He and his lifelong friend, David Gilbert-Smith, led two platoons of the Duke of Wellington's Regiment (West Riding) during the Battle of the Hook in Korea, recovering positions overrun by the Chinese offensive.
[1] Campbell-Lamerton had already escaped a life-threatening injury at school when, aged 15, he was struck on the chest by a javelin; he courted death again on foot patrol in Korea when he trod on a mine.
Hearing the faint click, he remained still while the corporal with him, who fortunately had worked in bomb disposal during the Second World War, rendered it safe.
[1] Three years later, serving in Cyprus during the EOKA campaign, he fell 60 ft from a helicopter in full combat gear, sustaining severe back, hip and leg injuries.
But when the Lions team was selected for the 1966 tour, he was 32, no longer captain of his country and the leadership was expected go to Alun Pask, the outstanding Welsh No.
Massie says that "You would have had no doubt that he [Mike Campbell-Lamerton] could push in the scrum, and with him and Frans Ten Bos together it achieved a solidity and power that had long been lacking.
[4] However, he also says that Lamerton was not a good national captain: "He was perhaps over-conscientious and a worrier, and hardly spoke the same language as many of the team; it affected his play.
"[3] Richard Bath writes of him that he was: Allan Massie provides a more colourful description of him: Though the Lions beat Australia in successive internationals, the New Zealand section of the tour was marred by ill feeling.
Campbell-Lamerton, would not have been out of place in the modern game: he was a big man, at 6 feet 5 inches, weighing more than 17 stone, yet athletic enough to play No.
At one stage the manager, Des O'Brien left the party for a reconnaissance mission to Fiji (where a final tour game was to be played), and the coach, John Robins, was in hospital with damaged ankle ligaments, leaving Campbell-Lamerton with far greater responsibilities than any modern equivalent would face.
Yet in a squad which he had not been expected to captain, his players still speak warmly of the example he set after a tour in which the Lions lost all four internationals against the All Blacks.