Sir Gregory was one of the first to see action on Mount William in ’82 and was mentioned in dispatches for his bravery under heavy fire. He celebrated with the rest of his comrades as they later stood on the windswept streets of Port Stanley that reminded him of family holiday he had taken when he was young on Skye.
He last saw action in the Gulf in the dry deserts of Iraq in 1991, although he never came close to any close contact as the Iraqi army melted in front of the advance. After this it was back to the daily army grind. The last shots fired at him in anger were on the streets of West Belfast.
After he left the army things never really worked out. His wife left him sometime in the late 90’s, he can’t really recall. Nor can he recall when he last saw his three children, none of which are children any more. Much of the next decade found him watching the world go by through the bottom of a plastic cider bottle until in 2012 he was convicted of some pointless assault on a fellow occupant of the lowest rungs of society. He received 6 months imprisonment which at least helped him to sober up and put some weight on. However, once he had left prison the old demons returned and before long he was once more scraping a living on ever decreasing social security payments.
The 1st of January found what was left of him slumped in an old settee behind some abandoned factory premises. No one could tell how long he had been put the wind and ran over Christmas had taken their toll. He didn’t make it beyond the first attempt to revive him by the paramedics. He was 52.
