Individualism, exceptionalism and counter culture in Second World War special service training

Abstract

• This paper explores the origins and nature of early special service training in the Scottish highlands and its influence on the culture of special service organisations during the Second World War and after. Focussing on the improvised training system devised at Inverailort House, Inverness-shire in the summer of 1940, it traces how ideas about special training developed in challenge to conventional British military organisation and thinking. The theory of organisational culture, including the role of artefacts in defining subcultures and countercultures, is used to analyse the place of training and selection in the evolving and uneasy relationship between special service and traditional British military culture.