Major Boris Mollo TD was born in 1936, one of three sons of a Russian art collector who escaped the Russian revolution, and an English mother.
One of his early memories is being evacuated to Wales, shortly after a bomb fell directly through the chimney of a house his father had acquired in Park Lane, and landed unexploded in the basement.
At school Boris was a keen war-gamer. Following National Service as a subaltern with the 8th Royal Irish Hussars, Boris went to Cambridge University. He joined the then 3rd/4th County of London Yeomanry serving as a Troop Leader. He eventually went on to command in 1968 C(KCLY) Squadron of the recently formed Royal Yeomanry Regiment at Croydon, and then also the Westminster Dragoons who formed HQ Squadron at Elverton Street in London.