Just after 10.30am on 20th July 1982, the IRA bombed the Queen's Life Guard. This act of terrorism took place in Hyde Park, London, but it shocked the world.

The mounted guard of 15 Household Cavalrymen and their horses was on its way to change the guard near Buckingham Palace when a remote controlled device was initiated, blasting nails and shrapnel into them. Four men and seven horses were killed, and many more injured.

Remarkably, some of the soldiers who survived the attack were back on duty just three days later and horses with catastrophic injuries lived to old age. The day when the Queen’s own guard was attacked in broad daylight, a stone’s throw from her home in the British capital, remains a day that is indelibly marked on the memory of those alive at the time.

For those who were there, it lives with them every day. But their story has never been told. Forty years on, what impact did this horrific event have on their lives, on their regiment and on wider British society?

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/hydeparkbombing

https://www.nam.ac.uk/whats-on/hyde-park-bombing

The Film

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the bombing, Mauricio Gris, an award winning film director and former Household Cavalryman is capturing the voices of the men who were there and turning them into a documentary film. This film will explore the impact of that day on the soldiers who were there, capturing for the first time culturally important first hand accounts, and preserving them for future generations. Mauricio, an acclaimed conflict documentary filmmaker, will explore the impact of trauma in a generation that was taught to “keep calm and carry on," and a regiment who lost more men on this dark day in London than in the Falklands War that they now had men returning from. #hydeparkbombingdocumentary

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