Fifty Years Ago: Friday, 16th July 1976
Okehampton Camp, Dartmoor – Age 14.9
I got into cadet corps kit for breakfast, only to discover that most of the others were wearing their home clothes. At fourteen, fitting in mattered, but not nearly as much as getting things wrong and being punished for it. Public schools and the military operated on remarkably similar assumptions: uniforms, discipline, punctuality and hierarchy. I quickly changed into civilian clothes so as not to get into trouble. Then, of course, it turned out I had been right in the first place and had to change back again.
After breakfast we went to RM Instow (Royal Marines Instow), located just across the Torridge Estuary from Bideford in North Devon. We had a ride in a 154.2 DUCK. the classic World War II-era DUKW amphibious trucks (popularly known as “Ducks”). These were used at the base as reliable benchmarks for water-to-land testing and to ferry supplies across the treacherous sands of the Torridge Estuary
At first there was a quick run, then a slower passage through what looked to my eyes like a giant sheep dip. The vehicle entered this enormous concrete trough, floated, motored through the water and then climbed back out again.
It felt faintly like watching a D-Day landing in miniature, or perhaps a trip down a waterslide at an amusement park, except without the speed, excitement or enormous splash. A dozen of us sat in it while the vehicle demonstrated what it could do in a carefully controlled environment. Looking back, the workshops struck me as surprisingly quiet.
We had a break in their NAAFI. I gave my older brother some money because he had run out. In truth, I do not remember him being there..
Then we watched a promotional and training film was produced by the Royal Marines Video Production Unit documenting all aspects of the trials, vehicle waterproofing, and adaptation work carried out by the Amphibious Trials and Training Unit Royal Marines (ATTURM
My diary reads:
“Perfect for Nick, but he disagrees.”
Just because heliked fast cars, powerful engines and performance didn’t mean the army or marines was for him! One is aspiration and excitement; the other is maintenance and logistics.
As for the film itself, it completely missed its audience. The Army seemed convinced that a group of fourteen- and fifteen-year-old public-school boys would be fascinated by the prospect of becoming military mechanics. Looking back, this feels oddly tone deaf. Most of us were there because we had to be there. Among the boys were sons of senior Army officers, businessmen, professionals, old-money families and newly wealthy ones. Very few were likely to be inspired by a recruiting film about repairing army vehicles.
I certainly was not.
Afterwards we went around Bideford before returning to tidy up.
It was another bright day during the extraordinary summer of 1976. The heatwave still held Britain in its grip, yet the diary barely mentions it. We seem almost oblivious. Perhaps after weeks of sun it had simply become normal. I imagine a breezy summer afternoon on the Devon coast, cadets wandering through town in groups, talking nonsense, looking in shop windows and spending whatever money remained in their pockets.
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