Bill Millin was the commando piper of Lord Lovat’s 1st Special Service Brigade. The following is his personal account of landing on Sword Beach on D-Day: ‘I went along to the Hamble River, aboard the landing craft with twenty-one others, …
No.11 (Scottish) Commando was raised in Galashiels in the summer of 1940, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Dick Pedder, from volunteers from the Scottish Commando. From Galashiels they completed a 100-mile march to Ayr before commencing arduous commando training …
Eight months before the attack on the French port of Bordeaux by the men later immortalised as the Cockleshell Heroes, a less well known, equally daring, and arguably more successful raid was carried out by two canoeists from No. 6 …
It is relatively unknown that the men of No.2 Commando were Britain’s first airborne troops and the unit was the first to be designated as the Special Air Service (SAS). In June 1940 Prime Minister Winston Churchill called for a …
Two weapons spring to mind when conjuring up an image of the Second World War commandos. The iconic Fairbairn and Sykes Fighting Knife popularly known as the ‘Commando Dagger’, and the Thompson Machine Carbine – the legendary ‘Tommy Gun’. However, …
Two days after Germany landed troops on Guernsey, Winston Churchill wrote to General Ismay on the 2nd of July 1940: ‘If it be true that a few hundred German troops have been landed on Jersey or Guernsey by troop-carriers, plans …
Due to the irregular and specialised role of the new Commando units they were intentionally given a degree of flexibility in terms of administration, recruitment and training. Each Commando initially had a total war establishment of approximately 500 officers and …
Despite opposition from regular army authorities, the Chiefs of Staff instructed the five regional commands: Southern, Eastern, Western, London District and Household Division, and Scottish Command, to provide enough men for two Commandos per Command, with each Commando coming under …
On the darkest hour of 4 June 1940, Prime Minister Winston Churchill wrote to General Lord Ismay, Head of the Military Wing of the War Cabinet Secretariat, demanding, that under no circumstances would Britain resort to the defensive strategy that …
The Third Battle of Ypres, commonly known as the Battle of Passchendaele, was one of the bloodiest battles fought on the Western Front during the First World War. Ypres was at the centre of the Allied presence in Belgium for …
