A BOOTNECK REMEMBERS by JULIAN THOMPSON
(Pen & Sword Military; £25; ISBN 978-1-03611 -7856)

This is a tale worthy of Shakespeare. An outstanding Royal Marines officer. A decorated war
hero. A decisive man who rarely questioned himself. An ambitious man who always led by
example. A man dedicated to King and country. A born leader destined for the very top. And
a passionate man whose life was irrevocably upended in his fifties for the love of a woman.

The essence of the Royal Marines, according to Major General Julian Thompson in this
revealing and absorbing memoir co-written with his daughter Henrietta Lilley, is that it is a
big “family.” Looking out for each other is, or should be, second nature.

In 1985, however, he met “a tall, elegant and very striking redhead called Jane” at a Royal
Marines ball. He was “instantly captivated.” Both were married, she to a former RM officer
Thompson knew. An affair developed. They fell in love. Feeling that in all conscience he had
no alternative but to resign his commission despite being poised to become the next
Commandant General of the RM, he did so in September 1986. Some of Thompson’s
colleagues later “made it very plain that they felt I had acted in a dishonourable way.”

After leaving the RM, Thompson and his wife of 25 years who had dutifully “packed and
followed” and brought up two children throughout his peripatetic career divorced. He
settled slowly into civilian life with a by-then also divorced Jane. So explosive is this story,
candidly told in this book but kept largely under wraps at the time, that it was to feature
subsequently on the front page of The Sun newspaper with “several facts neatly twisted.” A
stellar military career had ended abruptly.

As Thompson, now aged 92, makes clear, he then “kept his head down” and has done well in
civilian life reinventing himself as a sought-after security consultant, military historian and
adviser to organisations around the globe. Yet from schooldays at Sherborne all he had
wanted to be was a Royal Marine officer. The pain of what he gave up 40 years ago remains
evident in the book, if rationalised by the passage of time.

The memoir, explains Thompson’s daughter who did most of the writing, is “a biography first
and foremost” rather than a military handbook, and examines in close focus what makes a
Service leader. The chapter on the Falklands conflict contains some new material compared
to Thompson’s earlier account No Picnic (first published in 1985) and pulls no punches over
the convoluted UK command structure which emerged haphazardly under the pressure of
events. Task Force HQ at Northwood, for example, is described as “the worst HQ under
which I have ever had to operate…Chaos and indecision” reigned as did micromanagement.
Neither are individuals spared, in particular two senior Army officers.

The Falklands apart, though, the bulk of the book is a broad, fluent and often affectionate
account of Thompson’s ascent in the RM during the Cold War era. Jargon is kept to a
minimum and the memoir is full of telling details underlining how Thompson’s core
philosophy of “leading by example” played out in practise. A good example is the four
months he commanded 40 Commando on an emergency tour in IRA “bandit country” (South
Armagh) in 1976 “very full on,” but the unit emerged unscathed and seized hundreds of
pounds of explosives and munitions. At heart what he terms a “soldiering” RM officer, such operational episodes played to Thompson's strengths as did his lifelong ability to network with all and sundry.

In the late-1990s it was the Commander Carrier Battle Group in the Falklands war, Rear
Admiral Sandy Woodward with whom Thompson had had a not-always easy relationship
during the campaign who reached out to him, seeking his involvement with an appeal to
build a chapel at Pangbourne College to commemorate the 255 British servicemen killed
during the war. Thompson obliged, cementing a tie with an unusual institution that had
provided more servicemen to the Falklands force than any other school in the U.K.

In fact it turns out that Thompson’s links with Pangbourne go deeper. An early commanding
officer of his was the Old Pangbournian Peter Hellings, a future Commandant General of the
RM who once took personal responsibility for a minor Thompson transgression. A close
friend from way back in Oman in the 1960s is OP Ewen Southby-Tailyour. Ivar Hellberg and
Dennis Scott-Masson, both OPs, feature positively in the Falklands chapter. In civilian life,
too, Thompson was to work closely with an OP and former RM officer, Christopher Ledger,
one of the founders of Idarat Maritime which advised shipbuilders about anti-piracy
measures.

Today Julian Thompson is a rarity in British life – a widely respected soldier-scholar. This
revealing memoir describes frankly and fairly how this came about and succeeds. Family
members are not always the best judges in print of parents and grandparents. But Henrietta
Lilley and her father make a formidable and very readable combination in this vibrant
account of what already seems like a vanishing age.

By ROBIN KNIGHT