HHS COMBINED CADET FORCE ( CCF )

I knew even in Junior School that I wanted to join the CCF . Don't know really why ; perhaps it was the uniform or maybe the pipe band . You could not join till you were 14 which meant the 2nd year at Senior School .

In Scotland the CCF was compulsory in private schools and voluntary in the grant aided . Being voluntary our cadets were as " keen as mustard ". Officially the CCF is a Ministry of Defence (MOD) sponsored   youth organisation. We thought we were "proper little soldiers " and took everything very seriously ; drill , weapon training, map reading etc.

Our detachment was affiliated to the Highland Light Infantry (HLI) which is the   City of Glasgow Regiment . In World War 1 it had 36 battalions.

In 1958 the HLI amalgamated with the Royal Scots Fusiliers (Ayrshire) to become The Royal Highland Fusiliers . I went to the amalgation parade at Glasgow High School's grounds Anniesland. Princes Margaret took the parade . I was to meet her many years later in Kensington Palace when I commanded the  Pompadours .

In the photograph are my two main friends in the CCF , Gordon Imrie (bottom left ) and Peter Jopp (bottom right) but more of them later . I am the one not in uniform as I had to take the Civil Service Exam that day.

 As cadets we paraded on Mon & Fri after school ( Fri being in uniform) .One did a total of five years in the CCF .In the first two years the aim was to get Cert A Parts one & two and then in the third year do signals. Some of our radio sets had Russian markings so they must have been surplus stock earmarked once to go on the Artic Convoys .

As I came top in Cert a Parts 1&2 I skipped signals as I got accelerated promotion to eventually become head of the CCF & a Prefect . It was really the senior cadets in the 5th and 6th Forms who ran the show and did all the instruction . In the 6th Form I took cadets to  .22 shooting on a Tues evening at  Glasgow University OTC .

A ten day summer camp was immediately after the end of the school year ( 30 Jun ). We went to Cultybraggan Camp near Comrie in Perthshire . The camp had been built in 1939 to house 4,000 German POW s. Being a Cat A Camp it housed the bad boys ; Waffen SS and U Boat crews . Camps were fun but compared with today with the emphasis on adventure camps  would be considered dull. I suppose in the1950s there was simply neither the funding nor the the trained instructors .Fibreglass canoes and climbing walls had not yet appeared on the scene .

At Easter senior cadets would go on centralisd 10 day camps with regular units. On these you linked up with cadets from other schools all over Scotland .

I suppose I had been toying with the idea of joining the Army for some time. The only other idea I had was the Colonial Police ( Like Orwell in Burma !) However , in the 6th Form (East Break) I went on a CCF visit to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst .That clinched it that was where I wanted to go .