. . .or a Royal Marine?

I’M AMAZED that anyone is planning to accommodate women in the currently all-male Royal Marines barrack rooms.

Let’s face it, all Bootnecks will recall being drummed out of a warm bed on a freezing night in Lympstone by an instructor at 2am with the screamed order: ‘Outside now for kit inspection!’ It puts a whole new meaning to the word ‘kit’.

I can still recall with a shiver that ten-mile speed march in 90 minutes. By the end of it, I could count all the pimples on the neck of the Marine in front of me. And if you failed to make the grade, you did it all over again a week later. Now, I suppose, you’ll have to count the waves in the hair of the girl in front of you.

Don’t get me wrong; I love women (I married one — it was the uniform that she fell for). But accommodating them with a bunch of red-blooded, would-be green berets is a disaster waiting to unfold. JIMMY HODGE, Folkestone, Kent.