Foreword
This web site started life as a page on the Tomasin Family History Project web site. It was to be a page that attempted to described my life and work between the years 1966 and 1972 in London Port and at London Heathrow Airport - my early years in HM Customs & Excise as an Assistant Preventive Officer - as a member of Her Majesty's Waterguard. In 1972 I was promoted to Officer (EO) and continued to work in the newly reorganised Department, first as Officer in Charge at Exeter Airport, then Avonmouth (Preventive, Accounts, Administration & EPU), HQ London (RAMCS) and finally Bristol (LVO). I took early retirement as a Surveyor (SEO) in 1995.
The more I wrote, the more I realized the Family History page was becoming too large for it's original purpose - to record my personal history and written for my children, my grand children and their descendents. Over the 2006 Christmas period, I re-conceived the page as a web site in its own right. In January 2007 I registered the web site as www.hm-waterguard.org.uk and started an associated Rootsweb e-mailing list - HM-WATERGUARD-L-request@rootsweb.com so that ex-colleagues and others interested in the Waterguard could correspond with each other. I also started a sister Rootsweb e-mailing list - HM-CUSTOMS-EXCISE-L-request@rootsweb.com - so that non- Waterguard colleagues and others interested in HM Customs & Excise in general could also correspond with each other.
A few letters to the editors of The Bond - the newsletter of the Federation of Customs and Excise Retired Members Associations & the Retired Members Society - and Portcullis - the C&E house magazine - announced the new web site, its aims and scope, and soon put me back in touch with ex-colleagues who were more than willing to share their memories, search their lofts and to loan me memorabilia from their own Waterguard days.
From those humble beginnings the word spread and material for the site flooded in . . . . . .
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Trevor Tomasin
APO -1966 to1972
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