About me...

I am a teacher and outdoor adventurous activities leader and instructor. I graduated in 2018 with a 1st  Class Honours degree in Outdoor Leadership & Coaching which included being presented with the Award for Most Outstanding Student. I am now doing an MRes in Military History, which I hope to upgrade to a PhD..

I am a college Lecturer and have been teaching  Uniformed Public Services and Outdoor Adventurous Sport for over 20 years. Outside the UK I have travelled in the Peruvian Amazon looking for Giant Otters and trekked in the Japanese Alps tracking the elusive Giant Salamander. I have led successful expeditions in the rain forests of Borneo, Malaysia and Ghana, and safari and mountain treks in Southern Tanzania. I was made a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society in 2014 for my contribution to expeditions and was awarded an RGS Scholarship in 2019.

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In October 1985 I arrived at Quartier Vienot in Aubagne, the main headquarters of the French Foreign Legion. Here, I had to surrender my passport and receive a new identity (identité déclarée). Retaining my initials, I was re-named Marc Boucher, a Canadian, and then had to endure intense psychological vetting by "Gestapo" interrogators checking for serious criminal backgrounds. I was then transferred to the 4th Foreign Regiment (4e RE) in Castelnaudary for my basic training. I spent the first month isolated at a remote outpost they called The Farm under relentless physical hazing. I managed to survive on minimal sleep, learnt basic French via brutal repetition, and completed the legendary March of the White Képi to earn my status as a legionnaire. I volunteered and qualified for the airborne track and transferred late in the year to Corsica. I was based at Camp Raffalli near Calvi, Corsica, home of the 2e REP and I spent Christmas and early 1986 in Calvi, doing Airborne Training. The 2e atmosphere was notoriously rigid, dominated by a mix of Eastern Bloc, British, and Francophone veterans. Commonwealth guys tended to stick together during training and it's here I befriended two Aussies and a Rhodesian. At Jump School I earned the coveted French military parachute badge after standard night and day jumps over the Gulf of Calvi, and by late Summer I had been assigned to the 2nd Company (Mountain/Arctic Warfare).

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In the March of 1987 the regiment was deployed to East Africa, my first overseas deployment. We spent several months garrisoned at Quartier Monclar in Djibouti alongside the 13th Foreign Legion Demi-Brigade.Desert combat training was punctuated by short, brutal cross-border skirmishes. We were then sent north into Chad on temporary assignment during the final stages of the war to support Chadian forces against Libyan-backed factions. The biggest enemies for me weren't the Libyans, but instead the heat exhaustion, dysentery, and the extreme isolation of the African bush.

Now back in Corsica and a seasoned veteran (Ancien), in early 1988 I was promoted to Caporal (Corporal). The tables are turned and I'm now the one enforcing discipline, leading physical training, and shouting commands in French at the new recruits.

My Company was then deployed for a grueling three-month rotation at the CEFE (Equatorial Jungle Training Center) in French Guiana. We survived on ration packs while learning deep-jungle tracking and river operations. I got serious foot rot and thankfully we returned to Corsica, and my life is a loop of heavy drinking in local bars, endless combat exercises in the rugged Corsican mountains, and maintaining immaculate uniform presentations.

In mid 1990, I began to count the weeks to my contract expiring and me leaving the legion. 2e REP are abruptly deployed to Port-Gentil in Gabon for Operation Shark, evacuating hundreds of Western citizens during the violent, anti-government riots. After a short spell back at Camp Rafalli in September Iraq invades Kuwait and the Legion is mobilized for Opération Daguet. 2e REP, along with 1er REC mechanised armour, ship out to the Saudi Arabian desert. I spent the final months of my five-year contract dug into sand trenches in the Arabian desert, preparing for the massive ground assault that would launch in early 1991 with the Gulf War. My contract expired just as the world stood on the brink of war.

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I have always had a fascination with the tales of derrin-do of British explorers in the late 19th and early twentieth century and how they managed such incredible accomplishments with the equipment and technology available at the time; I have also been faascinated by World War 2 and in particular the exploits and acolades of the Commandos.  I began to link these intrepid explorers with the Commandos, as many were recruited or volunteered in order to share their knowledge and skills and to help create the first 'special forces' training depot at Achnagarry in the Scottish Highlands.