This site was first thought of in the Sgt's Mess (Use to be the Warrant Officers and Petty Officers Mess) at Whale Island when Molly and I first thought about organising a K Company reunion. First of all we had to work out how to find everybody, where we were going to hold it, how to get in touch and where to reply to, to name just a few admin points. We were working on flying down to the Falklands and the cost of hiring a Plane but soon realised that that would not work and the budget would not reach the fuel cost let alone the plane.

 I never thought that we would achieve a Regimental Diner in the Sgt Mess at 42 Commando Royal Marines with nearly all of K Company and what was to follow.

First was a committee to work out what to do and then ask 42 Cdo RM if they were happy for us to hold the event. Lucky for us the RSM was Mark Wicks who served in K Coy in South Armagh in 1984 when Molly and I were still serving in K Coy. Tony Veal was the Sup Coy Sgt Maj, who was also a young Marine in K Coy down South and was now PMC of the Sgt Mess. Dave Pickard was the Imprest Holder and Shep was the RQ.  The committee was sorted.

I looked on the web and found a web site that sold web names so I typed in bootneck.co.uk and it was available so I got it for £19.99 for two years. The next thing was cuffing how to do a web page, I used Microsoft Publisher as I had that on my computer. I done the web page and then had to work out how you get it from my computer to the www.

Luckily BT Internet gave me a free amount of space with my subscription and also a help page to tell me how to get it there. I needed an FTP programme which I found and then it done it all for me. Like I said the main reason for the Web site was to organise the first K Company reunion for the 20th Anniversary and a list of those that had been in touch. This was working well and we soon had quite a few that replied. I saw a web site with six balls that followed the mouse when you moved it. I thought that was cool and copied the HTML code and changed the ball to a Globe and Laurel. I was then getting a bit cocky and found that I could add some music to the home page. So ‘Life on the Ocean Wave was played ‘for 19 seconds once it was down loaded.

 The Reunion was an outstanding success. The plan was to meet on the Friday evening in the Mount Pleasant in Plymouth at about 1900. But as Molly and I had written to the FA and FIFA they decided to move the England game to the Friday afternoon at 1400, against non-other than Argentina. When I walked in there most of the Company were already in there along with around 70 civvies. The Civvies started singing ‘What’s it like to lose a War’ not knowing that there was 50 Bootnecks in there with them that helped win that war. It was a strange feeling seeing someone again that you haven’t seen for 18 or so years but we just reverted back to the childish 18 year old Bootnecks we use to be. Even the Two Trees DJ said over the speaker ‘I would like to welcome back K Company to the Street’ and gave Billy Boam a bottle of champs.   

After the reunion I added photographs of the reunion and kept a contact page for the company. I then decided to add a bit about 42 Cdo RM as I was getting the hang of it by now. All this was on dial up as well so it took ages to get the photographs up there. I stated getting emails from all over the world from blokes that use to serve in 42 Cdo RM so I thought I would add some History to the site. I went down the Royal Marine Museum and they let me go down stairs to where the old Unit Diaries are kept and found out about when K Company was formed and more on the Unit. I want to go more into this so if you can help then please do.

The site was dormant for about 2-3 years until the 25th Reunion was looming and then Molly and I started the ball rolling again but this time on a Unit Level. We went through the K Coy contacts we had and sent a quick blast at them to see if the emails still worked. I added company pages and tried to get nominal’s and contact addresses.  I put up on the website about the reunion and other Falkland events that were happening. Slowly we were getting responses and the number was growing.

The website was getting a lot more hits so the news was slowly getting out. I didn’t want to put too much info onto the site for security reasons and spammers just looking for email address to sell Viagra. I am now on the fourth totally new website having found Just host who host the website and also Joomla for the web producing side of things. This has allowed me to add a forum and also a Users / members side so a bit more personal stuff can get published. I would like to put more recent stuff on and get some good dits on what the lads are doing now and their brilliant success in both Iraq and Afgan.