Kippford's Donald Reid takes a trip down memory lane in Galloway People

He’s quite a character, is Donald Reid from Kippford.

The former Royal Navy diver has come through much in life, not least a near-death encounter with cancer a few years ago.

These days he devotes much of his time to raising money for charities researching more effective treatments and cures for the disease that almost killed him.

Apart from that, walks in the beautiful countryside in wooded hills behind the scenic village with wife Fiona and the couple’s three dogs, Jet, Ink and Rocket provide the perfect relaxation.

So it’s not surprising the 63-year-old is making every day of life count, telling his story in that soft, Scots-intoned accent so typical of Ireland’s north-east coast.

Born in 1961 in Larne – the ferry port is just about the closest Ireland gets to Scotland – Donald tells me he was an only child and at the age of three moved with parents Trevor and Anna to east Belfast, 20-odd miles down the coast.

I ask about his background – and it turns out he has some pretty impressive characters in his pedigree, including sporting legends and war heroes killed long before their time in the mud and blood of Flanders.

“My great-uncle Donald C Reid was a soldier in the war, and my great-great-uncle was Dave Gallaher, who captained the All Blacks in their first tour to the British Isles in 1905,” Donald explains.

“He was born in Ramelton in County Donegal, which later only became part of the Republic by one vote.

“His New Zealand team won 35 out of 36 matches and he was their first captain.

“But he and three of his brothers all fell in 1917 at Passchendaele in the First World War.

“One brother’s name is on the Menin Gate because they could not find his remains.

“Also, my great-uncle’s cousin was Robert Blair-Main, known as Paddy.

“He played rugby for Ireland and the British Lions and was the most decorated soldier in World War Two, winning four DFCs and the Légion d’honneur, the highest French order of merit.”

It’s a sobering start to our conversation, Donald being all too conscious of the terrible toll that World War One took on communities up and down the land.

His own story as a child in Belfast opens with attendance at Downey House then Cabin Hill Prep, the latter being a feeder school for the prestigious Campbell College in the city.

“It was the best school in Ireland,” Donald tells me in typical straighforward fashion.

“They reckon CS Lewis wrote The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe under the gas lamps on the road up to the school.

“Tim Martin was also a pupil and one of his teachers told him he would never be a success.

“That teacher was called JD Wetherspoon and Tim went on to name his pub chain after him.

“The college had so many rugby fields the Combined Cadet Force could tow a glider across the width of them, taking off at one side and landing it at the other.

“I was a big swimmer at school, and played water polo, rugby and squash.

“I got up to 11th in Ireland for squash and played world champion Jonah Barrington for an exhibition game.

“He just wiped the floor with me – I was just 16 at the time.”

In his senior school years he had a job in the hospitality trade during the Easter and summer holidays to earn a bit of cash but, Donald recalls, his savings took a hit after a brush with the Gardia – the Republic of Ireland’s police force.

“When I was 16, 17 and 18 I worked at the Fort Royal Hotel in Rathmullan in Donegal,” he tells me.

“It was beside the sea and very close to my mother’s birthplace.

“Rathmullan had horse racing twice a year when they would be giving it big licks up and down the beach.

“It was a big day out and all the bookies would be there.

“The hotel had this race horse, a black mare called Beth, and they asked me to exercise her one afternoon. But I fell among thieves, as they say, and I was not fit to be on the thing.

“Flying down the road to the pier on the horse I overtook a Garda in a police car.

“It was not a very wise thing to do – please don’t try this at home.

“At the beach they lifted me back on to on this horse, slapped Beth’s backside and away she went like the wind – right through some people having a picnic.

“Nobody got hurt – including the horse.

“But the policeman knew who it was and was waiting in the stable for me.

“I was earning £19 – and ended up getting fined £25 for overtaking a police car in the street.”

Donald has the air of an educated man and that indeed proves to be the case.

However, he chose not to attend university and chose a career with the Royal Navy instead.

“I was supposed to go to uni to study oceanography,” he tells me.

“But my parents couldn’t really afford it so I decided I did not want to go and would do diving and navigation with the Royal Navy instead.

“Their recruitment office was underneath my dad’s business in Belfast and they had picked me up the previous year.

“The recruitment officer had asked me to go on a two-week course for potential officers at the Brittania Royal Naval College in Dartmouth in Devon and I agreed.

“I sailed through that – then he asked me to go before the Admiralty Interview Board, and I passed first time.

“That qualified me for the college – so that’s what I did.

“I was at Dartmouth for 18 months and in the same entry as Prince Andrew, who I found arrogant and a hard man to like.

“We had sport three afternoons a week which for me meant rugby, squash and swimming.

“But you also had to go and earn your tickets on 12 different types of boats.”

That doesn’t exactly sound like hard work, I suggest.

“Well, south Devon in summer playing about on boats on the river – it was absolutely lovely.

“We were well cared for and it was splendid.

“I was 20 and a midshipman, then went to two ships for a few months on each to become a sub-lieutenant.

“It’s only after that you sit your exams with the Fleet Board to see if you are fit to go any further.

“I passed and then started as an officer of the watch on my first ship, the frigate HMS Diomede – they were all named after Greek and Roman gods.

“Then I was on a destroyer, HMS Exeter and senior officer of the watch and diving officer.

“All the frigates and destroyers had a diving team whose duties included underwater maintenance and checking for limpet mines.

“I volunteered and I loved it.

“There was a calculated risk but it was incredibly professional and very, very enjoyable.”

Diving training and skills, Donald continues, were delivered on HMS Vernon, a shore based facility at Portsmouth where divers were subjected to rigorous assessment to ensure they could handle challenging – and sometimes dangerous – subsea conditions.

“It was very physical and you got pushed very hard,” he says.

“You would get dropped from great heights – the deck of an aircraft carrier for example – wearing an inflatable dry suit.

“The exercise was called the bee-sting and the drop was at least 20 metres – it was to make sure you weren’t soft.

“You would also run for miles in full kit and do swimming in very cold water.

“One thing about being a diver then was that there was no communication.

“All you had was a rope and used what they call pulls and bells so you could tell those on the surface that you were okay.

“It’s a bit like Morse Code to some extent.

“Diving was such a professional branch of the navy and it was fabulous – you had to trust each other.

“I was an officer and I had to make sure nobody got hurt – and nobody ever did.”

The 77-day Falklands war between Britain and Argentina had been over for just three years when Donald headed to the group of South Atlantic islands in 1985 aboard HMS Exeter – a trip, he tells me, which included a visit to South Georgia.

At work underwater, there were occasional scary moments when marine life took a disturbingly keen interest in the humans intruding on their ocean domain.

“The water around the Falklands is very cold, only 6C – and that’s in summer,” Donald recalls.

“Leopard seals would sometimes come for a look – these animals are huge.

“They are 20 feet long and can be savage things – they could have chewed me up and spat out my scuba gear, no problem.

“At San Carlos Water in the Falklands we had to go and dive on one of the war graves.

“Four British ships had been sunk there during the war.

“On the bottom another diver was in front of me and he started pointing behind me.

“I looked round and there was a Commerson’s dolphin sitting not two feet away staring at me.

“They look exactly like a small killer whale.

“That really tests your non-return valve – but you are trained to stay calm and go through your drills.

“Most things underwater don’t want to do you any harm and normally they don’t.

“I was always taught that the bigger things get, the calmer you have to be – you could be in charge of hundreds of people at any one time and you have to do your job well.

“If the water’s up to the top of your wellies and the place is on fire you have to stay calm.”

Donald also has vivid memories of South Georgia – an island 900 miles from the Falklands and even colder because of its proximity to the Antarctic ice sheets.

It is one on the most remote islands on the planet and famed for its huge variety of sub-polar wildlife, both in the sea and on land.

“South Georgia is very barren with glaciers and five abandoned whaling stations, which include Grytviken and Stromness,” he explains.

“They were abandoned very suddenly – the chemical experiments were still sitting on the benches, the film projectors were still in the cinemas and the medical records of the men were still on the medical officer’s desk.

“It was all very strange.

“Whaling just died overnight and Christian Salvesen just brought them all back.

“Salvesen had brought reindeer to the island to augment the men’s food supply and they are there yet.

“One interesting thing is that the glaciers split up the herd and the two groups have evolved differently – the scientists got quite excited about it.The British Antarctic Survey stop off there on their way down to the ice and have a big accommodation place on the island.”

It sounds like a pretty forbidding place, but for Donald South Georgia has a kind of stark majesty.

“There were four seasons in one day but I loved the wildlife,” he tells me. “I still have a big whale bone at the back door I brought home with me from the whaling station.

“It was a charming place with many types of penguins – emperor, king, Adeli, Humboldt, gentoo and rock-hopper.

“There were elephant seals as well – you would be just walking along a beach and you’d hear this big grunt and there would be this huge seal right in front of you.”

South Georgia is also the resting place of legendary Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton who, like Donald, came from Ireland.

In 1916, Shackleton and his crew, guided by their skilled New Zealander navigator Frank Worsley, made an incredible escape in wooden lifeboats across the Ross Sea to Elephant Island, then on to South Georgia, where the only chance of survival lay.

Their ship Endurance had been crushed by ice and sank the previous year, leaving them stranded.

“I have cleaned Ernest Shackleton’s grave in Grytviken Cemetery three times,” he says quietly.

●Don’t miss next week’s Galloway News for part two of Donald’s story – underwater and on land.