I am of what must be described, recently at least, as a military family. My father and both grandfathers were all soldiers, though of greatly different career patterns. My paternal grandfather joined the infantry as a private soldier, in the York & Lancaster Regiment, in 1888, but transferred five years later to the Army Service Corps and was serving as a Sergeant in Malta when my father was born in 1896. He was commissioned in that Corps on the outbreak of the Great War and retired in 1922. He and my father both won MC’s in the War(1916). My other grandfather, though was a cavalryman (4^th Hussar) and reached the end of his service, having been wounded at Tel-el-Kebir in 1880 and later commanded his regiment, about the time the first mentioned joined.

On the other hand, I did not grow up with my father’s Regiment, The King’s. He went out to the battalion in India when I was six and did not return before the Second World War had started, so I saw little of him during the time I was growing up, and by the time he was able to enjoy a settled life of any sort I had myself joined the Service. I do not know how much he regretted these circumstances. I think I did, though I did not feel in any way aggrieved, for, after all, the situation was much the same for many of my contemporaries. Neither have I ever felt in any way deprived thereby, though I do not think my wife has ever quite been able to accept this.

I left school in 1946 to join the Fleet Air Arm. However, I did not attempt to go directly into the Executive branch of the Royal Navy to do this because my Careers Master at school made it clear to my father that, in his view, there was no hope in the face of the very steep competition which he said existed for places for "an ordinary decent plodder like Jeremy." Instead I set my sights at joining the lower deck and gaining a commission through qualifying as a pilot. Nevertheless I did sit the competitive entry examination for direct entry to a commission in the Royal Marines (they sought more maturity - I say!), on the off chance that I might scrape by. To the great surprise of my school, my father and myself I gained the fifth place among some 70 aspirants, and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant on 1 Jan 47.

A couple of years later the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, in their wisdom, changed their policy and, having just completed putting us all through an elementary flying course designed to fire our imaginations for the life of Biggles, decided that Royal Marines should no longer be accepted for training as aircrew. Thus I was saved from almost certainly killing myself as a pilot in the 1950’s when carrier flying was particularly dangerous, and, rather more importantly, was given the opportunity to discover that Marines are vastly more exciting, more interesting and more rewarding to serve with than a piece of machinery!

I had a short tour of duty in a cruiser (HMS SIRUS - the brightest star in the heavens) in 1948 which I very much enjoyed, largely perhaps because my boss was about to leave the Service to read Law, which he studied so assiduously that he left me, very largely, to run the Royal Marine detachment. He has since become a distinguished QC. However my real love for my career came home to me fully, I think when, on completion of training in 1950, I joined 40 Commando RM in Malaya during the campaign against the Communist insurgents. Here again I was very lucky in my immediate boss; a marvellous man, about five years older than I and just as bald then as he is now, who had a real knack of coaching his subordinates at the same time as giving one one’s head and building self-confidence ( I think I started out very under confident.)

During my 36 years of service I has six tours of duty in Commando Forces, from Lieutenant to Major General. The most challenging and satisfying of these, as all professional soldiers would say, I found to be when I had the good fortune to be appointed as the Commanding Officer of 42 Commando Royal Marines in 1972/73. It is perhaps a little ironical that this period included my two tours of duty in Northern Ireland, hardly what might be described as pleasant interludes, though of course the way the blokes responded was a great inspiration, whilst the opportunity to observe how all the effort that had been put into training and preparation bore fruit gave much satisfaction. The more active commando service took place in Malaya, Malta, Egypt, Cyprus, and Borneo as well as Northern Ireland, and rather more peacefully in many other parts 0f the World including, finally, the Arctic counties of Norway over several winters before General Galtieri and his henchmen commanded my attention in the South Atlantic. For times of "peace" a fairly indecently active career as a mainstream soldier.

Another major strand in my service was in training appointments, often with responsibility for potential leaders. For two years (1955-57) I was often in charge of the tactical and practical training of junior NCO’s in my Corps, which was, to me, a marvellous opportunity to pass on some of the things that I thought I has learned on my first tour on active service. After my second tour in a commando I has a further three years teaching, this time with Officer Cadets at Sandhurst. Some years later I also commanded the Officers Wing at the Commando Training Centre Royal Marines, where I took part not only in the training but also the selection of officers for the Corps. I had two tours which I particularly enjoyed, from a selfish point of view, at the Royal Marines School of Music, as a subaltern and later as Commandant. One of the great delights of the latter was that the man who had been my right hand as a Corporal was with me again, this time as a Regimental Sergeant Major, an example of the continuity of things in a family Corps like ours.

My personal training, after just over four years at Cheltenham College (1942-46), which with so many of the staff away at the war was not the best time to be at school (or, perhaps one should put it, not the time to get the best out of school), began with close on four years of learning the profession - some parts of it at least twice over! In 1963-64 I attended Staff College in Australia where I studied, during Sukarno’s Confrontational campaign, with both Malaysian and Indonesian students. This was intriguing because I myself had taken part as a company commander in the early development of this particular ‘war which was not a war’, and returned to Borneo to continue as a staff officer on one side, while a couple of my fellow students took part on the other side. One in particular, whom I had known quite well, conducted his operations entirely predictably. In 1976 (no year for sitting in a lecture hall) I studied at the Royal College Of Defence Studies in Belgrave Square. I also had four staff appointments; as Aide de Camp to a Royal Marine General in 1954-55, as the "operations" staff officer in the Headquarters of 17 Gurkha Division in 1965, as a secretary to the Chiefs of Staff Committee in London (quite a jump from dealing with real problems on operations to politics in Whitehall - enlightening if not inspiring), and as the Amphibious Operations Officer of HMS BULWARK, one of the Commando Ships. These vessels were not in service with the fleet for very long (under 20 years), but were most interesting and versatile instruments on which a very wide range of tunes could be played, so this was a most interesting and instructive appointment.

With only one London job and rather more than my fair share of time with the blokes, I would regard myself as one of the lucky ones.

I have absolutely no ability to strike any ball, whether moving or stationary, with implement, racquet, bat, arm, head or leg so my Principal sporting pastimes have been climbing (now reduced to hill walking as a result of the long term effects of a friend throwing a rock at my head in the Alps one day - I managed to move my head but not my knee!), sailing (in earlier days in cruising boats, but as the children grew to an age where they could join in, more often in dinghies) and parachuting.

I have no musical education and less than no performing ability (my family assure me even in the bath), bur music is one of my most principal pleasures. I recently started to do a bit of painting in water colour, but never seem to make enough time to get down to it as much as will be necessary to make any progress.