Quite a lot of the lessons I learned in the Royal Marines have not turned out to be terribly useful in civilian life. For example, while I can still recite the necessary mnemonics to tune a high-frequency radio and deal with a stoppage on a general-purpose machine gun, I haven’t found the need to do so in recent years. Equally, the vital truths to a young marine about never eating yellow snow and on no account ever opening a map wider than 6cm for fear a sniper will see it and pump a high-velocity round your way are no longer the life-and-death matters they once seemed to be.
Some lessons learned at Commando Training Centre, however, did return to me during the chaos of our driven shoot this Christmas. ‘Start cold’, for example, was always a mountain leader’s preferred piece of advice
