For four days the stunted little warship had writhed and hammered her way through the green bowels of the storm until the most hardened member found himself praying. In their selfish agony a few prayed for death, little caring its cause or how many would die in its accomplishment. Men of sterner stuff prayed for respite and peace.

The watch-keeper descended the steep steel ladder, his glistening black oilskins stiffly standing out from his body as if shunning contact, while his smooth-heeled sea-boots skidded in the shallow, dirty water that was sloshing back and forth in the passageway, in time with the rhythm of the ship. His face, beneath four day’s growth of beard, was weathered to rawness and his fingers were pallid and stiff where they protruded from the over-long sleeves of his coat. He steadied his lurching body before the sliding door of the steel compartment that thrummed like a biscuit tin under the pounding of irritant fingers, braced himself against the fetid smell that he knew would heap nausea upon nausea and pushed back the door. A bucket hung stiffly on a rope from the deck-head, arcing to and fro like a stuttering pendulum in tempo with the buffeting hull, while an excess of heavily laden hammocks, suspended above like strung maize, mimicked the jerking pail.

Entering this sordid home of his to waken his relief, and then to try to sleep, he cursed as he always cursed his existence, where privacy and freshness were highlights shining from the past, or beacons of the future, where the present was dull, grey and featureless, and where it could be conceivable that the stale, greasy smell of sailors’ hot cocoa could herald warmth, comfort and a change of mood.

He shook the hammock above him and waited for the familiar wakening pattern to unfold. The grunt, the stretch, the short staccato oath and then the appearance of the grey sea-boot socks as the long legs bestraddled the hammock to be bumped alternately by the swing of the exhausted bundles on either side. While he waited for the next phase, he looked down and absentmindedly watched the articles on the Mess table skate back and forth, and with senses long since deadened felt neither surprise nor criticism as one of the stockinged feet descended to squash flat the wedge of margarine as it too tobogganed on its saucer across the table top beneath the hammocks. The face that looked down at him was bruised with exhaustion and sucked dry with fatigue.

“God save me from looking like that!” he thought.

Food was in short supply throughout the war, we were not starving in the true sense, but our diets were insufficient to maintain that layer of fat which we might have carried just before the war and by 1944 I weighed only ten and a half stone with a ribcage like a washboard. I now weigh over 15 stone. I had never experienced hunger before this. Being evacuated there was a prevalent barter system in country districts, which cushioned us against the rigours of food rationing and I suspect my parents had made sure I was well fed. When working in Westminster lunch out was probably a useful supplement, but naval life was a different thing altogether.

My hunger started immediately I joined, and as we were badly paid, ten shillings a fortnight to start with, I had to find other sources of food. The obvious place at the Butlins camp was the kitchens, supervised by Wrens. One or two of us therefore cultivated the acquaintance of some of the Wrens with the result we all benefited. There was also a scheme there, operated by the more deft and more unscrupulous, which enabled them to improve their share to the detriment of their mates and that was the multi-fork system. It was not for tall people, short people were better at it. It was pure theft, and not worth a mere couple of sausages, especially as one could not gauge from whom one was stealing as seating was random. The system was quite logical.. We were fed in the old Butlins dining hall, on food already laid out, on trestle tables in rows, even before we were allowed into the building,. The vultures armed themselves with several forks, moved along between table and bench-seats to find a seat, and in passing, pierced a sausage from a plate with one of the forks and immediately secreted sausage and fork. This was repeated and then when the vulture sat down at his own plate he jabbed the forks, sausage and all into the underside of the table and then withdrew them one at a time to eat. It was a lot more difficult to do than describe. The injured parties would proclaim their loss and depending upon the whim of either the cooks or the supervising authority, the deficiency might be made good from the left-overs otherwise the unfortunate went without.

In Portsmouth Barracks, the rations there were so slight that they had actually to be guarded. Each class occupied a table in the dining hall and was supplied in the evening with a day’s rations of margarine, bread, jam and sugar which was all kept in what were referred to in those days as a ‘safe’ – a cupboard, with punched, zinc grills set in wooden frames for the sides and door. The cupboards were intended to be kept somewhere cool and ‘safe’ – that is, safe from vermin as they were often kept outside the house, particularly in summer. In this case the vermin walked upright. We were so hungry, one member of the class had to sleep on the Mess table with his pillow against the door of the safe, so no one else could steal the contents; although they could disappear through the day.. I still believe that one of the reasons for the lack of food was because a highly organised Mafia spirited some of the rations out through the gate, even assuming they ever came in.

Any barracks was set up for graft in a number of areas, and where long serving people in authority lived ‘ashore’, in the outside community, it was a racing certainty there would be shenanigans. There was the classic story of the officer in the twenties who stole the Admiral’s pinnace, a steam launch costing about half a million pounds by today’s standards. He had it loaded on a horse drawn cart and took it out through the gates, unchallenged because it had passed that way on other occasions on its way for repairs. The reason he was caught was because he had taken it up a hill which was too steep for the horses to pull.

At the Festival of Britain in the 50′s, one of the men building the Festival Hall was stopped at the gate each night wheeling a wheelbarrow full of straw, which he claimed was bedding for his rabbits. The security man discussed the keeping of rabbits at length to relieve his boredom, and let him go. This went on for a week and then stopped. A year later the security man was in a pub when he passed the man with the rabbits and enquired after them. The latter, smiled, put down his pint and said “God Bless you mate! I wasn’t tak’n’ straw out, I was tak’n’ weelbarrers.”

There was no dearth of extroverts in the Navy, the trick was trying to avoid them. We were a great mixture in that class going through Leydene Signal School. There were sailors who had been telegraphists and had spent years at sea and knew every dodge in the book. They would tell you that if you could play a sport, life would be a bed of roses, you would be wanted by every shore station going, especially if the sport was tennis. These men were often in their late twenties and early thirties and had seen the whole world through a porthole, a phrase which I translated to mean they were well versed in the seamier parts of every port from Malta to Melbourne, from Suez to Hong Kong. In spite of this though, most were conciliatory to us, the inexperienced HO’s. I suspect some of the tall stories we heard at night, seated drinking cocoa round the pot-bellied stoves which heated a small area of the huge hut, were apocryphal, but then again, some of the hairiest were obviously also true. Those evening discussions were fascinating. We would sit round the stove and read, study, smoke, mend socks or clothing and there was always a discussion or a monologue on some subject being carried on over peoples’ heads whether they were taking part or not.

A class-mate, Williams say, had been a radio repair man in civilian life. He gave us an insight to his methods; something I never forgot and something which created in me a cynicism with regard to jobbing people in general, which has been repeatedly reinforced. Williams explained that before the war, broke and looking to make money, he hit on ‘The Great Idea’. Firstly he bought a tool-roll, one of those canvas or leather rolls with loops and pockets for small tools, spanners, pliers, and the like. Next he had a flier printed for pushing through letter boxes in a selected area and then sat back and waited before calling on them. The flier implied that everyone who had a car had it serviced regularly, and he included sweeping chimneys. He followed this with the suggestion that the radio was a delicate device which too should be regularly maintained. He offered to provide a service starting with a free trial. If the client was satisfied he could sign up to have the set serviced for an annual fee and from then all labour would be free for up to two visits and only the materials would have to be paid for. The prospective client would receive a visit and they could make up their mind then.

It must be understood that radios then were in their infancy, they generally consisted of only two valves, three at the most, with huge coils or condensers for tuning. The aerials could stretch the length of the back garden and reception was very poor When the set was installed it was only a matter of hooking up to the aerial, connecting the wet and dry batteries and then one tried to tune into the only station available, the BBC, unless one could receive Luxembourg. Almost invariably people wanted to take advantage of the free service. The set was running so there should be no need to pay for replacements – something for nothing.

Williams, when he entered a home, made a great show protecting the table, anticipating vast amounts of dust He then took the back off the radio. Standing in awe, the housewife, saw him brush out the dust and fluff.. Williams running commentary was how one could not expect the best results from something obviously so dusty. With the client’s full attention, he tuned in to the BBC and then proceeded to tune the set to the aerial, which should have been done at the time of installation but rarely was. Williams had proved his point, regular servicing was clearly needed and the client signed up and handed over a reasonable sum for the twelve month service. The client was unaware that Williams had drawn a pencil line between two terminals so that a very small current leaked from one to the other. Not enough to reduce the quality but with time it would mean that a new transformer, or some other component would be needed and he would be called out to repair the set.

Other times Williams merely cleaned the set and left the tuning of the aerial to the next visit when he would say that a valve was on its last legs, but he just happened to have one which he would install reasonably. He would then change the valve, tune the aerial and low, the client was convinced, and delighted she had joined his happy band. The valve Williams had used had probably come out of the last set he had worked the trick on and so he was constantly being paid for a non-existent valve. There were other tricks Williams boasted of, equally heinous and sordid, but you get the gist. Little, it seems, can be taken at face value when dealing with an unscrupulous person with a specialised knowledge.

From the IOM we were sent to Petersfield, in Hampshire, to the Naval Signal School called Leydene. We were only to be in Leydene for about ten days and in that time we had to learn the workings of some ten transmitters and receivers together with all the ancillary equipment, so it is unsurprising that I remember nothing of that first trip, except the way we were taught. To a young man who had led a sheltered life and had been tutored mainly by Oxbridge graduates, the spiel of the three-badge Petty Officer or Chief Petty Officer, needed to be experienced and still couldn’t be believed. The three badges denoted a minimum of thirteen years service, but many of these instructors had been brought back from retirement. The classrooms were converted Nissan huts containing the replicas of the radio transmitters we would find on the ships we were destined for. Some were small, not much bigger than today’s work-top washing machine, others occupied the area of the average kitchen and were contained within an earthed steel cage, with access through a door which cut off the power to the high voltage areas when the door was opened. Almost the first thing we were taught was how to circumvent this safety measure so we could test the beast while under full power, from within its bowels, so to speak.

Most of us, who were used to radio receivers which were only one stage advanced from the crystal set, were amazed to see a valve the size of a large vase and resistors almost a foot long. The instructors had little to worry about with respect to discipline, we were so continuously bombarded with facts and so overawed with both the equipment and the prospect that we would, within a few weeks be in sole charge of its welfare, that there was neither the time nor the energy left to mess around. It was cramming taken to a fine art. Each morning we would be marched off to a classroom where we would discover yet another set with its own peculiarities. We carried a huge loose-leaf book containing all the circuitry and hints on repair, together with our class notes and a folder of a few pages of duplicated information supplied by the instructors. This library went everywhere, even to bed, because all spare moments were filled with catching up what we’d missed or mugging up what we had forgotten. I remember one of our class was married and had permission to sleep ashore with his wife. She complained that he spent most of the night sitting up studying this huge tome.

In class we were perched on rows of long, heavy, oak benches, with no desk and no support for the back, like starlings on telephone wires. The keen ones sat in the front row and those who were in the class purely as an alternative to sailing on the Atlantic convoys, were generally either dozing or craftily smoking on the back bench. While what I was being taught was in itself a totally remarkable experience, the method of imparting that knowledge was even more extraordinary. Inside these sets were valves, resistors, coils and condensers in the main, with a few other bits and bobs to make the whole thing work, but our elderly instructors, when pointing to a component on a circuit diagram did not refer to it by its name but merely said “Now this li ‘l f….r ‘ere is connected to that li ‘l bastard there….” and so on. In fact it became such a routine that some of us were caught more than once anticipating and saying which epithet would be applied to what item of electronic hardware and were then promptly, in our turn, referred to by yet another and even more expressive phrase.

Indeed there was the occasion when one of the instructors was inside a transmitter ‘putting on faults’ for an exercise in fault-finding. He was mostly only breaking connections, but sometimes he would insert a faulty component. The thing was that as one became more experienced the sounds of resistors being pulled from their anchorage or valves being released were so distinctive that most of us knew which piece was being tampered with. On this occasion there was a distinctive sound and someone on the front bench named the article in a stage whisper. Suddenly a face, surmounted by a battered cap, peered over the top of the fence round the transmitter and it said “Oh no ‘e F…..in’ ain’t” and disappeared to replace the part and pull out another which was equally recognisable. For me this incident epitomised the teaching in those first months of the war.

After three months in Newcastle we left for the Isle of man where we were billeted in boarding houses on the front at Douglas. Further along the front, similarly housed but behind barbed wire, were the Italian internees, mostly harmless waiters and restaurateurs who would probably have been a greater asset to the war effort than some of us.

Unsurprisingly, none of us realised the welcoming officer, the Entertainments Officer was John Pertwee, the actor, later to be of Dr Who and of Worsel Gummage fame. It was his job to inveigle us into contributing to the overall entertainment on the island. With a pleasant, innocent smile he enquired if we played rugby and those foolish enough to admit to it were promptly enrolled in the team and issued with navy blue kit. Later he was back recruiting volunteers for an amateur show to be put on at the local theater.

The rooms in the boarding houses had been modified to be small ‘cabins’, the naval euphemism for a hat-box. We slept on two-tiered steel bunk beds. The ground floor was given over to a dining room and a lounge in which we were supposed to study, but in which we mostly played a gambling bastardisation of Ludo called Uckers. Each morning we were marshalled on the promenade and marched up to Douglas Head. The building there, once a hotel, was converted into a radar signal school. Radar in those days was incorrectly called RDF, or radio direction finding, as a cover for what it really did, as the Germans were understood not to have it. The originally designs were for use in aircraft and consequently small and of limited range. We were being trained on more substantial versions for use in ships as well. The theory was difficult to master in such a short time, and the distractions of being on the Isle of Man, where the war seemed so far away, didn’t help. There was a dance hall where we tried to keep up with the local girls’ terpsichorean expertise, there was poker, Uckers, and the local services canteens. Finally, of course there was Lieutenant Pertwee and his bloody rugby, and I use the term advisedly.

He had omitted to tell us the RAF personnel stationed on the IOM had been especially selected for their rugby expertise, if they had a ‘blue’ or better still an international cap, all the better. It seemed that to retain a posting to the IOM as a member of the RAF required only one perquisite – to be an established, seventeen stone member of the rugby elite. Anything less and you could be on your way PDQ. We, the newly arrived Navy, eager to get off study, no matter the excuse, uninitiated into the mores of our sister service, – we thought of them as sissies – ran out onto the field of carnage with a light heart. I remember very little of the game except as it applied to me. I was not, I fear, seventeen stone, I was barely ten and a half, and this was a vital statistic. I don’t think we, as a team, were doing too well. There was one bloke on the other side whom I’m sure was referred to in terms unfit to be repeated. He was an oft capped international, was easily heavier than three of us put together, and belligerent with it. At one point in the game he picked up the ball, practically on his own line and started lumbering straight down the field. He had managed to evade a number of those late tackles the coaches take exception to, the ones where the tackler hits the ground gently, but only after the runner is well past. Mistakenly I thought that I was made of sterner stuff. I knew how the job should be done, and proceeded to demonstrate – silly me! I tackled him around the knees, head on – literally. About three minutes later, when I was brought round, I heard that I had not even caused him to stutter in his lope for the posts and a score, I had made no impact in any way, I was as a mere gnat, I was also unconscious. My first and only brush with first class rugby had been ignominious and salutary. It reinforced the laws of the lower deck, ‘never volunteer and always plead ignorance’, and to think how gentlemanly and simple the game was then, fifty years ago, today I would be dead

As Part of the Newcastle training we had to learn lathe work, forging and bench work at the Metalwork classes, a re-run of my Matriculation syllabus. This was an opportunity for me to relax. One day I was working on a lathe when I found a note complaining that the machine had been left dirty. During the day factory trainees, mainly women would use the equipment and then we would move in at night. The note was in verse. I showed it to those round me and they said I should answer it, which I did, with their help and hindrance. On the next occasion we were there I found another note and this went on for a week or so until there was a suggestion that the writer, a woman, would like to meet the unknown poet. One thing led to another, mostly pressure from my peers, and I agreed to meet her one night in an ice-cream parlour. Remember I was a na?ve 18 year old, and this not only shows my inexperience and innocence, but that of the others

The night arrived and I went there, and sat and waited. I was conspicuous by being in uniform. A woman entered who was also conspicuous because she too was in a uniform, but of another kind entirely, but one I was too naive to recognise. She was a lot older than I, heavily made up, and a lot more experienced. I bought her something or other and we sat and talked and then suddenly she got up and said, ‘Come on, we’ll get a tram.’ It was then that I began to have misgivings, I had expected to make what running there might be. We caught a tram, and as we both smoked we went up onto the top deck. Politeness and expediency demanded that I let her precede me. Mainly the latter, because I wanted, to put what little spare cash I had in my shoe. I had no idea what I had let myself in for, but I intended to see it through. Anyway, I could never have lived with myself, not to mention the barracking I would have got from the other ratings, if I had chickened out. When we were seated and I had paid the fare she turned to me, ‘You know’, she said, ‘You’re no good to me, I’ll take you somewhere that will be more in your league.’ This left me completely at sea, and not a little subdued. I took the remark to be a criticism of my manhood. I was now having lurid fancies of being taken and robbed, but I stuck it out.

We left the tram and walked along a road where the terrace house-fronts met the back of the pavement and were like many of the house built during the industrial revolution for mill workers and shipyard workers. Belfast used to have miles of them once, but now has only a few. We stopped, the woman knocked and a man in his shirtsleeves, opened the door and stood aside when we entered,. I was led into a living room cum kitchen and introduced to his wife and daughter. The woman made some excuse and left me there, stranded like a beached whale, feeling totally foolish and out of place. On her way out, I could hear her muttering to the wife at the front door, but as I could not make out what was being said I had to make the best of it. Desultory conversation had me embarrassed and I tried to think of a way of extracting myself without giving offence. I was not allowed to discuss why I was in Newcastle, but I suspected the woman had intimated what she knew. Tea was produced with a cake and then, as so often happens, the appearance of food broke down some of the reserve and we started to chat. I discovered the daughter was the manageress of a cake shop in Newcastle and she suggested that if I liked to call in, she would give me something for me and my friends. Ultimately, when it seemed decently possible without being rude I left and took a tram back into Newcastle.

As can be imagined the class was agog to hear how I had got on, and when I described the woman I had met at the ice-cream parlour there were a few ribald remarks passed. When I told them about the cake shop they nearly had me out the door there and then, on an errand of mercy, – on their behalf. I was not too eager to start a relationship, especially for purely mercenary reasons so I didn’t take the girl up on her offer for some time, I was also feeling a little stupid about the whole incident. I was finally pressured by my hungry friends to go to the cake shop and sure enough, I received a whole cake. For a while after that the young woman and I became friends and went to the cinema and met in the cake shop on a casual basis, but that was about all. My final judgement on the extra-curricular activities of the woman whose lathe I shared was correct. The family who took me in and fed me cake were looking after her daughter. I had had a very strange evening when at times I had been apprehensive. That it worked out well was certainly more luck than judgement. Education comes in many guises.

It must be understood that about 1940/41 the whole of Briton was going through an incredible time of change, at home and in the forces. There was evacuation, rationing, which induced the Black Market, bombing, recruitment, and families being split. In the forces, the need to recruit men and women in vast numbers, clothe and train them, move, and temporarily and strategically accommodate them was paramount. The logistics were complicated and enormous, with the result anomalies arose, leading to strange outcomes. Being billeted was one of them.

In Newcastle on Tyne, the Billeting Master-at-arms was overwhelmed by the number of sailors who would shortly descend on Newcastle for specialist training. RDF, Radio Direction Finding, the forerunner of Radar, was being fitted in ships and they urgently needed operators and maintenance staff, and these were arriving in days, me among them. Ferried by train and bus we arrive at a street of three storey Victorian houses and were delivered to the awaiting landlady.

At that time, the U-Boats were in ascendancy and many of the students sent on courses were long serving men who had volunteered, having had enough of the dangers of convoy work. We were given merely a bunk in a room full of cheap, black steel beds and we kept our belongings under the bed. With many of us to a room, there was just enough room to move between the beds. Almost as soon as we were in the room, the older guys, presumably from past experience, knew exactly where we were, in a brothel, and to make the point, pulled back the sheets to reveal stained mattresses. The quiet of that night and those following were broken repeatedly by the stamp of feet on the steps of the house next door, where trade was still in progress.

My nature, and that of most of the men there, was that if you have no solution to a problem, then forget it and get on with life. However, because it was so extraordinary I foolishly wrote and told my mother in humorous vein, but she could not see the funny side. Instead she, innocently, wrote a letter of complaint, to a naval Commander friend she knew. She forgot two things, the Navy is a club, the Commanders are trained in the tactics of war and the best form of defence is attack. They attacked.

The only meal we had on the premises was breakfast, prepared and given by the girls from next door. One day some of the lads were having fun with the girls when a pewter teapot got damaged This was all authority needed, all of us were put on report for riotous behaviour, when there was hardly elbow room for breakfast let alone a riot. For the rest of the time that we were boarded in the brothel, we were forced to scrub out the school rooms when not being taught. After that we were found new individual billets. I never did admit to my mother’s letter, ‘if there is no solution…’