His flair for publicity was an important element in the success of the campaign to "save" the Argylls. Sir Edward Taylor recalled: "Colin Mitchell was one of the most committed and determined MPs I have ever met." Mitchell defied his Prime Minister and went into the lobby against British entry into the Common Market.Sir Hector Monro said: "Colin was a very courageous commanding officer in Aden and equally courageous in some of the political decisions which he took. Mitchell's amounted to a ferocious criticism in detail of those who had made sure that he got no kind of MC or DSO for courageous actions in the Crater district of Aden and had added insult to injury by giving him a grudging mention in despatches.As a politician Mitchell was a man of causes. But, of course, the schizophrenic people are the British defence planners, who since the time of the Spanish Armada 400 years ago, have been trying to combine the ability to have a force on the continent of Europe and also have a maritime, and in modern times a maritime-air, capability across the oceans of the world.Maiden speakers, particularly Conservative maiden speakers, are supposed to make uncontroversial speeches. Its view of blue sea and golden beaches was very different from the squalid alleys and bazaars of Crater cut off as if in a different world by the thousand-foot peaks and ridges dividing them.In the 1970 general election Mitchell was elected with 18,396 votes over the Liberal candidate, Mrs Laura Grimond, wife of Jo Grimond and granddaughter of H.H Asquith, who got 12,847 votes. I cannot forget Mitchell's maiden speech on 19 November 1970, when after paying tribute conventionally to the beauties of his constituency he said:I now turn to the debate.

The strategic priorities of the White Paper are fundamental to our defence thinking The word "schizophrenic" has been used of the French. General Power was an artillery officer and as far as I was aware he had not taken part in any operations since the end of the war in 1945. This gave him little common ground with the Argylls.Like the Commander-in-Chief, General Tower worked in the massive headquarters complex on Barrack Hill, Steamer Point, overlooking the Arabian Sea. He had arrived in Aden only a few weeks before the Argylls, having been theArmy's Director of Public Relationsat the Ministry of Defence, where I had met him briefly. If you and your superior don't see the objective in the same light you end up clashing." MacMillan thought that Mitchell's trouble was that he was so sure that he was right, he was forever battling with the man above him.

And this indeed was the problem in the wake of the campaign in Aden where he was under Maj-Gen Philip Tower, to whom he had once been ADC.The flavour of Mitchell's difficulty with those above him is encapsulated in his autobiography, Having Been a Soldier, published in 1968:The General Officer Commanding was Maj-Gen P.T Tower. He was popular with the entire company and regiment and at that time was a fully playing member of the regimental team. It was only later that his difficulties with authority became evident. As General MacMillan perceptively observed, "Mitchell had a total determination about what he wanted to do. It was the opinion of MacMillan's son, General Sir John MacMillan, that Mitchell had a most perceptive military mind in dealing with insurgency.In Korea, George Younger observed that Mitchell was an extremely successful "B" company commander and a man of action. There he was ADC to one of the great divisional commanders of the Second World War, General Sir Gordon MacMillan of MacMillan.

Mitchell told me that he wanted to study MacMillan's approach and methods: "Take for your model the campaigns of the great captains, that is the only way to attain the secrets of the art of war." Through MacMillan he sat and listened to the great men who were his peers and acquaintances, Wavell, Slim, O'Connor, Wimberley and Richie. Yet again he was wounded in Palestine, where he served for three difficult years when the Jewish Irgunzwai Leumi made the life of the British army so dangerous. Mitchell recollected, "I felt like a fly on the wall of Olympus to be living so close to the great man." Cullis treated Mitchell superbly and General Sir John MacMillan, his adjutant in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, emphasised, "People below [Cullis] worshipped him. He could engender intense loyalty." This was also the view of George Younger (later Lord Younger of Prestwick), who fought in the same regiment in Korea in 1950-51. Perhaps Mitchell learnt how to engender loyalty from Cullis.Commissioned into the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in 1944, he served in the Italian campaign and was wounded in the Battle for Monte Cassino.