Like everyone else, I had heard about this legendary lawyer Gilbert Blades, and wondered whether he was myth, legend, or a mixture of both. Then I was lucky enough to be the court usher at a CM when the legendary Mr Blades was the defending lawyer. To cut a long story short, after the first day of the trial I thought that the poor unfortunate, the accused, was facing an amount of time counting prison bars. That was until the 3rd day, when Mr Blades asked for the court to be cleared to argue a point of law. The only other person in the court other than the panel, and the lawyers under those circumstances, is the court usher. I sat, listened, and watched, as Mr Blades demolished the prosecution case, totally humiliated the prosecuting admin officer, and generally made the RAF look totally incompetent, amateurish and totally out of its depth. I totally changed my point of view about the military undertaking prosecutions which could take away a person's liberty. Liberty is too precious to be arbitrated by an officer corps who think they are, wise, educated, and, all-powerful. On that particular occasion they were exposed to be arrogant, ill-prepared, and foolish. Mr Blades was neither myth nor legend, he was just an extremely articulate, professional, competent lawyer. Qualities which are only optional for a significant number of military officers.