My military Goat Story concerns the Naval Electrical Articifers training establishment at HMS Collingwood. Once upon a time the Captain of the place (Commanding Officer) was a Welshman. He got an invite to the Queens Birthday parade (Trooping the Colour) and the mob being 'trooped' was the Welsh Guards complete with their Goat Mascot.

The skipper of HMS Collingwood thought that a similar mascot would enhance the look of his stone frigate so wheels were put in motion to get a Billy Goat Mascot.

When the beast arrived, like all entering the gates of any naval establishment for the first time it required training. From this point on things only went down hill. The goat fell in with a bad crowd, or more accurately a bad crowd with a wicked sense of humour. They trained this rather active Billy Goat to charge at anything with more than two gold stripes on it's arm.

Come the first parade there's the Goat lined up with front and centre with the Colour and the Guard and off they step. The goat then sees the saluting dias and goes berserk, thinking that all his Christmasses have come at once. result, the Goat takes off dragging his 'handler' along with him and clears the senior staff from the parade ground. Ends up under punishment, and is given to the senior rates to correct his behaviour. Which they managed to in a round about way.

Before any parade where the goat was supposed to put in an appearance they would starve the animal for a couple of days and then on the great day the Goat knew that it would be fed once it got off the other end of the parade ground. Now this seemed to be a winner until one day a normal Saturday Divisions was postponed because some visiting VIP was going to be dropping by on a Sunday, so Sunday Divisions were decided on. Now instead of having had no food for two days the Goat was starved for three.

Once again the Goat, now ravenous, stands front and centre along with the colours, guard and band. As soon as the band strikes up the only thing on the goat's mind is making it to the end of the parade ground. Only thing was 'Quick March' tempo of the Royal Navy didn't appear to be fast enough for the Goat so he speeded up and accelerated. As he did so everyone else tried to keep up. The end result was that as the parade passed the VIP on the saluting dias everybody was going at the sprint, with the Goat still holding a respectable lead.

Well anyway that was it for the Goat as a Mascot, but he had been acquired officially so was therefore 'on the strength' so he couldn't just be killed and eaten. So he was drafted to Royal Naval Physiological Laboritories in Alverstoke where he was used for diving trials.

Now the routine for a Goat selcted for a trial was that it was isolated from the other goats for 24 hours. Kept apart and really pampered (fair enough as he was going to get bent the next day) and the ex-Mascot Goat loved Mars Bars. He never minded being selected for these jaunts because this Goat had noticed one thing. If having been selected and having eaten his fill of Mars Bars and god knows what other goodies when ever he saw a handler coming towards him with a lead he would start off towards the door of the building that housed the decompression chambers, then he would start to cough, or limp. He would immediately be turned loose amongst the other goats as only fit goats could be used for Trials. He spent many happy years at Alverstoke, where I believe, as far as I know, he died of natural causes.