About this Event
Speaker: Steve Nicoll
This talk will explore the demands of wartime Commando training in Scotland and the impact on our nation’s social and military history. The use of live ammunition and explosives at Achnacarry, with planned elements of risk and danger exacted a high human toll on trainees. Allied with the need for wartime secrecy, censored reporting and a generation who simply didn’t ask questions, we are left with an information vacuum that raises many more questions than answers.
‘The We Will Remember Them – We MUST Remember Them’ project is attempting to reunite relatives with their loss of a loved one during Commando training. To date six families have been successfully located and reminded that ‘Once a Commando, Always a Commando’ continues to resonate over 80 years later. Steve will explain why there is a need to remember these men and his attempts to reconnect their stories from the past to the present using archives and the Scotland’s People service.
Steve is a native Dundonian who enlisted in the Royal Marines in 1972 at the age of seventeen. This heralded the start of a thirty five year career in uniform including operational service in Northern Ireland and the Falklands. Specialising as a Mountain Leader he enjoyed a satisfying and varied career before retiring in 2007. His last ten years were spent working specifically in specialist project management.
Returning to Scotland in 2007 Steve spent the next 13 years in the voluntary sector using his free time to finally ‘compleat’ all 282 Munros combined with studying Social Sciences at the Open University. Since 2021 he has been committed to the Scott Sutherland Project (Commando Memorial) as a member of the Commando Association and the Royal Marines Association. This work has evolved into a detailed research project to identify surviving relatives of the twenty-eight Commando trainees killed during wartime training. Steve continues to wonder how he ever managed to find time for work and currently lives with his wife Helen, in Brechin, Angus.
Event venue & nearby stays
HM General Register House, 2 Princes Street, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
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