My Account
Squeezing into mini submarines as a member of the Royal Marine Special Boat Service was something Mac Hine became used to. In fact he says spending 21 years in the civil service, once he left the Marines, was far more claustrophobic. To cope, he travelled the world, ending up in Whangaparaoa. He spoke with Terry Moore about his war, and peacetime, experiences.
The Special Boat Service was a small force of around 80–100 men, and around 80 percent of the Marines who did the course failed it. That was mainly due to claustrophobia because it involved diving and submarines as well as canoeing, parachuting, and demolition – blowing up bridges and railways. I’m not claustrophobic, but even I had trouble in the midget, three person submarines. You had to get into the hatch, sit on the toilet, close the hatch and then flood the sub up; the water went above your head. Then, when it had submerged, the water was pumped out. Once you were in there was nowhere to move. We did small raids on the coast and beach reconnaissance. We’d put the canoes where the torpedoes used to go in the submarine and paddle in to the beaches at night. In Korea I was in a commando unit that did reconnaissance for the Americans. We’d carry two tons of explosive ashore in rubber dingys and put half in a tunnel and half under a bridge, set it off and then row like mad back out to sea. Big rocks would fly through the air after the explosion and land on you as you headed back to the American ships. It was all good fun, provided you got back in one piece. My unit got ambushed on the way to Chosin Reservoir and we lost half the unit in one night – 220 went in and only 108 were left in the morning who hadn’t been killed, wounded or taken prisoner.
I was one of the last British servicemen to be awarded a Military Medal by King George VI. I got the medal for giving covering fire to wounded comrades at Chosin Reservoir, but to be honest at the time I saw it more as a way not to join those comrades! King George V1 died before I returned to England, so I received the medal from the Queen at her investiture. It was a special day at Buckingham Palace and my only regret was that my grandmother, who brought me up, was not alive to see it.
I grew up in a village called Milford in Surrey. My mother wasn’t married, and in the 1930s that meant she had to go into service, while my grandmother raised me. My grandfather was very damaged by what he’d seen in World War I and he drank a lot. He supported the family, but died at the age of 48 because of his war experiences. After I left school, I worked as a market gardener for a couple of years. It was well paid and while all my mates were getting called up for national service, I was exempt because I was doing horticultural work. I joined the Royal Marines in 1949, partly for the reputation they had for a smart uniform which helped when chatting up the birds! Straight after I’d done my training, I was sent to Korea. Not long after that I met this girl, Shirley, on Southsea Beach in England. She was a ballet dancer, and was dancing in a show on the pier, which starred Harry Secombe. Next time I saw her, she had been in South Africa with George Formby and then I got sent to the Suez Canal and after three months, to Malta. While I was there I wrote to her and invited her to come out to Malta. She was only 20 and I was 24. We got married in Malta in 1955. This year we celebrated our Diamond Wedding Anniversary, 60 years together. We have four children, all now living in New Zealand, 11 grandchildren, 11 great-grandchildren and one great-great-granddaughter.
We wanted to move to New Zealand when I was 40, and finished my time in the Marines, but our children were in Grammar school and completing their education, so it wasn’t possible then. We never gave up on that idea and eventually we came out 30 years later. Our daughter Angela was a midwife, and a helicopter pilot. She crashed a helicopter at the Hole in the Rock in the Bay of Islands in 1991, while filming boats going through the hole. The cameraman was unfortunately killed, but our daughter survived – it seems that the reason was that being a short person, she had piles of cushions underneath her on the seat and that softened the impact. Shirley flew out to see her, our other daughter subsequently moved to New Zealand and we followed 14 years ago. The reason we came to the Hibiscus Coast in the first place was because of some nuns. A group of nuns were living near our daughter in Onehunga and when we told them we were going to live in Warkworth, they suggested that we try Whangaparaoa instead, which they said was much nicer. We looked around the peninsula and it only took us one morning to find a place here.
After the marines, I went into the civil service as a signal officer in the dockyards in Portsmouth. Pushing paper is all it was, but it was a reliable job and kept food on the table. I hated being behind a desk and the strip lighting gave me headaches – somehow I was stuck there for 21 years. We made up for it by travelling all around the world, whenever we could – we must have been to 80 or 90 different countries. There were regular reunions with the American Marines that I’d met in Korea, so we’ve been to every corner of the United States. We’ve also spent a lot of time in Australia, Tokyo and went back to Korea. One place we haven’t been to, since we emigrated, is the UK. We sometimes think of it a bit through rose coloured glasses, until we remember that we had to hibernate from October to May.
We haven’t been to the Pacific Islands, apart from Hawaii, because we don’t need a sea and sand type of holiday – we have that here in Whangaparaoa! This year we’re going to Australia – Sydney, Canberra and the Outback. We like travelling independently whenever we can, rather than doing a tour. The only place we haven’t been that was on our list is South America and we are not going to make it there because of the long flight and all those injections. Of all the places we’ve been, the one with the most impact by far has been Auschwitz-Birkenau, known as The Death Factory. We felt we had to go there, because it was part of our history. It still makes me shudder to think of it. I’ve seen enough brutal things, but that was shocking.
The biggest change in the service now, compared to when I was in it, is that generally we didn’t have cars, so we were stuck in a barracks or camp and all there was to do was drink. It was good when they stopped the rum, because that caused a lot of trouble and a lot of the men became alcoholics. On active service, you were given 20 cigarettes a day, but I have never smoked so I gave mine away. My hearing was damaged permanently by my time in the Marines. You couldn’t wear those ear defenders all the time – there were so many explosions. At the Yemen border, we were getting shot at a lot and mortars and rockets landed very close, which didn’t help. The British military pay for my hearing aids, although they tried to wiggle out of it when we moved to New Zealand. You definitely have to stick up for yourself. When we came here, any increases in my pension were frozen, which applied to my civil service pension as well. I wrote to the Minister of Pensions in Westminster and in the end he agreed that we should get those, just like everyone else. That is in the rules now. I think a lot of people must have just accepted it, but that’s not in my nature.
When I turned 80, I bungy jumped off the Skytower – my kids organised that for me and they thought I wouldn’t do it, but they’d forgotten that I’ve done a fair bit of parachuting in the Marines and actually quite like it. I’m thinking about doing a tandem parachute when I turn 85 later this year.
