Alaina Urquhart

When he was 14, he joined Army Cadet Force, a military prep organization for teenage boys.

His participation in the group gave him a structure that he was definitely lacking at home, and he gave him kind of a sense of purpose in a life that was like a little chaotic at times.

He said, I felt proud and useful in my battle dress.

And he also tried to become like, he tried his hand at sports basically too, but that didn't really pan out for him.

So it seemed like the military stuff was the thing that really tickled his fancy.

Yeah.

For the most part, his early life was that kind of like most boys at the time.

But an incident in his mid-teens would definitely disrupt that path of normalcy and provide some pretty serious consequences in his later life, I think.

One afternoon when Dennis was about 14, a local elderly man from the village went missing and the whole town turned out to look for him.

And Dennis and another boy, Gordon Berry, decided to search down by the river Uji, where they eventually stumbled upon this old man's body.

The local doctor later said that in his confusion, the man had probably wandered out of his house in the middle of the night and fallen into the river and drowned.

Oh, that's so sad.

Nilsen said, he reminded me of my grandfather and the images were firmly fixed in my mind.

I could never comprehend the reality of death.

It's very stand by me.

Yeah.

When he was 15, he decided to leave school and join the military.

And in September of 1961, he reported to London for duty.

It was, he hoped, an opportunity for a fresh start to get away from this tiny village and all the limitations he felt were there and to learn a new trade that hopefully was just going to carry him to adulthood.

But if he was looking for like a whole new experience, which he definitely was, he was definitely disappointed with the reality of army life, especially for someone so young.