LIEUTENANT COLONEL C P CAMERON MC RM

With the death of Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Peter Cameron (fittingly on the Royal Marines’ 360th birthday) the Corps has lost one of its most professional and experienced aviators. His wide collection of friends from both inside and outside the service have also lost much, for he was a loyal and steadfast colleague to many from every background whose lives he enriched through his and Carol’s zest for living! Rarely does the Corps enjoy an officer with so much natural leadership and charm, especially when coupled with a wonderful, sometimes wicked, sense of humour.

Peter Cameron was born in Kenya in 1941. Following primary school, he moved to the UK at the age of 12 to continue his education at Stubbington House (known as the ‘cradle of the Navy’) where he was in the football team and already noted for his high spirits. His arrival though, was preceded by the headmaster’s announcement that ‘next term, boys, we will have two young lads from Kenya joining us’. There was school-wide disappointment when Peter and his younger brother turned up for they were far from being black as had been expected!

The Royal Marines had not been his first choice for he had wanted to join the Southern Rhodesian Police Force before becoming a tobacco farmer. Wisely, his father suggested he joined the British Armed Forces first as the ‘wind of change’ was beginning to blow across the continent. At Repton School he led the ‘commando section’ of the Cadet Corps, was secretary of the mountaineering club and swam competitively, all of which in his view, suited him perfectly for the Royal Marines but he failed the Civil Service Entrance Exam. Just in time he achieved two A Levels and thus was able to join Young Officer Batch 20 at ITCRM in November 1959, following a brief ‘toughening up’ period in London’s Docks.

During training Peter and three others, as part of an initiative exercise, were the first canoeists to execute a rerun of the 91-nautical-mile paddle taken by Lieutenant-Colonel ‘Blondie’ Hasler’s ‘Cockleshells’ during Operation Frankton in December 1942. Unusually, Peter and one other were also the first to cover Hasler’s 90-mile overland escape route from the Gironde estuary to the French Resistance in Ruffec. Along the way they were entertained by many French people who had helped the original operation 18 years earlier, some of whom thought it was Hasler himself returning, so gave the young officers a great welcome.

For Phase Two of his training Peter joined 40 Commando in Malta to be followed by a move east in HMS Albion for active service during the 1962 Brunei Rebellion. He and his rifle troop also spearheaded the helicopter landings at Kuching and later, fought during Konfrontasi in what was ‘very much a subalterns’ war’.

Sparked by his Far East experience Peter volunteered to fly and in 1965 became the first Royal Marines helicopter pilot to be awarded Army Air Corps (AAC) wings with this achievement leading to a series of flying appointments including command of 42 Commando’s Air Troop back in Singapore. Subsequently all the air troops were amalgamated into 3 Commando Brigade Air Squadron (3 BAS). In those early days he was already noted as a ‘natural’ pilot and one not afraid to ‘bend the rules’ or ‘push the boundaries’; a reputation enhanced by stories such as towing water skiers behind his Sioux while dressed in bathing trunks and flip-flops! Despite this, he did not enjoy flying over water in single engined aircraft, yet volunteered to land on a diesel-electric submarine off Malaya to evacuate a sick sailor. This was considered a remarkable piece of airmanship.