Dan Snow's History Hit - Commando Training in Scotland

Episode Date: April 24, 2023

The commandos have become a byword for elite raiding and cutting-edge military operations. They were set up during the Second World War in June 1940, following a request from Winston Churchill, for special forces that could carry out raids against German-occupied Europe. As Monty Halls says, they were 'well trained men who wreaked havoc'. But to be the best you have to train the hardest and where better and more challenging than the wild and rugged highlands of Lochaber, Scotland.In today's episode Dan takes the podcast to Achnacarry Castle, the Clan Cameron headquarters turned Commando Basic Training Centre during World War Two. Both clan chief Lochiel Donald Cameron and ex-Royal Marine Monty Halls tell Dan about the gruelling initiation hike, the assault courses with live ammunition and the harsh weather that made the Commandos the best of the best.Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore.If you want to get in touch with the podcast, you can email us at [e-mail], we'd love to hear from you!

I'm just driving between Fort William and Inverness, down the Great Glen, one of the great highways of Scotland, through the Highlands, and we're just going through Spain Bridge. And it reminds me that there's actually a commando memorial here, because this is where the commandos trained in the Second World War, in one of the toughest environments that the UK had on offer. And I've been here before with some World War II veterans, commando veterans. It's been a while since I've been here, so I thought I might just look in, see how it's doing. It's cold out. Once I'm out of the car, it's pretty cold. I'm walking up to the deserted memorial. It shows three commandos looking out across the glen, across the ground on which they trained on which they

prepared for their operations all over europe the commandos were churchill's brainchild really you want to set europe aflame if he couldn't fight after dunkirk the defeat of the british and french armies in 1940 he couldn't fight germany conventionally on the continent he thought he could raise a band of elite warriors that could be landed, can assert its support, local resistance efforts, to fight Nazi Germany not with a sledgehammer but with a series of well-aimed lethal needle pricks.

This is a suitable memorial for one of the most remarkable units in the Second World War, and I think they were made remarkable by training in this brutal, brutal environment. Winston Churchill paid a tribute to the commandos. It's inscribed on a brass plaque on this memorial. It says we may feel sure that nothing of which we have any knowledge or record has ever been done by mortal men which surpasses their feats of arms. Truly we may say of them, when shall their glory fade? Well not yet, not yet. They train around here at Achnacarry Castle, one of my favourite castles in Scotland because it's home to the Clan Cameron and as anyone who knows about the Jacobite uprisings of the 18th century

knows, the Clan Cameron were probably the most ferocious supporters of the exiled Stuart family. Donald Cameron of Loch Eel, the clan chief, was one of Bonnie Prince Charlie's first and most important supporters. So you know what, I'm going to see if anyone's at home. I'm going to go knock on the door. Let's see if the modern Loch Eel is around, talk about his ancestor. Bear with me. A few phone calls later, folks, I'd managed to get myself an invitation to Achnacarry Castle to meet Donald Angus Cameron,

the 27th chief of the clan Cameron, whose ancestors fought at Bannockburn and Culloden. He's known simply as Lockheel. T-minus 10. Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again.

And lift off. And the shuttle has cleared the tower. and the shuttle has cleared the tower. And then it says signposted Gare Lockie? Gare Lockie. Oh, we're just crossing the Caledonian Canal. That brings back the old memories. I did that on a family holiday once with my other kid. We sailed from the west coast of Scotland right the way through to Inverness on the East Coast via Loch Ness and this is a particular staircase of locks

here. I remember sweating away opening and closing the sluice gates when I was a kid and my dad shouting at me. Happy memories. I think we're driving up to the big house. Do we keep going here? Yeah, that's the museum. Just pulling into the gate now and we're driving up to this kind of crenellated stately home. So it's a Victorian, it's a kind of gothic stately home with a nod to its military past. It was once upon a time, these defences weren't just for show

because this would have been the HQ of a powerful warlike clan. Hi there. How are you doing? Right, here we go. Hello, sir, how are you? I'm very well, thank you, Dan. Well, let me just say that the house now feels like a beautiful, almost a sort of stately home. Was it once, was there a kind of military stronghold, Was there a castle on this spot or have things moved? No, the original castle,

which was made of timber, was about 500 yards away and was burnt by Cumberland soldiers in 1746. So the British government burned it down? Yeah. And then this was built in about 1804, started by that man behind me, who was the 22nd chief. How are you different from an English aristocrat south of the border from Somerset or something? How are things different up here? What does a clan chief mean? Clan means children in Gaelic.

That's what clan means. And so a clan really was a group of people who owed allegiance to the main man, if you like, the most powerful guy. And they probably took his name. So the clan Cameron was probably a mixture of three clans, sub-clans, and they all intermarried and took the name Cameron and that's how the clan originated. Did the clan chiefs have more power over the people of their clan of their area than again they're an equivalent living down in East Anglia or Bedfordshire or something? Yeah much more much much more because I think that the chief would have given tenancies to a whole lot of people and they would have given it to taxmen or whatever. And in return, those people would

be expected to fight for the chief should he ever require them. So the chief would give out parcels of land and in return they had to fight. Yeah. And presumably they were masters of sort of guerrilla warfare, using the hills and the mountains. It must have been very difficult for English troops lumbering up from the south to have any chance against these clansmen. I think it was. And I think that the guerrilla warfare continued all the way through. How many clan chiefs still exist and live on the lands that their ancestors held hundreds of years before, like you? I mean, are you quite unusual in modern Scotland? I think we're probably quite unique in that we still have

quite a lot of the land which we had before. Less than we had, but still quite a lot. This estate proved very desirable during the Second World War. It had everything needed for commando training. How did that come about? I think almost the whole of the North Scotland was a sort of restricted area. And it was very much Churchill trying to get commanders to go and fight overseas to upset the Germans. And there were 25,000 came here during the war. Seven-week gruelling course. And then they got their green berry at the end of it Colonel Vaughan. He was the the main man but 25,000 all nationalities mostly Brits obviously

but Free French Dutch American American Rangers came here for instance. So it's quite international and were they based in the house the Instructors were this was the officer's mess here. They all had mizzenhuts out in the park, which is where they slept and ate and whatever. But the instructors were in this house. And I've met a couple of the veterans who talk about how tough it was. In the beech trees here, they had a climbing thing with long ropes and then they had a rope across the river which they had to slide down with live ammunition going on underneath them. There's, I think, one or two deaths here in the training

because they used live ammunition. When they first came to Spearham Bridge, they got off the train and carrying a full kit, they had to be at Arden and Kerry within a certain time or they were RTU'd, return to unit. Right, so that was the hurdle that had to jump from the train to here. Yeah, in full kit. Wow.

And they did a lot of damage here, actually. I mean, you can't really see because of the rain, but they started a fire up on that hill, which lasted three days and three nights, and burnt down a whole lot of the old Caledonian forest. And you can still see the damage now? Yeah. And they burnt the roof off this house, and they left a lot of unexploded ammunition.

We've had to get the bomb disposal people up from Fas Lane on more than one occasion because we found unexploded mortars and hand grenades and whatever. Anyway, we love them, despite all that. Lockheel, thank you very much for having me in your house and telling me all about your wonderful history. It's been my pleasure and very nice to see you.

Yeah, great. You listened to Dan Snow's History Hit. Don't give up on us just yet. There's more coming. I'm a spy doing whatever spies do. But what am I going to whip out of my pocket next? Careful. In this special month of Patented,

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Wherever you get your podcasts. A huge thanks to Lachille for having us in his historic house. But after I got back from my trip to Scotland, I had the bug. I wanted to find out more about these Commandos that I can carry. So I turned to my good friend. He's been on this podcast before. He's an absolute legend. He's a Commandos expert.

He's a former Royal Marine himself. He is a walking, talking encyclopedia of Royal Marine history. It's Monty Halls. He knows everything there is to know about the Royal Marines and the commandos, including what they went through in Achenacarry. Monty, good to talk to you, buddy. Good to see you again, Dan. How are you? I'm good, but I'm wondering, there's been Royal Marines around since the 17th century, but we now call them Royal Marine commandos. Where do commandos come from? Now, that's 80 years ago, so it wasn't some sort of brilliant tactical pivot by Churchill. It was Churchill who came

up with the idea, and indeed came up with the name Commandos, because as I'm sure you know, he was a war correspondent in the Boer War and he watched de Wette's commandos, these small groups of highly trained sort of fieldsmen who could shoot a fly's eyebrows off at 800 yards, incredible horsemen, and he watched them run rings around a 250,000 strong British army and it made a huge impression on him. So after Dunkirk in June 1940, which was an unmitigated disaster, as everyone knows, Britain was left in the situation that they could only do very basic infantry operations. There's about 350,000 soldiers were evacuated off the beach at Dunkirk, and they left all their heavy kit. They left everything. So Churchill became a huge advocate for the commando model.

Interestingly, I was doing a bit of research into this. There were a number of names put forward for these new elite troops, and one of them was the Knight Panthers. So I could have been a Knight Panther, which I think is a missed opportunity, quite frankly. Monty, I'm fairly convinced you have described yourself as a night panther before. That's right. That's right. That's definitely not a conflict context, but there we go. So things happen really quickly.

It's been really interesting to look at this in the context of our modern status and inability to do anything administratively and logistically at speed with our defense, with our armed forces, everything takes ages. So two weeks after Dunkirk, the first commando raid was launched. It was a disaster. Of course it was, because they just threw a bunch of people together and said, right, you're going to get some boats. You're going to get to France and kill some Germans.

That was broadly their remit. And amazingly, they all made it back in one piece. There was only one injury, and that was a guy called Colonel Dewar, who was the guy who actually came up with the whole concept of how these guys are going to operate. A couple of weeks later, there was another one, Operation Ambassador on Guernsey, which was even worse. And at the end of it, Churchill said, right, if we're going to do this, we've got to do it properly. So that's when the commando model really started to be formed. And of course, that's what's led to ACNA carry, because originally, army units were asked to train up their own commandos. But that didn't work. They needed centralized training.

They needed an inspirational, brilliant figure to run this training. And they found a World War I veteran called Charles Vaughan, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Vaughan. And he basically set up ACNA Carry. So it was organized in December 1941. And by February 1942, the first commandos were arriving. And of course, the Royal Marines only became commandos really in 1942. Before that, it was the Army commandos. Every time an Army commando meets a Royal Marine commando, even today, they're like,

hey, we were the originals, fellas. You just came along when all the hard work had been done we were the original commandos so the royal marines only came in in 1942 essentially and yet the royal marines are the ones who've carried the tradition on so talk to me about the the training talk to me i'm gonna carry it sort of looms everyone still talks about it it's just become a thing of legend, hasn't it? It is a citadel. It's an iconic location for every Royal Marine and every commando who's ever existed in the last 80 years. And why is it perfect? Well, it's perfect because it's a long way from anywhere. That's one of the reasons. And the reason that was important was obviously security to train up this new elite band of

brothers as Churchill called them the butcher and bolt brigade was one of the expressions he used as in they're raiders nowadays when Royal Marines do their commando tests when anyone does their commando tests you carry 22 pounds of equipment for every test And the reason is that's enough to keep you going for 24 hours. The commandos were never thought to be in theatre for longer than 24 hours. So Agna Cary was chosen. Okay, so it's remote. It's also very difficult terrain. It's one of the rainiest places in Britain. So training there is going to be arduous. It's going to be tricky. So training there is going to be arduous. It's going to be tricky.

It's owned by the Camerons of Loch Eel. And Lord Cameron was a real patriot. So he was like, yes, of course, I will give you the house and I'll give you the grounds and you can train up the commandos here. As I was researching this prior to us chatting, Dan, I was like, that's really funny, but so many things in Acna carry just became woven into the DNA of the modern Royal Marines. Certain things were put down there that just became woven into the DNA. What's one of them? Officers and other ranks all trained together.

You don't have like training for officers and training for other ranks. These are commandos. If they're going to wear the green beret, they all have to do the same stuff together. And that applies today as much as it did back then. They created a buddy system. So each recruit, as it were, and bear in mind, these were enlisted men who were already experienced soldiers who had volunteered to become commandos. Each one of them had a mucker in training, and they did everything together. It's the buddy system. And that still exists in the modern Commando Training Center as well. So it's really interesting to sort of delve into that bit. And the other thing that made it perfect, it was seven miles away from Speon Bridge railway station. So the recruit

commanders, trainee commanders, wannabe commandos turned up at Speon Bridge. They had 60 pounds of kit that they'd been asked to bring with them. And they got off at Speon Bridge and they had one hour to get to the gates of Atna Carry. And if they didn't make that hour, they were back on the 3.30 train that took them back south. That was the instant filter. And there's a hill on route of that seven miles, a very steep hill called Heartbreak Hill. And what do you know, next to the Commander's Training Centre down in Devon, now where you do the nine miler, there's the Heartbreak Hill. so it's really woven into the dna really of the organization you've been through that training a lot of people listen to this and be like yeah i reckon i can do

that is it the fact that you're already sleep deprived you're wet you're kit it's the fact that you're not doing it in your nicest trainers after a proper night's rest with lots of little energy pouches is it the cumulative effect that's so hard or is it just the the sheer scale of the obstacles that you guys have to overcome yeah it's a good question a lot of people have lots of different approaches and touching on the training that took place in akakari it's really interesting to see it was elemental really elemental they were out in the elements all the time. And it toughened them up. They became feral and hardened.

And that was one of Vaughan's things, you know, the camp commandant's thing, was that he felt in World War I, the young Tommies that came out just weren't ready for the environment, let alone fighting. So they degraded very quickly. And Vaughan really didn't want that to happen so he was like right we're gonna toughen these lads up from day one that's psychologically as well so you know I mentioned that seven mile run to the camp and if you didn't make it that's it you were back on the train as you walked into the camp there was a row of graves next to the entrance. That was the first thing you saw.

With each headstone saying, this man didn't seek cover when he was under fire. This man didn't advance to contact properly. This man lost concentration. This man, that was the first thing. It's like, this is real. We're going to war. You're probably going to die.

You know, it was that sort of brutal. But what they were trying to do is get them really inured to the environment. That still exists now. You know, that's a big part of it. That sort of physical debilitation. These environments are so harsh and so hard. So that was definitely part of this thing. But add a layer on top of that is taking people right to the edge physically in terms of asking them what to do.

So the training culminated in commando tests. And the final test was a 36 mile yomp, essentially, to the top of Ben Nevis, which is conveniently that summit is 18 miles away from Achnacarry. They had 36 hours to do it, but they had to spend a night in the field undercover, basically. And then they also had a 14-miler that they had two hours, 10 minutes to do. And interestingly, they had a Tarzan assault course that they needed to do. And that was creating ropes over rivers.

It was getting over obstacles. It's really, really elemental stuff. All the while, the last exercise, all the while they were under live fire. So live rounds. So 41 commandos were killed during training under live fire, basically blown up or shot or whatever. And I think a lot of that continues. The live fire bit doesn't. But you asked Dan right at the start of my long diatribe about the training, what is it that gets people through? And Woody Allen said that 98% of success in life is turning up. An old and bold Marine said to me at the start of my training, just turn up to the next day. Just be there the next day, 24 hours.

Just get through it. And then you can give up at the end of that day. But what do you know? Why don't you just do one more day? You said one more day at a time. Monty, there's lots of people out there going, every time you and I post anything on social media about some heroic World War II commando raid,

people go, oh, these days, everyone's too soft. In your experience, and you've not only been through this yourself, but you've worked really closely with the generation of absolute legends who were in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. Is that true? Or is actually the thing about this, because what you're describing in Achim Kari sounds like it's out of my league, but do you think actually that's what we're all capable of?

And it's just a matter of training and preparation and culture and spirit? For the book and the TV series, I had to interview a lot of the falklands marines because it was the 40th anniversary of the falklands conflict and i spoke to julian thompson who was brigade commander of the royal marines you couldn't be a prouder man to wear the green barrier you really couldn't he's a commander to his absolute tiptoes and i said what do you think of the young lads going through now he said they're not as good as we were they're better they're better than we were and the reason is that they've got a huge amount of sort of technology to get their heads around modern warfare is a very technological game you've got a sort of intellectual hurdle as well and when i was looking into the acne carry

training it was so elemental like one of the tests was basically getting a pine tree the trunk of a pine tree with like 20 of you and throwing it backwards and forwards to each other until one of the groups didn't want to do it anymore it's really that elemental It ain't like that now. The guys and girls going through commando training have to be phenomenally bright as well as physically capable. And that training paid off, right? I mean, the wartime operations, it's so interesting that you described the failures at the beginning, and I always love that because it reminds us how important failure is

and how so many of the things that we try begin in failure. But by the end, whether it's claymore in norway going up to uh the low photon islands to steal the communication equipment from the nazis sanazair which we've done this podcast a while ago diep these are legendary some of the greatest of commando you might call them special forces combined missions of all time and so that training kind of paid off right yes? Yes, it did. And perhaps the epitome of a commando raid was Dieppe. And the reason Dieppe was such a shining example of what this new group of sort of elite warriors could do is because the main operation was a disaster. So many Canadians, basically, it was an absolute horrendous, you know, the casualties are unbelievable. But Lord Lover, who's about the epitome of a World War II commando, a little

pencil tash, rather dashing, you know, a bit of a cove, I think. He was a bit of a cove. And he trained his team for that, his group of commandos on his own estate, number four commander, I think it was. And instead of doing the main raid bit, they went around and silenced a battery of guns that was potentially going to fire on the main force. And they did it using stealth, intelligence, huge fitness, close quarter fighting skills.

They didn't take one casualty so they took out all of the guns and then they extracted in the boats and they disappeared and it was so vivid now Churchill was quite guilty about Dieppe he got Dieppe wrong they ended up going in under cover of daylight they didn't have air cover they didn't have a barrage before they went in. It's one of the reasons that it was such a massacre. But Churchill thought Dieppe was the moment that it really turned because that was like, wow, look what this new group of elite soldiers can actually do compared to a simultaneous large scale raid that is just utterly disastrous so and you mentioned there down learning from failure that diep is kind of one of the reasons that d-day was a success is so many things were learned in diep about what you can't do assaulting a bitch you've already said a lot about the legacy of the wartime commandos and aknikari literally there's still places at the commando training center down in the west country which are named after that you still do the same things so that clearly that legacy

endures yes well on the main drag in the commando training center one of the first things you see on the right hand side is an old nissen hut like a wooden nissen hut now achnikari it wasn't a training base when they took it over. So they had to sort of transform everything. They ended up with 52 Nissan huts there. At one time, they had 2,000 people going through it and 150 officers going through. So they had to build a lot of these temporary structures. And out of interest, the people going through weren't just British commandos. You had French, you had Belgian, you had Canadian. Most surprising of all, you had people going through weren't just british commandos you had french you had belgian you had canadian most surprising of all you had germans going through the free germans essentially so jewish people who might have escaped germany they were trained as commandos as well because

obviously they're invaluable knowledge of the land that these guys were going into but that nissen hut is not from acna carry It's actually from when the Commando Training Centre was established, which was in the 50s, which is when the whole Commando role was handed over to the Royal Marines. And that Nissan hut has been left there to say, this is where you come from, chaps. This is your heritage. Every time you go anywhere, Commando Training Centre,

you have to go past that hut. Yeah, which is good. A little visual reminder of your DNA and your heritage and who you represent, really. Amazing. And just lastly, you're a great ambassador for the Marines.

That ethos continues today, right? The idea of highly trained, skilled, thoughtful, clever soldiers attacking from the sea or not. So the legacy lives on in the men as well. Yes, more than ever. More than ever. And the reason is, think of future commando force within the Marines at the moment. And the future commando

force are small groups of really highly trained, they're tier two special forces. And they're trying to roll it out across the whole of the Royal Marines to essentially work behind enemy lines, to create chaos in logistics chains, to create confusion within the ranks of the enemy. And future commando forces proved to be devastatingly effective, and is now being rolled out by the army as well. And of course, that's in the spirit of Vaughan and Churchill and Dudley Clark back in the 40s, who were like, we need raiders, basically. And the reason it's so applicable now, look at Ukraine. So Ukraine has faced, in particular in the early days of the invasion, overwhelming numbers.

But they had small groups of well-trained men who wreaked havoc, basically, trained by the Green Barriers in America, who took their name from the Green Barons. So it's devastatingly effective now more so than ever. Wow, that's fascinating. Churchill would be very pleased to hear that. Monty, thank you so much for coming on the pod and sharing all your knowledge about commandos,

the Marines that are carrying with us. Tell everyone what your fantastic book is called. It's called Commando, Britain's Ocean Warriors. I always think this every time we hang out, you embody that commando ethos, that culture, that pride. You personally kind of do link those generations together. You know, you still work a lot with the young folks. Can you imagine who you'd be without the commandos? As you know, I talk a good game, but I never fired a shot in anger. I was a bit of a generation that just never really went into conflict.

So I'm in awe of what the lads that I interviewed did, just completely in awe. They're my heroes, you know. Yes, it is so defining. It's a really interesting thing. It is a brotherhood, and it does come to define the way you conduct yourself and the way you go through life the way you face obstacles is you think well i can't not do this because i'm a bootneck and a bootneck's a name

for a royal marine so it does become really defining and i often think it's a wonderful thing that that identity that you have such a strong sense of identity makes me incredibly boring at dinner parties but it's quite nice to have that identity I think it's not true listeners he's a he's an absolute laugh at dinner attest to that um thanks Monty no worries huge pleasure thanks for having me on you