Messages posted by: Jon Evans

Great, thanks for the info Pete, much appreciated. :)

I'm completely new to the forum and I expect I'll be reading through a lot of the material this year. I've ended up here because I've been trying to verify a half-remembered piece of information that I'm reasonably sure I saw on a documentary about the Royal Marines. I'm an author and I wanted to reference something known as the 'death dive' which is a forward abseiling manouevre used to test the nerve during selection or training.

If my recollection is correct, this technique was apparently used during WWII, possibly as a method of retreating rapidly at some point. However, the documentary would have been in the 90's and my memory of it is fuzzy at best. I'm writing science fiction set in the far future but I really don't want to reference something that's pure fiction. There's quite enough of that sort of thing in Hollywood films about well documented history anyway.

I asked in a writing forum and an acquaintance whose ex-military and spent some time serving on bases near Brecon, posed the question to some Royal Marines she knows. They've confirmed the death dive is a part of the Tarzan assault course but suggested I should come here for the more historical information.

If anyone can suggest a source I can refer to or can even confirm when or if the technique might have been used during a war, that would be incredibly helpful.

It was also suggested I visit the Royal Marines Museum but sadly that's closed at the moment. Shamefully, I was born in Portsmouth and never actually visited it. I'm planning to visit as soon as it re-opens in the historic dockyard, along with my co-author and family. :)