Life
In 1927, he was commissioned into the Royal Horse Guards. In 1935 he married Angela Claire Louise, daughter of William Dudley Ward, a Conservative Member of Parliament. They went on to have two sons and three daughters.
When the Second World War broke out in 1939 Laycock's interest in science led to his being appointed to the chemical warfare section of the British Expeditionary Force in France. This was a dead end position, and Laycock was sent home to attend the Staff college, thus missing the Battle of France. In the summer of 1940 Winston Churchill appointed Admiral of the Fleet Sir Roger Keyes as head of Combined Operations, and Keyes soon sent for Laycock, whom he knew by reputation. Laycock was then a Captain in the Royal Horse Guards and had just received a posting to India. The actor David Niven later claimed that he had introduced Laycock to the Commandos, as Laycock was related to his wife Primula Susan Rollo. Niven claimed to have helped to arrange for Laycock to be interviewed by Dudley Clarke, which resulted in another officer being assigned to India and Laycock going on to form Number 8 Commando.
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Famous quotes containing the word life:
“The child who enters life comes not with knowledge or intent,
So those who enter death must go as little children sent.
Nothing is known. But I believe that God is overhead;
And as life is to the living, so death is to the dead.”
—Mary Mapes Dodge (1831–1905)
“I have no doubt that they lived pretty much the same sort of life in the Homeric age, for men have always thought more of eating than of fighting; then, as now, their minds ran chiefly on the “hot bread and sweet cakes;” and the fur and lumber trade is an old story to Asia and Europe.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The great passion in a man’s life may not be for women or men or wealth or toys or fame, or even for his children, but for his masculinity, and at any point in his life he may be tempted to throw over the things for which he regularly lays down his life for the sake of that masculinity. He may keep this passion secret from women, and he may even deny it to himself, but the other boys know it about themselves and the wiser ones know it about the rest of us as well.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)