The Commando Basic Training Centre, Achnacarry

Origins and the Cameron of Lochiel / Achnacarry context

Achnacarry Castle sits on the banks of the River Arkaig in Lochaber, between Loch Lochy and Loch Arkaig, and is the ancestral seat of the Cameron of Lochiel family, chiefs of Clan Cameron. The present Scottish baronial house was designed by James Gillespie Graham and built from 1802 for the clan chief, replacing the earlier house burned by government troops in 1746 after Culloden — Donald Cameron of Lochiel, the "Gentle Lochiel," having committed the clan to the Jacobite rising of 1745. This is a wholly different family and place from the Atholl/Murray family and Blair Castle of Card #19: Achnacarry is Cameron country in the west Highlands, not the Atholl estate of Highland Perthshire.

In June 1940 Sir Donald Walter Cameron of Lochiel gave hospitality to No. 1 Independent Company. As commando training was then run unit-by-unit, Achnacarry and Achdalieu Lodge were brought into use in December 1940 as a Training and Holding Wing for the Special Training Centre at Lochailort. With Lochailort scheduled to close and a recognised need to centralise training behind a single Commando Course that every volunteer must pass, Achnacarry was redesignated the Commando Depot in December 1941 under the Special Service Brigade, with the first centralised course intakes in February/March 1942. The remote, rugged, wet terrain and the concealment it offered made it ideal; Ben Nevis, some 18 miles away, served as a final challenge on many courses.

Lieutenant Colonel Vaughan and the training regime

The centre's commandant was Lieutenant Colonel Charles Edward Vaughan (born 1893), a First World War veteran of the retreat from Mons who had risen from drill sergeant to Regimental Sergeant Major in The Buffs before being commissioned. Originally attached to No. 7 Commando and briefly second-in-command of No. 4 Commando, Vaughan was promoted lieutenant colonel to take up the commandant's post. Some trainees nicknamed him the "Rommel of the North" for his exacting standards. He founded the Commando Association at Achnacarry on 20 June 1943 (holding membership number one) and was later awarded the OBE (1946). Instructors and memoirists who served under him include Major James Dunning and Captain Donald Gilchrist.

Volunteers arrived at Spean Bridge railway station and were speed-marched roughly seven miles to Achnacarry carrying full kit; those who failed to make the time were put back on the train to their units. The grounds were transformed: the castle lawn became an asphalt drill square ringed by Nissen huts (over 50 buildings at peak) housing 25–40 men each. Trainees were allocated to one of three training "Commandos" — Keyes, Haydon and Sturges — named after Combined Operations pioneers, each organised into four troops. A Demonstration Troop assisted instructors and doubled as the centre's pipe band.

The live ammunition and training fatalities question, examined

Live ammunition was genuinely and deliberately used at Achnacarry. Contemporary sources — including the Imperial War Museum's own film record of an "opposed landing" exercise with live ammunition, the National Army Museum, and the Commando Veterans Archive — confirm that opposed-landing serials, sniper and ambush exercises laid on by instructors, and demolition training used live rounds and explosives to instil realism. On arrival, trainees were confronted with a line of mock gravestones bearing cautionary "lessons" about carelessness — a motivational and instructional prop, not a literal tally of the dead.

But the popular leap from "live ammunition was used" to "many men were shot dead in training" is not supported. The Commando Veterans Archive — the most rigorous available source, working from CWGC records, National Archives WO 417 casualty lists, the statutory Register of Deaths for the district of Kilmallie, and unit war diaries — documents on the order of two dozen named training deaths connected to Achnacarry. The single largest cause was drowning, in the fast, cold River Arkaig, Loch Lochy, the River Lochy and Loch Eil. For example, Lance Corporal Norman Drew "died by drowning… found dead on 27 October 1942 in the River Arkaig, Achnacarry, 100 yards South of the Iron Bridge," and Privates Kenneth Drysdale and Charles Sweeney drowned at Mucomir Falls on the River Lochy in a fishing-boat accident. Deaths involving live ammunition or explosives — accidental gunshot wounds (e.g. Fusilier Charles Bleakley, "accidentally killed by a gunshot wound (instantaneous) at Bunarkaig, Achnacarry"), 2-inch mortar accidents, and premature demolition-charge explosions — were real but a minority, and were accidents rather than evidence that live-fire exercises routinely killed trainees.

Two important caveats attach to the widely-quoted figure of "27 died." First, it is a 2024 campaign figure from the Scott Sutherland Project, reported in The Scotsman, which states that "for the 27 men who never made it out of training alive, a memorial will be created for them for the first time"; the same account blends deaths across multiple locations, including a march on Ben Nevis and an accident in Fort William. Second, four of the most-cited deaths — Gunner Alan Haydon, Private Patrick McCarthy, Fusilier James Scullion and Corporal Frederick Turner, who died in the Loch Linnhe area on 28 November 1941 — occurred before the centralised Commando Course formally began in February/March 1942, when Achnacarry was still only a Training and Holding Wing. The honest, evidence-tiered conclusion: training was genuinely dangerous and lives were lost, but fatalities were proportionally few given 25,000+ trained, and were predominantly drownings and accidents rather than a direct product of live ammunition.

The training programme and its distinctive elements

The Commando Course lasted around six weeks and combined physical hardening with weapons handling, fieldcraft and amphibious skills. Distinctive elements included:

• Speed marches — formed-body marches at pace carrying weapons and kit, a defining commando test that survives in today's course.
• The Tarzan Course — an aerial confidence and agility course through an avenue of beech trees, including the Death Slide (a rope descent from a tree platform) and the toggle-rope bridge across the River Arkaig, built from the commando's own toggle ropes. Physical training was overseen by CSM Instructor Alexander Frickleton, who is credited with devising the course.
• Opposed-landing and cliff-assault training — small-boat work on Loch Lochy at Bunarkaig, and rock and cliff climbing, conducted under simulated (and real) fire.
• Fieldcraft and survival — 36-hour cross-country schemes with improvised bivouacs and living off the land, taught by staff such as CSM "Ossie" Moon.
• Close combat and weapons — unarmed combat, use of British and captured weapons, and demolitions. The Fairbairn–Sykes silent-killing system and fighting knife originated in the Scottish special-training world (principally STC Lochailort under William Fairbairn and Eric Sykes); those methods and manuals circulated through the commando syllabus, and Sykes is recorded as having worked at both Lochailort and Achnacarry.

Successful trainees earned the green beret, which during the war was issued specifically to those who completed the Commando Course.

The international / Allied training dimension

Achnacarry's reputation extended across the Allied world. In the summer of 1942, following a visit to the depot by US Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall and the initiative of Brigadier-General Lucian Truscott, the newly-formed US 1st Ranger Battalion under Major William O. Darby trained at Achnacarry — a founding moment for the US Rangers. Of the 600 volunteers Darby brought to Achnacarry, 500 (about 83 per cent) completed the commando course; one Ranger was killed and several were wounded by live fire during training "so realistic, it was actually executed under live fire." Darby insisted his officers tackle every obstacle first.

Achnacarry also trained the volunteers of No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando, whose national troops seeded post-war Allied special forces. Philippe Kieffer's Free French naval volunteers (1er Compagnie de Fusiliers Marins) trained there and are the direct ancestors of today's French Commandos Marine; the No. 2 (Dutch) Troop is commemorated as the origin of the Korps Commandotroepen. Belgian, Norwegian and Polish troops, and the German-speaking No. 3 (X) Troop (largely Jewish refugees from Nazism), also passed through. The Commando Veterans Archive records trainees "from the USA, France, Holland, Belgium, Poland, Norway, and surprisingly, some Germans… 'Free' Germans and included Jews who had escaped the tyranny in their own country." Achnacarry is thus reasonably described as a wellspring of Allied special-forces training doctrine.

Legacy and modern status, including the Commando Memorial

The CBTC was disbanded in 1946. Achnacarry reverted to the Cameron of Lochiel family and remains their private seat today (the castle is not open to the public). The Clan Cameron Museum, opened in 1989 in an old listed building on the estate — the fulfilment of a project by Donald Hamish Cameron of Lochiel and Lady Cecil Cameron — interprets the clan's history alongside the commando story and displays commando material. Around 25,000 men trained on the estate; the museum records that men who trained at Achnacarry went on to win multiple Victoria Crosses.

The Commando Memorial, designed by the Scottish sculptor Scott Sutherland (who won the 1949 competition and a first prize of £200) and cast by H. H. Martyn & Co. of Cheltenham, stands about a mile from Spean Bridge at the junction of the A82 and B8004 — a separate but related site overlooking the training grounds, on ground the volunteers passed on their march from the station. The figures themselves are 9 feet 4 inches high, and the finished memorial approximately 17 feet high; the bronze group of three commandos was unveiled by Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother on 27 September 1952. Its plaque reads: "In memory of the officers and men of the commandos who died in the Second World War 1939–1945. This country was their training ground," with "United We Conquer" on the plinth. A remembrance garden alongside now commemorates commandos of later conflicts.

Achnacarry's training legacy endures: elements of the modern All Arms Commando Course (speed march, Tarzan Course, rope regain) trace directly to the wartime regime, and the wartime green beret was adopted in tribute by later special forces. The modern SAS founding story is covered separately on Card #20; here it is enough to note the shared Scottish special-training ecosystem — Achnacarry, Lochailort, Arisaig — from which many early special-forces personnel and methods emerged.

• Volunteers were deliberately detrained on the "wrong side" of Spean Bridge station so their very first task was to jump onto the tracks and up the far platform — before a seven-mile speed march to camp.
• The toggle-rope bridge over the River Arkaig used the very same toggle ropes each commando carried as personal kit, threaded and looped into a crossing.
• Some German nationals trained at Achnacarry — the "Free" Germans of No. 3 (X) Troop, many of them Jewish refugees from Nazism.
• Lieutenant Colonel Vaughan founded the Commando Association at Achnacarry in 1943 and was given membership number one.
• The Commando Memorial's three bronze figures look south towards Ben Nevis and Aonach Mòr; from the rear the group forms a V-shaped "cutting edge" formation.
• The obstacle courses and equipment at Achnacarry were largely home-made by the staff from local timber.
• It was at Achnacarry that Lord Lovat is said to have met Piper Bill Millin, who would famously pipe the D-Day landings on Sword Beach.
• The mock gravestones at the camp entrance carried instructional warnings — a piece of psychological staging, not a record of real deaths.

• The live-ammunition "death toll" myth. It is true that live ammunition and explosives were deliberately used at Achnacarry. It is not true that this produced heavy fatalities. The recorded training deaths were relatively few relative to 25,000+ trained, and the largest single cause was drowning, followed by accidental gunshot, mortar and demolition accidents. The frequently-quoted "27 deaths" is a 2024 memorial-campaign figure (Scott Sutherland Project, via The Scotsman) that combines several locations and includes deaths pre-dating the formal centralised course; there is no single official Achnacarry death total. Treat "many were killed by live fire" as legend/exaggeration; treat "training was genuinely dangerous and lives were lost, mostly to drowning and accidents" as documented.
• The Lord Lovat instructor legend. Lord Lovat is popularly cast as an Achnacarry commando instructor. His documented instructional role was at STC Lochailort; his fame rests on commanding No. 4 Commando at Dieppe and leading the 1st Special Service Brigade on D-Day. His Achnacarry association is traditional, not established as an instructor role.
• Geographic/clan distinction from Card #19. Achnacarry is Cameron of Lochiel/Clan Cameron territory in Lochaber (west Highlands). It has no connection to the Atholl family, the Murrays, or Blair Castle in Highland Perthshire (Card #19). The two should never be conflated.
• Distinction from Card #25 and Card #20. This card is the dedicated institutional treatment of Achnacarry; Card #25 covered Scotland's broader WWII contribution thematically, and Card #20 covered the SAS founding story. Achnacarry's influence on modern special forces is noted here in outline only, to avoid duplicating Card #20.