in, but this led to the odd misdemeanour on Barry’s part: “Dawn’s room was very close to mine, but it was in the next door camp and there was a big fence dividing us. Instead of going all the way round the side I would climb up and over. Once I got caught and had to go to our military jail (only for a few hours). The couple went on to get married and have two boys, Nick and James, who both went into the army and are now based in Gibraltar.
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