The RM Classic embroidered cap now available in the store. Lots of colours. Royally Royal.

There's always one that instantly regrets swearing the oath of allegiance. We had one. The second everyone had finished he put his hand up and said he'd made a mistake. Tough tits now fella, you're theirs for 4 weeks (not sure how long you have to do now after the oath). He didn't enjoy his 4 weeks I'll like add. 🤣

Getting searched and having nearly all your kit taken away!

Royal Marines of 40 Commando rest and have a meal in a barn which they have converted to a temporary grot. The wall is decorated with the Union Jack flag and note a poster showing a portrait of the Prince and Princess of Wales on their engagement. At the time of the photograph, the Prince and Princess were expecting their first child. Prince William was born on 21 June 1982, a week after the ceasefire. The gun sits ready next to the lads while they're getting their scran on, should it be needed to take care of any enemy that wanted to have a go.

Harry Francis, of South Gloucestershire has died at 101. Known as ‘H’ to those close to him, he was one of the West of England’s last surviving Second World War veterans, and one of the first men into what became the Special Boat Service. He joined the Royal Navy in 1942 at sixteen, having lied about his age. From there he went into the Royal Marines, and in 1943 into the small, unorthodox boat parties that Roger Courtney had argued into existence after Dunkirk. He took part in covert operations in Italy, Lebanon and Burma, where he was wounded. His daughter Teresa Betton put it plainly while he was still alive: “What he gave for this country, all the friends that he lost… I’m so proud of him. He tells the stories, but not all of them. He signed the Official Secrets Act and has stuck by it.” The stories that did get out were epic. Spinning dits like ten men when nobody would fail to listen. Knowledge ahead of his years and instilling pride in those who gave their ear to him. One story, told at his hundredth birthday last year, had him dropped in the wrong place in wartime Yugoslavia. He spent five days finding his way out and was greeted by Josip Broz Tito, who later ran the country. Francis was awarded a Yugoslav military medal. One of a pocketful Tito was said to keep for soldiers who turned up alive. In Burma the jungle was, in his own words, hell. Out on a recce one time his section was ambushed. Two of his oppo’s were shot. He got a bayonet in his stomach. He came home to recover but didn’t make a big deal of it. The man after the war He lived in South Gloucestershire (which happens to be where I live!) with his wife Gwen. He liked Armed Forces Day and being in the middle of a crowd with a story. At 100 he was given a personal letter from the First Sea Lord, General Sir Gwyn Jenkins, and a visit from Royal Marines Reserve Bristol. Jenkins called the operations “truly courageous” and Francis “an incredible individual with an abundance of character,” an inspiration to today’s sailors and Royal Marines. Asked then for the secret of a long life, Francis said: “Before you argue with a man, make sure you can handle him.” Wise words many young lads could pay attention to in today's world. Gwen said this week that he was the love of her life and the heart of the family. “He loved local events like Armed Forces Day and he loved being part of this community. He was never happier than when he was right in the middle of it, with a story to tell. We’re all heartbroken, and I’ll miss him more than I can say, but we’re so grateful for all the kindness people have shown us.” South Gloucestershire Armed Forces Day wrote that he belonged to a generation that gave everything so the rest of us could live in freedom. “His quiet bravery, and his remarkable life, will not be forgotten.” Thoughts to Gwen, to the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and to everyone who knew H. Gone but not forgotten Royal.

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The Operations Room of 40 Royal Marine Commando during the initial phase of Operation MOTORMAN. Operation Motorman was the British Army’s largest operation in Ireland since the War of Independence, and the largest British military operation since Suez. It began at about 04:00 on 31 July 1972. The aim was to smash the barricaded “no-go” areas that had grown up in nationalist districts — above all Free Derry (Bogside and Creggan) and republican parts of Belfast — and put the security forces back on the streets. Why it happened After internment (August 1971) and Bloody Sunday (January 1972), whole neighbourhoods were sealed with rubble barricades. The IRA and, in places, local defence committees controlled who went in. Loyalist groups threatened matching no-go areas. Direct Rule had begun in March 1972. Ten days before Motorman, Bloody Friday (21 July) — 22 Provisional IRA bombs in Belfast — killed nine people and injured about 130. That attack supplied the political opening Westminster and HQ Northern Ireland wanted. Major-General Robert Ford planned the operation. Scale About 22,000 regular troops plus roughly 5,300 UDR, extra battalions flown in, and RAF support. Derry was the main effort (sometimes called Carcan in planning). HMS Fearless put Royal Engineers and adapted Centurion AVREs (bulldozer tanks) ashore on the Foyle so the barricades could be pushed aside. Smaller columns went into Newry, Armagh, Lurgan and Coalisland. In Belfast, 40 Commando was tasked with the New Lodge and 42 Commando with Ligoniel. The IRA had seen the build-up and chose not to fight a set-piece defence. Sirens sounded in the Bogside; most volunteers went to ground. Resistance on the morning itself was slight. Security forces took no combat deaths that morning. The same day, nine civilians were killed in the Claudy car bombs outside Derry — a separate IRA attack, not part of Motorman, but it sits on the same date in every chronology. What it achieved By nightfall the barricades were down and Free Derry as a physical no-go area was finished. Troops occupied schools, factories and parks (including GAA grounds in Belfast) and stayed. Arrests and weapons finds followed in the weeks after. Violence in 1972 was the worst year of the Troubles; after Motorman the rate of killing never again reached the pre-July peak, though the campaign itself lasted another two decades. Republican accounts treat it as occupation, not a military defeat of the IRA. Royal Marines: 40 and 42 Commando were among the units that went through the Belfast barricades. The Corps was already deep into Operation Banner; by the end of 1980 it had completed 22 emergency tours, with 11 Marines killed in the Province. Motorman was one day in a much longer tour cycle, not a one-off raid.

Nordic Sking with the Aurora Borealis behind them, are two members of Commando Helicopter Force at Bardufoss, Norway. They took part in Exercise Clockwork as part of Joint Helicopter Command (JHC). The three squadrons of the Commando Helicopter Force are the wings of the Royal Marines, providing crucial aerial support to the green berets be they at sea in an assault ship or in the sand and dust of Afghanistan.

Live firing exercise sitting in a ditch. What's not to love?

The idea of using canoes in warlike activity had apparently first occurred to Roger Courtney shortly after Dunkirk. In the shaken summer of 1940, Britain was looking for any way to strike back. The evacuation had so unsettled military convention that unorthodox formations — Independent Companies and Commandos — were not merely tolerated. They were encouraged. Whitehall was “besieged by men who had tramped across deserts, descended to claustrophobic depths in caves, lived on berries and snakes in Africa," or, in Courtney’s case, canoed down the White Nile between intervals of big-game hunting. Each of them believed his own peculiar speciality held a way to hit Hitler’s Germany. Roger James Allen Courtney or “Jumbo” to those who knew him, was then a subaltern in No. 8 Commando, recently formed by Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Laycock, an ex-Royal Horse Guards officer with a marked sense of humour. Courtney’s brother, Gruff, had already commanded one of the early operations. Roger’s contribution was different: small, collapsible canvas craft — folboats — that could put raiders silently onto an enemy shore. It was not an obvious idea. Canoes looked frail beside destroyers and landing craft. But Courtney had already proved, in Africa, what a folding boat and a determined paddler could do. He had bought a two-seater sports canoe in London and taken it the length of the White Nile. That private voyage became, after Dunkirk, a military argument. Laycock encouraged the enthusiasm. In the months that followed, some twenty officers and men with Wilson and Hughes among the most eager, spent long, cold, exhausting hours learning to manage their wayward craft in the stormy waters around the rock-bound island of Arran. Training was not only about boats. It covered every weapon still left in the British armoury after the débâcle of Dunkirk, plus those President Roosevelt had been able to prise from reluctant American quartermasters, and specialist work in demolitions. Sceptics still had to be convinced. Courtney’s answer was typical of the man. He paddled, unannounced, to the infantry landing ship HMS Glengyle, climbed aboard, and later presented a stolen deck-gun cover to senior officers meeting in a nearby hotel. The stunt and a sanctioned follow-up won him a captaincy and permission to raise a dozen men. They were first called the Folboat Section, then No. 1 Special Boat Section: the seed of today’s Special Boat Service. So why did this idea work? The canoe was quiet, portable, and small enough to be launched from a submarine or a larger ship. It could put two men onto a beach or against a hull without the noise or silhouette of a motor boat. That simple advantage — stealth at the waterline — would later take Courtney’s men into the Mediterranean, onto enemy beaches, and into the lineage of modern maritime special forces.

14 years ago today we lost Captain Carl David Manley, Royal Marines. 3 September 1971 to 24 September 2012. Carl died at Bagram Airfield on this day in 2012, aged 41, of what the Ministry described as natural causes. He was on operations, and had worn his green lid for more than twenty years. His commanding officer spoke of a ferocious work ethic paired with humility, and of a sustained contribution to ISAF on that tour and the ones that had gone before it. He called him a highly valued Royal Marines officer, missed by everyone who had worked with him. Carl was a husband and a father of three. His wife said he was the loveliest of both, that they could not imagine life without him, and that they were proud of everything he had done for the Service and for the family. Always smiling, she said. Never a bad word about anyone. Selfless at work and at home. They asked for privacy then, and that still stands. Gone but not forgotten Royal. See you at the re-org.

HMS Trent in the Caribbean. The Puma is in the water. Lads are off to retrieve it. That is how this one comes home. The drone flies off the bridge wing, has a gander at the target — damage after a storm, or a hull you do not want to close on — then stalls in and floats. The unglamorous part is this. Three in a rib, closing in then picking the airframe up before a wave takes the tail off or it drifts out of the picture. 700X fly it. The ship’s company still have to recover it. Practise that enough and the next sortie is just another launch. Get it wrong and you have lost the eyes for the rest of the patrol. As the saying goes, "amateurs practice until they get right, professionals practice until they can't get it wrong." Puma is the low cost eyes on the target.

M Company, 42 Commando. Barikju, north of Kajaki. Late January 2007. The dam needed a ring of quiet. Taliban had been mortaring and rocketing the hydroelectric works from the empty village of Barikju. It was twenty-five compounds, sentries on two positions, an admin area behind. Civvies had already thinned out. Once the plant ran properly it was meant to put power into the lives of the best part of two million people. It could not run while the firing points sat five kilometres up the valley. Operation Volcano was the clearance. Night move in: M Company, 59 Commando Royal Engineers, search teams. 10 Troop made the first breach into the high-walled compounds and took rifle, machine-gun and RPG fire. The rest of the company worked compound to compound. Fire also came from Chinah. Aircraft and the company’s mortars answered back for the lads. This photograph is that moment. Lads on the roofs enjoying the view with the strike going in behind the mud domes. Op Volcano sat inside the wider fight for Kajaki and, later, Op Achilles. The Shrine and the firing points north of the river were the same problem: push the Taliban far enough back that engineers could work. Terry didn't stay away though. Rockets still came inbound with control of the dam being the prize.

22 September 1989. 08:22. A 15 lb time bomb under a sofa in the Coffee Boat recreation room at the Royal Marines School of Music, Deal. Three floors came down. Ten bandsmen died in the rubble. Musician Christopher Nolan, 21, died of his wounds on 18 October. Twenty-one more were hurt. No one has ever been convicted. They were not on operations. They were musicians and, like every RM bandsman, trained as medics. The IRA called it part of the war. They're spineless. Mick Ball, 24. Andy Cleatheroe, 25. Trevor Davis, 39. Richard Fice, 22. Richard “Taff” Jones, 27. David “Mac” McMillan, 26. Dean Pavey, 31. Mark Petch, 26. Tim Reeves, 24. Bob Simmonds, 34. Christopher Nolan, 21. The memorial bandstand on Walmer Green carries the names, paid for by the town itself. A service at Deal is still held on this morning. Gone but not forgotten, Royals.

The repatriation ceremony from Afghanistan of Royal Marine Jonathan 'Dutchy' Holland in March 2007. The ceremony took place at RAF Brize Norton, Oxfordshire. Jonathan was killed in action whilst serving with Whiskey Company, 45 Cdo RM. Gone but not forgotten Royal.

The Royal Marines attached to CTF 158 and the boarding team of HMS CORNWALL carry out a tanker sweep in the North Arabian Gulf on Wednesday 14th June 2007.

Royal Marines from Yankee Coy 45 Commando begin a mountain march up 'Stol' in Slovenia in 2021.

Narrator: These missions didn’t always go according to plan. Cpl Steve Newland: We got within fifty metres of the base of it, and one of the blokes in the front said stop — by hand signal — so we all stopped. We all went to ground, and it came back: there’s a sentry up front. And we’re all peering through the gloom of the dark light, and there were six of these blokes. You could just see them. They were all talking, mincing up and down, carrying weapons. One of them then lit a cigarette up, and they were talking away. So we decided we’d try and push round this bend and get into some cover, because we were well out in the open at the moment, and they’d not seen us. Me and a bloke called Graham Fisk just snaked over the top of this little hole on our stomachs and crawled along some jagged type rocks. Between me and him there’s a little row of rocks that look like the back of a dinosaur. And we’re just crawling along, trying to get towards these six that were shooting at us, because we were behind them now. And this little voice in the dark said, “Steve, I can see one.” And I hadn’t realised at the time that when we’d gone over the top he’d pulled a 66 out and made it ready. So my immediate reaction was, well, hit him. So the next thing I know is a 66 goes off and it blows my head off — because he’s fired at this bloke with a 66. And it hit him, went through him and detonated behind this rock and totally blew him to pieces. And if you’ve ever imagined, in the middle of a gunfight — I was so annoyed that he’d fired this 66 I actually gave him a bollocking in the middle of a firefight. And then these others must have thought, well, he’s gone, we’ll try and snake out. And what they did was they came round the same way, and instead of getting back up onto Harriet they walked straight into me and him. So it was like a duck shoot. So six of them went down. Narrator: The information about the Argentinian positions from such patrols was passed on to the rest of the men who were about to go into battle. A great deal had been found out. We know how they’re going to reinforce themselves.

A Thames River Police lead maritime security exercise in conjunction with the Royal Marines is carried out on the river Thames in preparation for the Olympic Games in 2012.