twenty deep, which formed a cleft in the mountain not too far from our base camp. Along the side of the ravine was a small stand of fir trees. My Royal Engineer friend selected twostout ones growing close together and, using expertly placed plastic explosive, dropped them neatly across the ravine. A little work with levers was all that was then required to manoeuvre them so that they lay parallel to each other and about six feet apart. We secured them firmly to each bank with rope and spikes driven into the ground and then used them as the basis for a most impressive structure which had a narrow walkway giving access to a most magnificent eight-holer. We were miles from anywhere and some two thousand feet above the fjord, so there was no need for screens to hide us from prying eyes. I have known few more congenial experiences in my life than sitting every morning, in the company of my fellows, over a twenty-foot-deep latrine, with the mountains around us, looking down on the returning trawlers of the local fishing fleet dotting the fjord below and listening to the distinctive ‘pot, pot, pot’ sound of their big, single-cylinder diesel engines wafting up to us from the calm waters below.
My first act when I got back from our Norwegian adventure was to go and see Jane, who had now got a job in London. I turned up unannounced at her bedsit on the fourth floor of 13 Philbeach Gardens, Earls Court. I had fixed nowhere to sleep that night and hoped to be able to stay with her. But I reckoned without her dragon of a landlady, Miss Griffith-Jones, who instructed me in tones not to be disobeyed that ‘All visitors are to be out by eleven o’clock’. So, after a scratch meal of baked beans from her fridge (all she had at the time), I left to take pot luck on the streets of London. I called in at a nearby mobile tea and buttie stand, where I met a very pleasant man of around 60, who asked if I had anywhere to stay? I said I didn’t and he offered to give me a bed for the night. We walked back to his flat nearby where we sat and talked over glasses of whisky. I found him engaging, interesting and utterly charming. He introduced himself as very well-known contributor to a popular tabloid newspaper. After about two hours conversation and several more whiskies he told me that he was homosexual, was I? I said I wasn’t, and the conversation then continued as though the subject had never been raised, until the early hours of the morning. I remember him as one of the most urbane, interesting and civilised people I have ever met. *
Next on our training agenda was the much feared Commando course, which we began in late September 1960. Newly joined Royal Marines wear the Corps’s distinctive blue beret with a red patch on the front, on which is mounted the Globe and Laurel which is our insignia. The green beret of the Commandos has to be earned on a six-week course designed to test the limits of physical endurance. The centrepiece of the course is a series of forced, or ‘speed’, marches which must be accomplished at a pace of a mile in ten minutes, carrying full kit and rifle. These speed marches escalate from the ‘five-miler’ to the final march in full kit across thirty miles of open Dartmoor, which we Officers had to complete in seven hours and the Marines in eight. In addition there were exercises to test mental endurance when tired, negotiating an assault course while carrying a ‘wounded’ comrade over obstacles, and high rope and net work in the upper branches of a local wood. It was very tough going, but we all got through it and received our much-coveted green berets on 28 October 1960.
This brought us to the next phase of our training, in which we were posted as junior Troop officers to an active service Commando for a year. To my delight I was posted that autumn, along with my two colleagues Tim Courtenay and Rupert van der Horst, to 42 Commando Royal Marines, then serving in Singapore.
Before the start of our
My first act when I got back from our Norwegian adventure was to go and see Jane, who had now got a job in London. I turned up unannounced at her bedsit on the fourth floor of 13 Philbeach Gardens, Earls Court. I had fixed nowhere to sleep that night and hoped to be able to stay with her. But I reckoned without her dragon of a landlady, Miss Griffith-Jones, who instructed me in tones not to be disobeyed that ‘All visitors are to be out by eleven o’clock’. So, after a scratch meal of baked beans from her fridge (all she had at the time), I left to take pot luck on the streets of London. I called in at a nearby mobile tea and buttie stand, where I met a very pleasant man of around 60, who asked if I had anywhere to stay? I said I didn’t and he offered to give me a bed for the night. We walked back to his flat nearby where we sat and talked over glasses of whisky. I found him engaging, interesting and utterly charming. He introduced himself as very well-known contributor to a popular tabloid newspaper. After about two hours conversation and several more whiskies he told me that he was homosexual, was I? I said I wasn’t, and the conversation then continued as though the subject had never been raised, until the early hours of the morning. I remember him as one of the most urbane, interesting and civilised people I have ever met. *
Next on our training agenda was the much feared Commando course, which we began in late September 1960. Newly joined Royal Marines wear the Corps’s distinctive blue beret with a red patch on the front, on which is mounted the Globe and Laurel which is our insignia. The green beret of the Commandos has to be earned on a six-week course designed to test the limits of physical endurance. The centrepiece of the course is a series of forced, or ‘speed’, marches which must be accomplished at a pace of a mile in ten minutes, carrying full kit and rifle. These speed marches escalate from the ‘five-miler’ to the final march in full kit across thirty miles of open Dartmoor, which we Officers had to complete in seven hours and the Marines in eight. In addition there were exercises to test mental endurance when tired, negotiating an assault course while carrying a ‘wounded’ comrade over obstacles, and high rope and net work in the upper branches of a local wood. It was very tough going, but we all got through it and received our much-coveted green berets on 28 October 1960.
This brought us to the next phase of our training, in which we were posted as junior Troop officers to an active service Commando for a year. To my delight I was posted that autumn, along with my two colleagues Tim Courtenay and Rupert van der Horst, to 42 Commando Royal Marines, then serving in Singapore.
Before the start of our
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