The National War Museum of Scotland – part of the National Museums of Scotland – has revealed a new exhibition looking at Scotland’s role in Britain’s Commando forces.

In 1940, Winston Churchill ordered that special troops be trained for raids and sabotage. The commandos were taught at the first school of irregular warfare on the shores of Lochailort, near Fort William, where the mountain terrain, sea lochs and challenging weather of the highlands offered perfect conditions for training. This centre became the blueprint for all others.

The Commando Country exhibition looks at how remote properties in the Scottish highlands were transformed during the Second World War into special training centres to teach sabotage, close combat and outdoor survival.

The exhibition highlights the tough training methods carried out at these schools by a select team of instructors, including polar explorers, mountaineers, colonial policemen and ghillies from highland sporting estates. It also examines the equipment they used, the clothing they wore and the bravery of those who went on to take part in raids and missions.

The exhibition also looks at the schools set up in the Arisaig and Morar area of the west highlands to train the Special Operations Executive (SOE), officers who carried out the highly dangerous work of supporting and organising resistance movements in enemy-occupied countries.

Items on display include a visitors’ book from a hotel near the Special Training Centre at Lochailort, featuring the signature of film star David Niven, who trained there as a special service volunteer; a fighting knife designed by close-combat instructors Captain WF Fairburn and Eric Sykes, which became a symbol of the Commandos and the renowned green beret, awarded to each Commando upon completion of their training course at Achnacarry.

Also on show is a jersey worn by George Murray Levick, a member of Captain Scott’s famous expedition to the South Pole in 1910–1913, who lectured at Lochailort, and a flag from a German headquarters captured by No 9 Commando in Italy in 1944, signed and decorated with the Commando insignia by the men who captured it, as well as sketches, letters and extracts from memoirs.

Stuart Allan, senior curator of military history at the National War Museum of Scotland, said: “Commando Country shows how the Scottish highlands offered the perfect landscape to prepare men for utterly ruthless and uncompromising warfare. From their distinctive weapons and equipment through to first-hand accounts and personal photographs, the exhibition reveals the demanding reality of training for the deadly missions that followed.”

The exhibition is free with admission to Edinburgh Castle and will run until February 2008. Details: www.nms.ac.uk

Photograph: Commandos training at Lochailort in 1941 in preparation for the St Nazaire Raid, courtesy of The Hon. IDW Chant-Sempill