An Exercise Remembered
by Val Parnell

In the early seventies, when 3 Commando Brigade was still assigned to NATO’s southern flank, a Brigade rebro detachment was seated on the top of a mountain in Greece awaiting a heliborne evacuation to HMS Fearless.  Endex had been called and they were looking forward to a shower, food and a couple of cans of beer.

Locals from a nearby village had gathered to see them off and as the helicopter made its approach to pick them up a man in the crowd suddenly cried out.

“Don’t leave me, Sam!” he called through cupped hands.  His plea was barely audible above the clatter of the Wessex helicopter as it hovered above us on the mountaintop.

“Get me out of here, Val”, shouted Sam.  We huddled over our kit as the downdraft from the chopper’s rotor blades tugged at our clothing and threatened to blow us away.

“Sam!  Stay here with me”.  The man was pleading now, stretching out his arms towards the worried signaller beside me.  “We could be so happy together” he continued.

A Navy crewman leaned from the helicopter’s door and gave the thumbs-up sign.  It was time to go.  Sam didn’t wait for the order to move.  Scooping up his pack and rifle, he bounded towards his means of escape.  He was strapped into his seat before the rest of us could climb aboard.

Last in was Dennis, sorrowfully leaning forward to catch a final glimpse of the young girl who stood on the edge of the landing-site.  Her eyes were filled with tears.  In her right hand she grasped an English-Greek phrasebook; her left held on to her mothers’ arm.  After a moment, the mother slowly turned away and led her daughter back along the track towards the village.  Soon they were out of sight.

The helicopter lifted off and started down the mountainside towards the sea.  Ahead of us we could see the Fearless shimmering in the Mediterranean heat.  Later that afternoon we sailed for Athens, blissfully unaware of the girl in the Kaiser Willhelm helmet and lilac split-crotch knickers who waited for us there.  But that is another story.