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1940 – Churchill’s Vision

As France fell and Britain stood alone, Winston Churchill demanded a new kind of force: small, highly mobile raiding units that could strike the Germans anywhere along the occupied coast, disrupt supply lines, destroy installations and vanish before the enemy could react. Inspired by the guerrilla tactics of the Boer Commandos he had seen forty years earlier, Churchill ordered the creation of what would become simply “the Commandos”.

Hit hard, move fast, live tough.

Initially manned by volunteers from Army regiments, the force was dramatically expanded in 1942 when nine Royal Marine battalions were redesignated as Royal Marine Commandos. A new, ferocious training regime was required to turn good soldiers into something far more lethal.

The Depot: Achnacarry Castle, Scottish Highlands

Deep in the West Highlands beside Loch Lochy stands Achnacarry Castle, ancestral home of the Chiefs of Clan Cameron. In 1942 it became the Commando Basic Training Centre (CBTC) – the single beating heart of Commando training for the rest of the war.

The ground was ripped up, lush lawns replaced by asphalt for a vast drill square, and lines of freezing Nissen huts sprang up. Ben Nevis loomed nearby; the weather did the rest. As the old Commando saying went: “If it ain’t raining, it ain’t training.” It rained. A lot.

Command of the depot fell to Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Vaughan, a hard man with harder standards. Under his watch, more than 25,000 British, American, French, Polish, Norwegian, Dutch, Belgian, Greek and even “Free German” troops passed through the gates between 1942 and 1946.

The Training Philosophy

Everything at Achnacarry was designed to build three things: physical toughness, speed, and unbreakable character. Live ammunition cracked overhead on assault courses, men crossed rivers on swinging toggle bridges, and every scheme ended with a speed march back to camp in soaking kit.

The four famous Commando Tests that today’s Royal Marine recruits must pass to earn the green beret were born here:

• The Endurance Course – 6 miles of tunnels, wading pools and the infamous “sheep dip”, followed by a 4-mile run back and a wet marksmanship test (73 minutes, 71 for officers).
• The 9-Mile Speed March – full fighting order, 90 minutes.
• The Tarzan Assault Course – high ropes, the Commando Slide (once called the Death Slide), and the 30-foot wall.
• The 30-Miler – across Dartmoor in under 8 hours (7 for officers).

Fail one and you went again. No excuses.

The Men Who Made the Legend

Captain Donald Gilchrist & the Birth of the “Death Slide”

In early 1942, Captain Donald Gilchrist (Cameronians – Scottish Rifles) arrived as a student, passed the course, and was kept on by Colonel Vaughan as an instructor. Paired with the wild, gap-toothed Lieutenant Alick Cowieson, the two set about inventing new ways to terrify trainees.

One day Cowieson rigged a long climbing rope from the top of a tall tree on one bank of the icy River Arkaig to the base of a tree on the far side. A short toggle rope looped over it became the handle. The first man to test the home-made zip line was Cowieson himself.

Halfway across, the rope sagged. Cowieson hung helplessly over the freezing river, wrists locked in the toggle loops. Gilchrist and another instructor, Frickleton, saw their chance. Shouting “Hold on, sir – we’ll let you down gently!” they loosened the anchor rope. Splash. An enraged, soaking Cowieson surfaced swearing vengeance while the two pranksters sprinted for their lives.

The “Death Slide” had been born. It is still the first obstacle on the modern Tarzan Course at Lympstone.

The 36-Hour Scheme

Winter 1942. Two hundred men disappeared into the hills for 36 hours of relentless rain, gale-force winds and near-freezing temperatures. Men were lifted off their feet by gusts, packs and rifles were carried for those who could no longer walk, yet not one man fell out sick the next morning.

This was the direct ancestor of today’s Final Exercise – a week on the hills ending with the assault on Scraesdon Fort.

The Legacy

When the war ended in 1945, the peacetime army decided it no longer needed such a large Commando force. The depot at Achnacarry closed in 1946.

But the tests, the ethos and the sheer bloody-minded refusal to quit lived on. Every Royal Marine who has earned the green beret since 1942 has been measured against the standards set on those rain-lashed Scottish hills.

The castle may be quiet now, but the spirit it forged still marches across Dartmoor, through Helmand Province, and into whatever fight comes next.

Because once a Commando, always a Commando. And it all began in the rain at Achnacarry.