By JAMES D. LADD

An icy wind made breathing difficult and chilled the bones despite the lieutenant’s Arctic clothing. As he trudged over frozen snow by the railway to Kandalaksha (Murmansk) on New Year’s day 1919, North Russia was a place of many uncertainties. In the next 75 years or more Royal Marines would be protecting British lives and interests in equally difficult circumstances. Over 1,000 miles from the sea, up the river Yangtze (modern Chang Jiang) in China during the 1920’s and 1930’s, Royal Marines from the decks of gunboats held off pirate armies exacting unlawful tolls on British ships. In Greece and elsewhere they gave help to local communities at times of natural disasters – ‘the only angels in our calamity’ as the Royal Navy were once described. They saw service in major wars and many smaller ones – aboard HMS Exeter ‘an 11-inch shell came through the port side . . . below the Marines’ mess deck’ at the battle of the River Plate (13 December 1940), and five months later 400 anti-aircraft gunners and searchlight crews fought as infantry in the rearguard on Crete. The following December a small raiding force of Marines landed behind the Japanese lines in Malaya to ambush enemy staff cars. In August 1942 40 RM Commando landed at Dieppe ‘with a courage terrible to see’, and later in that War Marine commandos were in many fierce actions from Normandy and the rivers of north-west Europe to the jungles of Burma. They landed in tanks in Normandy (6 June 1944); they provided assault craft crews and manned the guns of close-support craft coming into the beaches at Walcheren (November 1944) and elsewhere, under heavy fire from undefeated coast batteries. They patrolled the jungles of south-east Asia in the 1950s and 1960s, when they also fought in the mountain deserts of Aden, in Korea and to keep the peace in troubled lands around the world. In 1982 the 3 Commando Brigade RM spearheaded the recapture of the Falkland Islands after an Argentinean invasion. In 1991 they were deployed in northern Iraq and during the UN operations in Yugoslavia, Royal Marines served with peace keeping forces as they did elsewhere in that decade.

 

But in 1919 the majority of Royal Marines were serving in ships, with a strength which had been reduced from 55,603 on 15 November 19181 to 15,000 by the end of 1919. At that time the Corps was divided into two arms: the Royal Marine Artillery (RMA), whose gunners served on all capital ships; and the Royal Marine Light Infantry (RMLI), whose privates also served as gunners in ships from their home ports. After these arms were amalgamated in 1923, the strength fell to around 10,000. The Marines’ role was later defined as follows:

 

‘In war and peace . . . while fully capable of manning their share of the gun armament of ships . . . [to be] especially trained to be a striking force . . . for amphibious operations such as raids . . . or the seizure of temporary bases’ for the fleet. They were, as Kipling wrote , ‘ . . . a kind of giddy harumfrodite – soldier and sailor too .. .’.

 

For the detachment of HMS Dauntless (4,850 tons), manning two of her six 6-in guns, these duties led to a number of actions in the Baltic against Russian ships disputing the coastal waters of the emerging Latvian and Estonian states after World War I. The origins of this undeclared war are confused but the political decisions were made by the Supreme War Council of the Allies, meeting at Versailles, who in mid-February 1919 gave Britain the main responsibility for the Baltic. Aboard Dauntless the RM detachment, under their Senior Royal Marine Officer (SRMO), Captain C.R.W. Lamplough (later Major General, CBE, DSC), provided a gun crew for one of her Mark XII 6-in guns on a PXIII* mounting. This crew worked in the open behind the gun shield, where the pitching and rolling gun platform made it difficult to keep your feet in rough weather, never mind carrying through the drill for loading and firing the gun. In this the crew would normally follow the dial pointers giving information from the director through the Transmitting Station (T/S), but if communications were cut or electric power failed the gun would be fired in ‘local control’ to commands from the captain of the gun or the officer commanding its turret.

 

Dauntless was in commission for most of the next 20 years and later saw service in World War II. During peacetime her detachment usually completed 2½-year commissions, before leave and a posting to duties ashore, possibly in Stonehouse Barracks, as she was a Plymouth ship. Each ship had a Port Division Chatham, Portsmouth or Plymouth – from which her seamen and Marines were drawn, with Plymouth Marines, for example, only serving in Plymouth ships in normal circumstances. At sea the Marines normally manned ‘X’ or ‘B’ turret of capital ships and a portion of the secondary armament, but on the signing of the Washington Treaty in 1922 the Americans sank more British battleships ‘than were ever lost in a battle at sea’; 20 battleships were scrapped, and four in building were cancelled. With them went some 4,500 berths for Royal Marines at sea and in training posts, although the Treaty had the unexpected effect in raising the size of cruisers to 10,000 tons with 8-in guns, as such ships were capable of the long Pacific voyages made by American fleets. Few limits were placed on aircraft carriers, but as these had no heavy armament, their Marine detachments were small, and although the Washington Treaty allowed the signatories to have as many small warships as they wished, this did not affect the Corps since Marines did not serve at that time in destroyers or other small ships.

 

A further limitation on the size of the Corps was the Ten Year Rules maintained by successive British Governments, and which in various forms restricted all military planning by the assumption that there would be no major war within the next decade. As a result of this, the proposed Raiding Force of Marines was not created, although in the 1920s the Admiralty had wanted such a force to seize temporary bases for the fleet. In a wider context the Rule made the Admiralty’s task more difficult in balancing fleet commitments between the Far East and European waters, for the Navy wanted to avoid fighting a war in Europe at the same time as it faced one in the East. But in the inevitable compromises which had to be made detachments of Marines had to be found for service afloat with few opportunities for ‘square numbers’ (those pleasant jobs in barracks).

 

During the 1920s and early 1930s the Corps’ strength remained around 10,000 with the majority at sea, typically on the China station, which was a popular draft for which many volunteered to do a second commission on completing their first. But this station was not all rice wine and mahjong, as the detachment aboard the old cruiser HMS Despatch found after they crossed the silt-dulled waters of the Yangtze River’s outflow some 150 miles out to sea from the great river’s estuary. Despatch made the passage of 1,000 miles across the central plains of China to moor-up at Hankow (modern Hankou) in the winter of 1926.

 

Here the Marines were landed to patrol the warehouse area of the British concession, under rights granted to British, French and American warships under 19th-century treaties with China. These privileges angered the 20th-century Chinese and on 22 December a mob tried to break into the concession area. But they were repulsed by strong will rather than strong arm tactics, the Marines holding steady until the mob dispersed. After Christmas, on 2 January 1927, Chinese soldiers picked flowers in the ‘no Chinese allowed’ gardens of the Race Club, and in more forceful efforts the mob tried to pluck Marines from their strongpoint on the Bund. This riverside wharf of the concession became the centre of Chinese resentment against foreigners, as bricks and jagged bits of gutter were hurled at the landing party of 35 Marines from Despatch. With fixed bayonets, they held off the mob, knowing that to open fire would precipitate a major skirmish, although three Marines were injured by flying bricks before the local police took charge of the situation. Later there were some grumblings by authorities in London, because the local consul had arranged the withdrawal of the landing party and the resulting loss of the concession, yet only some five years earlier a few rounds from the gunboat HMS Widgeon had recovered wool cargoes improperly confiscated from a British ship higher up the Yangtze.

 

The days of gunboat diplomacy were drawing to a close with the resurgence of Chinese and other nationalism. Nevertheless the practice of maintaining an old cruiser in Hankow during the ‘dry’ season continued until the river was closed in the Sino-Japanese war, and when the river was in flood with sufficient water to manoeuvre more modern cruisers, these went 1,200 miles or more upriver from the sea. Marines were transferred from the larger ships’ detachments to serve on the gunboats from time to time. Others volunteered, as did Marine Claude Flambard from HMS Caradoc, to sail as armed guards on a British merchantman. On a previous voyage her captain had been waylaid by pirates, who, no doubt, had moved the buoys the River Inspectorate placed to mark ‘crossings’ where river channels swung from one bank to the other. The guards sailed to Ichang (modern Yichang) some 300 miles upriver from Hankow. Caradoc had been in the Mediterranean fleet and her sailing to the China station – one of the Admiralty’s balancing of forces – was in response to the increasing friction over local taxes.

 

For young Marines joining ships in China the voyage out could be full of incident. In HMS Hawkins after coaling-ship, a 6-hour dust-choking slog with coal bags, one young Marine was posted as keyboard sentry standing guard over the ship’s keys. A few days later in the Bay of Biscay, the same youngster was persuaded he should wish the Commander a Merry Christmas. He did so by chalking the greeting on the deck of the keyboard flat (ship’s space), and for his cheek had to scrub this deck for two hours every night for a week. ‘It’s a good job I didn’t hang my stocking up’ sums up the philosophy with which punishments were accepted. He was to serve 2½ years aboard HMS Hawkins before returning home.

 

In the unstable political situation of a Russian inciting the Southern army (of what became Chiang Kai-shek’s forces) against foreigners, the ‘E’ class cruiser HMS Emerald on 23 March 1927 put ashore 14 Marines at Nanking (modern Nanjing), 300 miles downriver from Hankow. They were to protect the consul- ate from looters of the retreating Northern army of the Chinese government, but were refused permission to enter the city gates after marching a mile from the river. In twos and threes they had to get through the gate in taxis. Next morning firing broke out in the town. At 1014 hours the Consul reported by wireless that there were looters in the building, and for the next 36 hours the consulate party was subjected to numerous searches and harassment by Southern army soldiers, as the Consul’s staff wisely prohibited any defensive fire. Disarmed, the Marines had to watch the building being looted and they decided to stay with the wounded Consul, although they might have escaped back to the ship. Looking for help in the surrounding streets, three Marines found a Southern army officer who ordered the looters away; a car was then found to take the Consul back to the Emerald, where he later died of his wounds. Meanwhile a party of Marines with a Lewis gun Section on the Bund had held off the mobs for three hours before the Marines were withdrawn.

 

They had to return the following day, after Chinese troops attacked American property. That afternoon two of Emerald’s officers brought the American consul to temporary safety, after a couple of salvos of shrapnel from the ship had dispersed soldiers attacking the American consulate. Later two platoons of sea- men and Marines were landed under a covering bombardment of 76 rounds of shrapnel and high-explosive (HE) from Emerald and 19 from the American destroyers USS Noa and William F. Preston. The platoons rescued 48 expatriates, and looting stopped in the town.14 Further threats of bombardment, later reported as an effective deterrent, prevented more attacks on British and American residents, 500 of whom were safely evacuated. About the same time in March (1927) the 12th RM Battalion was landed in Shanghai to reinforce such deterrents.

 

Throughout the early 1930s Royal Marines were engaged in many minor incidents on the rivers of China, often against bandits, but after August 1937 they were bombed by Japanese planes, despite the large Union Jacks spread over the ships’ awnings. In October 1937 even the railway line was bombed in an attempt to prevent a troop train – well marked with Union Jacks – evacuating British crews from ships trapped on the Yangtze. But by this date the Mediterranean deployments had been made against Italy and rearmament was under way. As the Corps was – and is – engaged in such varied and far-flung operations, the narrative of their history at times must move sharply from one scene to another and breaks in the text are intended to show where such changes are made.

 

The British tradition of cutting armed forces in peacetime had been sustained in the 1920s and early 1930s by a faith in the League of Nations. This, for many Marines like John Hopkins, 1 meant 10 years abroad during his first ‘twelve’, although he made no complaint. Few left the service in this time of economic depression, for there were bed, board and some lively times in the Corps, not only on the China station in the decades between the world wars. There was the annual Spring Cruise, when ships from the Home and Atlantic Fleets sought ‘more favourable conditions for training than in the inclement weather . . . in home waters’, 2 and in 1921 two forces, the Red and the Blue fleets sailed for Spain. Five battleships, six light cruisers, five K-class submarines and the 3rd Destroyer Flotilla (13 V and W class) made up the Red fleet. The Blue had three battle-cruisers – HMS Hood, Tiger (built 1912) and Repulse – the 2nd and 4th Destroyer Flotillas ‘with 24 boats’, and four L-class submarines. They came down the Channel at 9 knots on 17 January, 3 seaplanes scouting with two of the light cruisers of Red fleet. Then the two fleets sought shelter as the weather deteriorated.

 

The first phase of this cruise was intended to test the ‘comparative fighting values of the submarine and dreadnought’. But on the morning of 20 January, some 72 hours after the exercise began, K5 was lost as she dived under Blue fleet’s battle-cruisers approaching her at 18 knots. All 57 of her crew were lost and she was never found despite an intensive search. The loss overshadowed the rest of the cruise, but the fleets had carried out an hour-long mock action off Cape Finnisterre before reaching north-west Spain for the Admiral’s annual inspection, which that year was held in Arosa Bay. On the return passage the battleship squadrons at times moved in two divisions so that gunnery officers, range takers, and crews were given practice in ship-to-ship gunnery. Other exercises followed: in submarine attacks; live-firing practice, Revenge firing three rounds from each 15-inch gun at three-quarter charge while steaming at 21.3 knots; musketry courses; and concentrated gunfire practice with all the war drills, although live rounds were not fired.

 

An epidemic of influenza throughout the fleets had been nipped in the bud by the medical officers while the ships were in Spanish waters, and the regattas in 12-oared cutters and 5-oared whalers could, therefore, be held as usual. In one of these two RMLI privates pulled in a winning crew when the total stakes on the race were £324. 4 Although Marines did not carry out seamen’s duties ‘when picked for a racing boat’s crew . . . they were not likely to be defeated’, which puzzled – and continues to puzzle – seamen who thought a boatload of Jollies was ‘an occasion for pointed pleasantries’. By the time the fleets anchored in their UK bases, on 21 March, they had sailed 3,000 miles and paid a final tribute to the crew of K5.

 

Marines, frequently referred to individually aboard ship as ‘Royal’, were to spend more time at sea than many seamen of the 1920s and 1930s. For these Marines’ detachments there were many ceremonials, from the morning parade for ‘Colours’, when the ensign was raised each day, for guards when local dignitaries visited ships and on the visits of Admirals for inspections or other reasons.

 

The Marines blue uniforms and white helmets were worn for such ceremonies after 1923 (see Appendix 3), but when HMS Renown took the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) to the Far East in 1921-2, the detachment wore pre- 1914 full service dress of a blue tunic with scarlet facings for the RMA, and scarlet tunics with the royal blue facings for the RMLI.6 Other major cruises included the voyage of the Special Service Squadron formed for a cruise around the world in 1924, with 600 Marines in the ships’ detachments.7 On such cruises the ships’ officers had opportunities to become familiar with foreign waters and to bring back intelligence, as those visiting Tientsin did in 1937 when they first saw a Japanese Landing Ship which was able to launch small assault craft.

 

Other voyages, like those on the Yangtze, included actions to protect British nationals. HMS Colombo stood by off Nicaragua during a revolution before sailing home through three successive hurricanes. No doubt such ravages of the sea are the source in part of all seafarers’ calm indifference to the brickbats of a crowd. More often, however, they were praised in the manner of the delegate’s plea on behalf of the citizens of Ierossos in north-east Greece, which summed up for many ‘very poor . . . who in our great distress’ – after an earthquake of 1932,’[saw] the only angel in this calamity has been the British Fleet . . . [which] is our only hope . . . while the earthquake shocks continue .. .’.

 

Not all the wild water was found in foreign parts, however, for early in 1924 the young Lord Mountbatten was on duty in Revenge. He was called on deck ‘when a tornado of rain hit the ship as she lay anchored in Torbay’. It had been a calm night and the awnings were spread, but in the squall the seamen were nipping this way and that to up-boats, drop a second anchor and slope the awnings. But where was Royal? He was on parade, for the detachment fell-in despite the storm and gales of laughter from the seamen, the RM officer reporting his men ready for duty as required. In the 1920s there were still many hundreds of coaling stations around the world whose stocks were reported in Admiralty orders, and ‘Royal’ coaled ship with the rest of the crew. He also took part in many other routines of ship life.

 

Marines, like seamen, lived and ate in their allotted part of the ship, which was their mess decks and known in the Marines’ case as ‘the barracks’; although anything less spacious than a shore establishment is hard to imagine, for the casings of ventilator shafts, ships’ machinery and the low deck-head (ceiling) made the spaces cramped. In these circumstances personal cleanliness was essential, so Royal took a bath daily if there was sufficient water, after which he did his dhobi (laundry). The ship’s forced-air draught blew noisily from nozzles along the ducting and sometimes there were no ports opening for fresh air. Nevertheless the mess deck was a cheerful place where Marines made their home, and when possible there were two Sections of the Marines, some fourteen to sixteen men, living as a group in their mess as part of the ‘barracks’. This helped to build up the teamwork essential when the Sections landed for action. Each day two Marines took their turn as cooks of the mess, responsible for keeping the mess clean and collecting meals from the galley.

 

Before 1921 these cooks prepared the food and the galley staff merely cooked it, but after a trial period in HMS Hawkins. Among other ships, all meals were prepared and cooked in the galley. This system was used for the next 40 or so years, until ships were equipped with cafeterias and men no longer ate and slept in their mess. Corporals, as mess supervisors, did not take a turn as ‘cook’, while sergeants lived and slung their hammocks in the ‘horse box’, which had a stable-like door to an area partitioned off from the mess deck. The sergeants’ messman, an old Marine, kept the ‘Box’ clean and tidy, and boy buglers slept there to protect them from bullying or worse in a general mess. Otherwise Royal kept clear of the ‘Box’.

 

The ships’ companies were divided into Watches, so that in a two-Watch system those in the Port Watch could relieve the Starboard Watch turn and turn about every four hours at sea. Half the ship’s company at other times, the Star- board Watch, say, might be sent on leave. But the system varied and in some capital ships there were three Watches – Red, White and Blue. Some men in each detachment were also designated as watch keepers, who for a three-month period would do special duties, as explained later, but in normal harbour routine Royal would have lashed up and stowed his hammock before turning-to at 0600 hours for an hour scrubbing the officers’ flats – those passages and landings around the officers’ cabins aft. Between 0700 and 0800 he shaved and had breakfast before falling in with the other non-watchkeepers of the detachment, when the ship’s company paraded at 0800 Divisions. The men would be inspected and then fall out to go to ‘Cleaning quarters’. Royal might be a gun-sweeper responsible for the general cleanliness of a gun, or a turret-or magazine-sweeper among other duties. In this way each Marine had a specific general duty if he was not a watch-keeper, and whatever his routine duties he had an action station – when a turret-sweeper might be a gun-loading number or a magazine-sweeper have his position in loading charges into the hoist.

 

In the daily routine, however, he was piped – a boatswain’s pipe shrilled for attention before orders over the Tannoy when no bugler was aboard – at 1000 hours to ‘stand easy’ for ten minutes. This was the time for a smoke and to read your mail, before the pipe ‘hands to quarters clean guns’ that sent every man to his action station for half an hour. The rest of the morning was spent at general cleaning quarters, the cooks of the mess collecting the rum ration at noon after 1100 pipe for ‘up spirits’ (an issue which ceased in 1970). In the 1920s and 1930s afternoons from 1400 to 1600 hours were spent in gun drill, cleaning and sport, while on Wednesdays in harbour all the ship’s company had a make-and- mend when you darned your socks or took part in sports. Tea at 1630 hours was often slices of bread, jam, ‘herrings-in’ on Saturdays and that sugary sweet tea made from condensed milk that had its own special flavour from a china dish.

 

In his free time Royal might play Uckers, a form of Ludo on a board 4ft square with ‘dice and other appurtenances . . . in proportion’. In one match ‘after opening ceremonies, i.e. Muscle exercise and war dance, we lost the toss’. This Team from Warspite also lost the game against Iron Duke, attributing the defeat to ‘bad visibility, probably caused by coal dust; inability of our dice to accustom itself to chunks of fuel lying about . .. and marking . . . our marker has since studied theories to try and obtain “Six” from “Five”’. The last meal of the day was supper – cold meat and salad perhaps – served at 1830. At 2100 (2030 at sea) came evening rounds, when the Duty Officer in harbour or the Commander at sea went through the ship to check all was in order. On Saturday mornings the ship’s captain made these rounds, with a thorough inspection of all quarters and hands in the ship. Then it was extra duties for any Royal who had left his washing to dry on a steam pipe, although this was a rare event as the OCRM’s daily rounds of the ‘barracks’ made sure Royal knew what the ship’s captain expected. Sunday was a day of rest after Divisions (the morning church parade on the upper deck). A day of rest, that is, for all but the watch keepers.

 

The watch keepers included keyboard sentries, guarding four keyboards in HMS Hood.6 From these were issued magazine keys to named officers, but not accepted on return if the indicator light at the board was lit to show that the magazine had not been locked. There were ‘X’ keys for compartments normally used only in working hours and other groups of keys, all of which had to be entered in a register on any issue or return. Other watch keepers included the corporal-of-the-gangway who helped the duty Regulating Petty Officer search men coming aboard, making it harder to get a bottle into a ship than a ship into a bottle. In harbour the corporal – often a Marine given the authority of a corporal for these duties – had other administrative work to carry out, while at sea he was the captain’s messenger. Watch keepers who were sentries included the jetty sentry in harbour. At sea he was a lifebuoy sentry stationed aft, where he could release one or two life buoys if he saw a man in the water, or was ordered by the officer of the watch to release the port or starboard buoy. He had also to make sure at night that the stern light was burning. Other sentries were posted from time to time, as was the focsle sentry on Sussex with 20 rounds of .303-in during the night hours to prevent boats making fast to the mooring cable and buoy, although he was not to open fire without orders from the Officer of the Watch.

 

The round of watches for a sentry or other watch keepers was based on his action station for half an hour. The rest of the morning was spent at general cleaning quarters, the cooks of the mess collecting the rum ration at noon after 1100 pipe for ‘up spirits’ (an issue which ceased in 1970). In the 1920s and 1930s afternoons from 1400 to 1600 hours were spent in gun drill, cleaning and sport, while on Wednesdays in harbour all the ship’s company had a make-and- mend when you darned your socks or took part in sports. Tea at 1630 hours was often slices of bread, jam, ‘herrings-in’ on Saturdays and that sugary sweet tea made from condensed milk that had its own special flavour from a china dish.

 

In his free time Royal might play Uckers, a form of Ludo on a board 4ft square with ‘dice and other appurtenances . . . in proportion’. In one match ‘after opening ceremonies, i.e. Muscle exercise and war dance, we lost the toss’. This Team from Warspite also lost the game against Iron Duke, attributing the defeat to ‘bad visibility, probably caused by coal dust; inability of our dice to accustom itself to chunks of fuel lying about . .. and marking . . . our marker has since studied theories to try and obtain “Six” from “Five”’. The last meal of the day was supper – cold meat and salad perhaps – served at 1830. At 2100 (2030 at sea) came evening rounds, when the Duty Officer in harbour or the Commander at sea went through the ship to check all was in order. On Saturday mornings the ship’s captain made these rounds, with a thorough inspection of all quarters and hands in the ship. Then it was extra duties for any Royal who had left his washing to dry on a steam pipe, although this was a rare event as the OCRM’s daily rounds of the ‘barracks’ made sure Royal knew what the ship’s captain expected. Sunday was a day of rest after Divisions (the morning church parade on the upper deck). A day of rest, that is, for all but the watch keepers.

 

The watch keepers included keyboard sentries, guarding four keyboards in HMS Hood. From these were issued magazine keys to named officers, but not accepted on return if the indicator light at the board was lit to show that the magazine had not been locked. There were ‘X’ keys for compartments normally used only in working hours and other groups of keys, all of which had to be entered in a register on any issue or return. Other watch keepers included the corporal-of-the-gangway who helped the duty Regulating Petty Officer search men coming aboard, making it harder to get a bottle into a ship than a ship into a bottle. In harbour the corporal – often a Marine given the authority of a corporal for these duties – had other administrative work to carry out, while at sea he was the captain’s messenger. Watch keepers who were sentries included the jetty sentry in harbour. At sea he was a lifebuoy sentry stationed aft, where he could release one or two life buoys if he saw a man in the water, or was ordered by the officer of the watch to release the port or starboard buoy. He had also to make sure at night that the stern light was burning. Other sentries were posted from time to time, as was the focsle sentry on Sussex with 20 rounds of .303-in during the night hours to prevent boats making fast to the mooring cable and buoy, although he was not to open fire without orders from the Officer of the Watch.

 

The round of watches for a sentry or other watch keepers was based on periods of 4 hours ‘on’ and 4 hours ‘off during one period of 24 hours, followed by a day’s stand-off. The third day he did four ‘on’ and four ‘off, followed by 36 hours stand-off. There were, therefore, four Marines required for each watch keeper’s duty covering every 24 hours. A man might then stand the ‘forenoon’ (0800 to 1200 hours), the ‘dogs’ (1600 to 2000) and the ‘middle’ (2359 to 0400) and be on stand-off until the next ‘afternoon’ watch (1200 to 1600), followed by duty on the ‘first’ (2000 to 2359) and the ‘morning’ (0400 to 0800), after which he could go ashore on the 0900 liberty (leave) boat if he was not required for ceremonial guards or gun drills.9 At sea or in a two-Watch system, the ‘dogs’ were used to prevent a man standing the same watches every 24 hours – he stood the 1st dog (1600 to 1800) one day and the last (1800 to 2000) the next, (this last dog watch was known as the 2nd dog watch in the Merchant Navy). During the 36 hours he was not watch keeping, Royal in the Mediterranean in the 1930s did not have to be back aboard until 1100 hours the following day. He might take a ‘run’ ashore in his best rig with a swagger cane and belt, for civilian clothing was not worn by the lower-deck personnel when going ashore until the 1950s. ‘Runs ashore’, not physical marathons in the run-with-your-feet sense, although perhaps exhausting in other ways, were the Navy’s term for short-leave periods. In Malta the ‘run’ might take Royal down Strada Stretta, the Gut in Valetta. ‘Come inside, Royal’ was the plea here from cheerful girls touting for bar business. ‘All your crew are here’, she would call, although there might only be a couple of matelots in the gloom of the bar behind the brightly lit cafe front, one of the dozens stretching either side of the street. Beer was 2d (2/3p) a pint here in 1936 and a bed cost 6d (2½p) when a Marine’s pay was 3/-s (15p or 30 US cents) a day.10 Royal, if he went inside a bar, was jostled by the girls in horseplay or more fleshly delights if he chose. Although the girls to many a young Marine appeared older than they were, this did not deter the suitors from brawls when in their cups. Riots would be too provocative a description of these fracases, but Provost Marshals like Major D.A.C. Shephard with his boxer’s appearance quelled such disturbances in the 1930s without fuss, as did his Assistant Provost Captain C.S. Watson. Both were Physical Training Officers, well able to look after the most cantankerous stoker or ‘stroppy’ Marine.

 

The ship’s detachment also provided Marine Officer’s Attendants (MOAs) and Wardroom Attendants (WRAs), who kept their officers’ cabins clean and valeted their clothes. As gunnery ratings they also took part in practically all gun drills, and when the detachment landed they might act as field orderlies to the OCRM (Officer Commanding RMS) and his lieutenants. The officer/MOA relationship was one of personal friendship, and at least one has been heard to swear at his officer’s incompetence in getting a dress tunic wet – man to man in the officer’s cabin. In flag ships of battle fleets the Marines also provided three Admirals’ orderlies and three orderlies to fetch and carry messages for his office staff.

 

Officers between the Wars of 1918 and 1939 found in the Mediterranean Fleet a lingering Edwardian gaiety. There was polo in Malta – HMS Warspite carried some ponies” there in the early 1930s – and later in Alexandria there was a craze for roller-skating hockey.

 

The more serious purposes of the crews were tested in ‘General Drills’ held when all the ships of a fleet were assembled in an anchorage, on a Monday forenoon in the 1920s but on any unexpected day in later years. The Admiral would signal ‘Weigh anchor by hand’ or ‘Prepare to take a tow’ or – for Royal’s special delight – ‘Land a platoon of Marines in full kit a t . ..’. ‘Prepare for collision’ brought 30 or so of Hood’s Marines to the rails with a many-tonned collision mat they had to manhandle into position, for this great ‘rug’ could cover a gash in the ship’s side after a collision. These evolutions were almost a sport, although no less keenly executed even if the order was ‘Two fried eggs to the flag ship’. For Joey, the RM junior officer, his service future might hang on the outcome of his detachment’s efforts; and a ship’s commander, as executive officer, put his future on the line in every evolution. Mention of young Joey leads to those confusions of titles by which Royal Marine officers and NCOs were frequently known: the senior marine captain was known aboard as ‘Major’, and the senior sergeant as ‘Sergeant Major’ – although seamen frequently referred to this NCO as ‘Major’.

 

Gunnery exercises from 1919 were directed towards improving gunnery control and the concentration of fire in the target area. Live firing exercises always had – and have – their dangers, as when HMS Devonshire was carrying out single ship firing with her main armament on 26 July 1929, the first broadside from her twin 8-inch being fired at about 1000 hours. Almost simultaneously a sheet of flame rose from ‘X’ turret manned by Marines, blowing the turret roof into the sea. Captain J.A. Bath, DSC, and 15 men were killed outright or died of their injuries, as did a Naval ordnance artificer, and all but one of the rest of the gun’s crew were seriously injured. The uninjured survivor, Marine Albert Streams, clambered out of the smoke over the turret top after the first shock of the explosion, but he went back into the suffocating darkness of the billowing smoke and fumes. He ignored the obvious risk of further explosions from the charges in the hoist and handling room ‘deliberately endangering his own life to save others’, a gallant act for which he was awarded the Albert Medal. He was later killed in action with 40 Commando in 1943.

 

The cause of the accident was probably a hang-fire – when the cordite did not explode immediately – in one gun, which the crew had not realised in their reflex actions of a well-drilled team firing every 8 or 10 seconds, although the gun had not recoiled before the breach was opened at the moment the charge exploded after a hung-fire delay. Subsequently a hang-fire latch was fitted to prevent any breech being opened accidentally in action until after the gun had recoiled. At other times Royal took some chances to be sure his turret excelled in firing practice. For instance, when the air blast mechanism clearing the fumes from a turret after a round was fired broke down in a live-round shoot by HMS Hood, the Marine crews, despite the fumes and smoke that choked the turret, got off three salvos to match the seamen’s fire from other turrets. By 1930 the Mediterranean Fleet had established an RM Strike Force of two battalions drawn from ships’ detachments.15 Each company of these battalions was provided by pairing battleships. Every year, when fleet deployments allowed, a Strike Force landing was practised, but understandably the captains of ships disliked losing the major portion of their Marine gunners for landings, a problem we shall see becoming a crucial factor in the Corps’ commitments at the start of World War II.

 

The Marines were usually landed in oared cutters, and typically, in a night landing on 2 July 1929, they came ashore with their own Signals Section and two Naval wireless sets for contact with the fleet. They were ashore for three days, although each night they came off before sunset to avoid malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Their only transport was specially designed folding handcarts for medium machine guns, and in a similar exercise the following year the companies ran out of water by noon on the day they landed. But by 1931 general training in the fleets was restricted by cuts in government expenditure which limited rounds for live firing, the fuel for sea-time, and had more serious consequences.

 

The Government’s cuts must be understood against the background of a world- wide trade depression, which in 1926 had led to the British general strike. In this the Marines guarded sailors operating essential services, with, for example, a machine gun from Warspite mounted at a Glasgow dockyard gate,’ and a hastily raised RM Battalion2 protecting the ammunition wharf in Portsmouth. The men received supplementary allowances while standing by in such industrial emergencies.

 

By 1931 there were 20 million unemployed.

 

Wage cuts proposed by the May Committee that year fell more heavily on the lower-deck seamen and Marines than on senior officers. For those Marines who had joined after 1921, with ‘X’ numbers and known as ‘Jixxers’, their pay at 4/6d (22½p) a day after 6 years’ service’ would be cut by l/-s (5p), as was the pay of those on the higher pre-1921 rates. The resulting hardship to their families understandably put seamen (on similar rates) and the Marines in an ugly mood. The tune, if not the words, of ‘The Red Flag’ was heard by one corporal-of-the-gangway, and ashore there were meetings in the canteen at Invergordon (Ross and Cromarty), although these were not the organised affairs some participants later claimed. On Monday night, 13 September 1931, an RN lieutenant with a shore patrol from HMS Valiant came into one of these meetings and a pint pot was thrown at the lieutenant by some idiot but did no damage’. The men went off to their ships but next morning aboard Valiant no one turned-to, and the Commander told the RM Officers to leave their men on the mess deck.

 

Some other ships also mutinied, although the Marines and seamen then went about their duties without supervision. But in the next day or so an Admiralty Fleet Order was read to the effect that ‘ . . . the Admiralty is fully alive to . . .[the] special hardship . . . from the reduction of pay . . . [and] investigations . . .[will be] made . . . with a view to necessary alleviation .. .’, for these investigations the ships were to sail to their own ports. Whether or not the individual Marines who refused duty were set back in their careers is hard to prove, but there is no evidence of bitterness nor overreaction by officers or men at the time of the mutiny or later.

 

The mutiny had resulted as much from a series of inept communications as from the unfairness of the cuts. For the men had first heard about these over the BBC radio, as cuts affecting 71 per cent of the Royal Navy but far fewer other service personnel and only 20 per cent of the Civil Service.” The outcome was a smaller reduction for the seamen and Marines than had been proposed; subsequently any sweeping changes in conditions of service were considered with growing understanding, as when senior officers in the Corps took steps to meet the needs of Marines’ home commitments in the late 1930s when there were fewer UK postings.

 

Whether or not the Ten Year Rule of 1919 to 1932 created a fixed state of mind in defence departments, as Lord Hankey later suggested, there is no doubt that in the inter-war years British ‘planning lacked the point of reference which military action or its prospect provides’. The initial rearmament was mainly directed at increasing the size of the RAF ‘as other countries were increasing spending on air power’. Naval plans were hedged about by various treaty negotiations – the London Conferences of 1929-30 and 1935, the Anglo-German Agreement of June 1935 – but when the prospect of war became clear, five King George V-class battleships were ordered. Their keels were laid in the years 1936-8 and each would require a Marine detachment of 250 or more as additional anti-aircraft defences were added. Further plans for four Lion-class battleships to follow the KGVs were made and not abandoned until 1940. The Admiralty, therefore, expected an additional 2,500 Marines – five wartime Commandos’ worth – would be required by 1940 for sea service in capital ships. The cruisers added to the fleet would also require some 1,500 Marines, absorbing most if not all the increased manpower when the Corps’ strength was raised in 1938.

 

General Sir William W. Godfrey, KCB, CMG, who was Adjutant General of the Royal Marines from 1936 until the outbreak of World War II, was only once approached by senior Naval Officers for an opinion on the employment of Royal Marines in wartime. At this meeting the First Sea Lord explained that the Admiralty required a Mobile Naval Base Defence Organisation (MNBDO) and a striking force of a brigade to be ready for action in 1939, but the bulk of the Corps would be deployed at sea when the Naval staffs were ‘contemplating war as an affair on the High Seas’. The Adjutant General in those years was on the staff of the Second Sea Lord, whose responsibilities were mainly concerned with personnel, an indication of the Admiralty’s view of the Corps as a source of manpower for ships’ guns, at a time when senior Naval Officers were less ready to discuss with their staffs matters of policy than they were during World War II.

 

Such attitudes in part explain why the Admiralty – responsible up to 1940 for all amphibious operations – failed to make use of Marines in this role, although General Sir William Godfrey was a firm believer in the value of raids by ‘a striking force of Marines to work with the fleet’, a role he had planned for a Marine battalion in 1916, but not carried through when they were withdrawn from the Mediterranean. Typical of Adjutant Generals of those years, Sir William had been one of the three Marines to attend the first Naval staff course in 1912.11 He served on the planning staff in the Dardanelles in 1915-16, and in the Admiralty Plans Division during 1924-7, and therefore like many senior Marine officers had seen service outside the Corps. He had also been a Royal Marine ADC to the King from 1934 to 1935. But no senior officer above the rank of major serving in 1939 – except Brig Tripp, had held operational command of more than a detachment. However, that is not to say they did not fully appreciate the rigours of war, for almost without exception they had served in World War I.

 

For junior officers there were the prospects of action against the Italians in the 1930s. This had helped to sharpen their detachments’ training, but many had found shipboard life a little flat if enjoyable. The Navy had moved the nucleus of the MNBDO units to Alexandria in 1935, when the Admiralty was contemplating the use of Port ‘X’, probably in the Greek Bay of Navarino, if French ports were not available and Italian air raids neutralised Malta. Before the MNBDO could be moved to Port ‘X’, however, the Admiralty abandoned the plan, as Italian aircraft could put any ships there at needless risk. Major exercises and cruises were also cancelled, for ships were needed in strategic centres – HMS Devonshire had passed through the Hellespont when she was recalled ‘at all speed’ before she could show the flag in Black Sea ports. The annual joint exercise by the Atlantic and Mediterranean Fleets was also cancelled that spring of 1936, although to placate the Maltese traders a token force visited the island, deprived as it was of the usual fleet visits after a spring cruise.

 

The groundwork for British Naval victories of World War II had been largely prepared by this time, in particular in techniques for night actions, which the Grand Fleet had avoided in 1916-17. By the 1930s the use of star shells and controlled searchlights lessened the risks of major ships’ exposure to unseen MTBs or destroyers suddenly streaking through the night to launch torpedoes. Fleets also now turned into an enemy’s torpedo attack to present a narrow target as quickly as possible, and the coordination of ships’ activities by wireless had been revolutionised by Lord Mountbatten when he was Mediterranean Fleet Signals Officer. Marines served as signallers in the fleets, and before 1923 flag battleships had carried an RMLI signals instructor and an RMA signaller; other capital ships carried two RM signallers and all vessels ‘allowed an RM Officer’ carried at least one signaller ‘proficient in flag signals, semaphore, buzzer [W/T], lamp and shuttered [searchlight] signalling’. Marine signallers also had to be familiar with the signal procedures of the Naval Examination Service (NES), whose small craft inspected merchantmen entering harbours in time of war.

 

Royal saw other actions in the Mediterranean – refugees were rescued from the ravages of the Spanish Civil War; ashore there were security duties in Palestine. There was also a worldwide commitment in the protection of Empire trade routes. By 13 September 1938, for example, in addition to ships in home waters, in the Mediterranean and in China, there were one or two cruisers in San Francisco (California), in Antigua (West Indies), Colombo (Ceylon, modern Sri Lanka), Montevideo (Uruguay) and Simonstown (South Africa). In those years there were about seven weeks’ food stocks in the British Isles, which were dependent on sea routes for its replenishment, a fact not always appreciated by those nations and individuals questioning the size of British fleets. Only the American navy was of comparable size, and in striving in the 1920s to ensure her major warships at least equalled the number and power of those in the Royal Navy, some friction arose between the two services. One Marine remembers HMS Renown’s visit to the Philippines in 1922 when ‘the US Navy . . . just ignored us’. But these rivalries of the 1920s were largely forgotten by the time war broke out. One British Marine, serving ‘as a kind of “lease lend” aboard USS Alabama’, found the gunnery of a high standard but missed the mess routine of his own ship; for the Americans ate in two sittings in cafeteria style and ‘if you hadn’t finished when the whistle blew after the first sitting: bad luck’.

 

Preparations for war, which accelerated in 1939, included the Navy’s ‘rapid and smooth mobilisation . . . a longstanding tradition’, for which exercises had been regularly carried out at all the Grand Divisions (Chatham, Portsmouth and Plymouth) before 1939. RM Reservists and pensioners under 55 were recalled and the fleet’s detachments placed on a war footing; the numbers in many detachments were as much as 25 per cent below their peacetime complement, so that the increases were larger than the planned increases, which raised peacetime complements by 30 to 50 per cent. Nevertheless, among the Marines, with some 275 years of sea soldiering behind them, there was the quiet confidence of highly trained men. All those exercises and evolutions, the parade ground drills and ceremonials, had taught Royal the way to go to war. His experience ranged from life in tropical climates to that north of the Arctic Circle. He had learnt to look after himself and his messmates in the minor battles of North Russia, in skirmishes along the banks of the Yangtze, and a hundred other incidents – experiences of sea service which so ably prepared the Marine for his far wider roles in the coming war.