Isle Of Man, Two – A careless death The second visit to the Isle of Man was an entirely different experience, we were now Petty Officers with the privileges that entailed. The work if anything was harder, and the sets we were learning much more sophisticated and in some cases as big as a small kitchen. When one can walk into a large high-voltage transmitter, it seems to have less threat than putting one’s hand within a small one. Hence, when a Radio Mechanic left the door of a set open while functioning on full power, an operator, who regularly dried his clothes inside the set ‘On Standby’ – the heat of the huge valves would dry his clothes in an hour – walked in and was electrocuted. This act was analogous to throwing an electric fire into a bath. I’m sure the practice of hanging washing in a dangerous area went on, long after I left the Service, you see, we all, by necessity, had the philosophy that ‘it could never happen to us’.

The Italian Prisoners Several blocks further along the front at Douglas, in a loose compound, surrounded by a barbed wire fence nothing more than a gesture to security, the Italian internees were still housed, but when we arrived they were about to be moved out, block by block and we were instructed to supervise the clearing out of the hotels and boarding houses they had been occupying. These men were prisoners, in spite of the fact that they had held jobs at every level in British society, and one can but guess at the trauma incarceration had caused them and their families. The one aspect which pervaded all these lodgings was the way these prisoners had decorated their prison. There were murals on walls, pictures on windows giving a stained glass effect and the quality of the work, in many cases was breath taking. I have often wondered if the returning occupants retained those works of art, as many had a religious flavour, it is possible that they might not have been acceptable, but the quality was irrefutable.

Leydene, The Cabooshes The fact that we were Petty Officers had no effect on our accommodation at Leydene – a top bunk, on a tier of two, in a row of twenty, on each side of a standard Nissan hut, with a coke burning, fat bellied stove and steel chimney set in the centre, and one chair each. That was home. The top bunk was just below the shelf running the length of the hut on which stood the small suitcases and hat boxes, safes where anything valuable or of a deeply personal nature was stored, and that was the limit of privacy. At night rats would sometimes run along the shelf above our heads looking for food and cats would produce kittens on the beds of the lower bunks. We had a cat called Vera frequenting our hut, a strange creature, with hind quarters like a rabbit, she could jump prodigious heights with ease. Vera adopted me. I would wake up to find a furry creature snuggled down under the blanket, face on the pillow, purring like a Morris 8 going up hill. So it would be no surprise that the instructors organised alternative accommodation, away from the Tannoy system and Vera Lynn, where one could relax, sleep read and write. The cabooshes were small brick huts which housed machinery for the sets we were teaching and, because we serviced them, we had the keys, and so our irregular behaviour was unlikely to be discovered.. Occasionally we had to make them shipshape for some inspection, but as we generally scheduled these as well, we were never caught on the hop. We were the men in charge, the officers were merely there to make up the numbers

The Silly Side Of Leydene A student, on a long course, had built up a relationship with one of the Wrens billeted in Leydene. She slept in a dormitory high in the main building, overlooking a flat roof. He was in the habit of climbing onto the roof, entering the room through one of the windows, and getting into bed with her, quietly, and leaving before the others woke. If the others were aware of what was going on it was never divulged, but in the end they were rudely awakened. The Wren was suddenly taken ill, and her replacement in her bed, was a woman in her forties, stern and prudish. You’ve guessed it! The sailor got in beside her. The rest was pure Ealing comedy.

With the war ended people were looking to the future. One guy intended setting up his own business in radio repairs, and was collecting stock towards that end. The authorities, aware petty thieving was rife had everyone below Wardroom rank searched before leaving on the bus. I saw the man queued up, searched. tying shoes, while the driver was revving the engine. An accomplice rushed up, a bundle of washing clutched in his arms shouting that the man had forgotten his laundry. It was duly handed in, the bus took off and another load of valves, condensers and a B28 receiver were on their way to his new shop at a certain port in the North of England.

Once I had found my feet, dancing was the best way of meeting people and filling the long evenings when Belfast City was blacked out. My mate Bunny was keen and we went every night to some dance hall or other. On Sunday nights when all the other halls were closed we went to the Jewish Institute. I often went to a dance hall in the centre of the City where I am convinced they were so keen on looking at the dancer’s feet to see whether the turn was on the heel or the toe, they would have failed to notice if the dancer was totally naked. The conversation might have been one track – no, not that – dancing, – but those visits to the clubs and studios did a lot for my skills on the dance floor.

To relieve the boredom during the interval when the band went off and we were left with soft drinks and a record player I used to practice a parlour game. I have always believed that by studying people, their looks, their body language and their reaction to others around them one can make a shrewd assessment of their character in a broad sense. Someone at our table, in our company, would point to a person across the dance floor whom they knew. I would watch and then give a thumbnail sketch of their character and their reactions in certain circumstances. It seemed at the time that my assessments were reasonable, or else it was a case of who is kidding the kidder? Certainly my companions  seemed to enjoy the game.

In this way I met many good dancers and one in particular who had been a beauty queen, whom I invited to a Christmas dance at the British Legion Hall. The dance went well but when it was over the limited number of taxis had all left and we had the choice of waiting or walking. She lived some four miles away at the posh end of town and was shod only in dance shoes, so walking was out of the question. I had an idea, asked her to wait and then left in search of transport. Just round the corner from the Hall was a police station and in my experience big policemen had big bicycles. Sure enough the RUC did and one of their number was prepared to lend me his. I returned and stated my case. With a little hesitation she mounted the cross bar and we eventually arrived at her house. She never held it against me, but I think she had aspirations higher than a sailor whose only asset was a highly developed initiative.

The Irish Question Take the Irish Question, for an instance, not the Irish question, from where I stand I find nothing amusing in that. No! Just an amusing Irish question. I don’t remember my friend Bunny’s rate of assimilation, certainly I didn’t really find my own feet for about a week and then he and I started visiting dance halls and I became privy to the Irish Question.

The system worked like this. The dance halls had groups of tables and chairs round the walls for couples and parties, the rest of us, loosely termed ‘the talent’, all huddled near the entrance and during the intervals between sets of dances, tried to find a suitable partner, by peering through the throng. The conversation, which took place, after the selection was never sparkling and generally bordered on the banal, except when I was asked the Irish Question. This had a dramatic effect on the relationship until I managed to derive a formula for the answer.

We would be gliding round the hall to the strains of ‘A string of pearls’, or some other Glen Miller hit, when my partner would look up into my face and ask most sweetly, ‘What religion are you?’ You can imagine the look of surprise which spread across the face of a well brought-up boy from the Smoke, (London), when stopped in his tracks by a question the Yanks would refer to as coming from ‘left field’. I was aghast the first time, surprised on a few subsequent occasions and nonchalant for the rest of my stay in Ireland – by then I had found the solution. There was a saying in the Navy which went something like – ‘if it was good enough for Nelson it’s good enough for you’, this was sometimes followed by the words ‘my lad’ and sometimes something a little more earthy, depending on what had sponsored the raising of Nelson and his preferences in the first place. I was of an independent nature and often found the idiosyncrasies of the Naval regime irksome and sometimes even ludicrous. There was no scope, for example, for agnostic or atheistic choice when religion was the subject in question, everyone had to belong to a religious sect, no matter how outre. Later, when I was more guileful I put this facet of Naval life to good effect. Initially I sometimes wondered if it was because Nelson couldn’t spell atheist. At every change of posting and every church parade one was asked what religion one was, it was even written in one’s paybook, which was a constant form of identification; so, having been told I was ‘C of E’, whether I liked it or not, and then having to repeat this falsehood for ever more, it came to my lips like a reflex action, and that was my mistake.

Each time I answered the Irish Question with the phrase ‘C of E’, at once a change came over the relationship and the face of the girl. It wasn’t exactly a tick, merely the expression some people evince when they have bitten into a particularly sour lemon. For the poor Catholic girl the dance could not end quickly enough – it could of course have been my aftershave, but in 1942 only the officers even knew such things existed. Bunny had the same experiences but a young woman of indeterminate religion explained the phenomenon to him and he passed on the intelligence, it was quasi political, what else in Belfast? I then devised a solution. When asked, I replied that I was a Buddhist and had a prayer mat up my shirt if they would like to see it. Each interpreted this from whatever experience they had of sailors, and life became more amenable after that. It took a stupid answer to solve a ridiculous question.

Coincidences Everyone has unexplained coincidences, so why write about them? These I believe were extraordinary. Remember! I was English born and educated, knew roughly where Ireland was but little more, and was never likely to go there, even on holiday. Few people apart from my Aunt ever did. Reg, the lecturer in our Mess came from Liverpool and taught there. He and I became close friends while I was on the ship but I never heard of him again. Later I came to Ireland, met Soph, married, and at the end of the war settled down. Two strange coincidence were brought to my attention. Sophie had an Irish cousin who, as a young woman left Ireland and moved to live in Liverpool. She went to Liverpool University where she met Reg and was friendly with him for some time.

Sophie taught modern languages and one day she said, “I’ve invited a colleague round for a drink and she’s bringing her husband. I opened the door and introduce myself. The husband said, “I know you, you shared a room with me when we were on course in the Isle of Man. Those I believe are strange coincidences.

Shipbuilding is probably the most complicated and detailed engineering exercise, outside aeroplane design. The size of a ship, various hull designs, its use, all give multitudes of options from the thickness of the plates, to the design of door handles. All the equipment has to be installed which involves designing the positioning, the fixings and the power. Multiply this throughout the ship and the complexity of design is mind boggling, and is transferred to construction on the day the contract is signed It is therefore no wonder that in 1943, Belfast shipyard, Harland and Wolf, among others in Britain was working flat out with an enormous workforce.

Our job was to inspect all the radio wiring and installations, make sure the equipment was in order, sail on the first trial and approve the work, – all this was on ships as large as the cruiser The Black Prince, and as small as landing craft. Sometimes I would also have to go to places like Greencastle, County Down, to repair sets for the Coastguard.

A Stupid Ritual, A Near Disaster
It was just before the Italian landings that several Landing Craft Tanks (LCTs) were brought into Belfast to be fitted out as Landing Craft Guns (LCG’S). They were in several of the dry-docks, and the work was so urgent all the trades were working together, so there was controlled chaos, which meant that I had to work at night when thing had quietened down. The modifications to the LCGs consisted of making living quarters in the centre of the ships which would house the gun crews of Royal Marines and would also act as the support for the 4 inch guns they proposed to use for shelling the shore before the landings.

To enter the dry-dock one passed through huge wrought iron gates, at least twelve feet high, supported on Gargantuan pillars. The gates were most impressive and were opened every morning and closed and locked every night. When I had finished work at two one morning, I found the gates were closed. It was dark, and no street lights due to the blackout. With a torch I managed to see enough to tie all my tools, meters and equipment, together with a length of flex. Wrapping the flex round my wrist I climbed to the top of the gate, hauled the gear up one side and down the other, and finally clambered down the gate, safe and sound – just – it had been a hazardous experience. The jolt came later. As I was walking back to the hut I found the walls on either side of the gate had been blasted away in the Blitz – I could have walked round the pillars and out of the dry-dock. I was l told the unions insisted the gate keeper was an essential part of security and he was to be retained. to continue opening and locking the gates morning and night. Such are the rocks of precedent upon which our war effort was built. When I arrived back at the hut I was too tired to put up the blackout, instead I put on the electric fire and crashed out on the couch. After a while I woke thinking I was taking the flu, coughed, turned over and went to sleep again. I awoke twice more, but on the third occasion I lifted my torch to see the time only to find the beam of the torch was no longer than two feet, the room was filled with a white choking smoke. Immediately I went to the door, I was both sick and dizzy. It transpired that someone had leaned a coil of rubber-covered telcathene cable against the fire and it was burning. I am convinced if I had gone to sleep just once more I would never have awakened.

Within a very short time of being in Barracks I was given my draft to Belfast, some place in Ireland I had never heard of, in a country I knew nothing about. My mental image when I received the news was of being sent to a windswept, featureless bog with small white houses dotted about. I was not well pleased. The trip from Portsmouth to Belfast was long, unpleasant and unmemorable. We were met at the railway station in Belfast and taken to the Caroline, an old grey has-been of a ship, allegedly with a concrete bottom, which was used, and still is, as the titular Base of the Navy for Belfast. It was here we were assembled to be taken to find lodging in the grey Admiralty bus. To say we were miserable as the few of us got into that empty, dull bus and were trundled through the narrow, dark, wet streets in late December, would certainly be no over-statement . Why the powers, that were in charge, thought dumping me and my mate Bunny in Belfast on Christmas Eve, was likely to further the war effort, was beyond our understanding.

The bus had hardly stopped in a street before women rushed out with cries of “I’ll take two”, or one or three – whatever. We were dished out like food parcels to the starving, with no idea of what we were being let in for. Bunny and I were allocated to a Mrs Plump, a sharp lady of ample proportions, hair pulled back in a bun, arms akimbo, a toughie all right, but fair – well at first anyway. What subsequently followed was of our joint making. That first weekend was an eye opener. Strangers in a strange town rarely see the best. Unlike tourists, who generally have a foreknowledge, we had no such guide, it was dark, blacked-out and raining. Having dumped our kit, had a cup of tea, we left to reconnoitre the City. Naturally we went into the first pub we found. When that got a bit hairy we crossed the road to a dance hall where Yanks were being bloodied – literally. Unpromising and depressing.! The lot of us had been fed up when we arrived and what we saw as we peered out the partially steamed-up windows of the bus made our future look bleak and in those first few days our first impressions seemed to be confirmed.

The following day, Christmas Day, the town was empty, public transport was practically non-existent, and we were to be welcomed at the HMS Caroline for Christmas dinner, an equally dismal affair, as most of the Navy in Belfast were living ‘ashore’ and had their corporate feet firmly planted under civilian tables about the City. There was only one way we could go and that was up, nothing could conceivably have been worse. From the depths of despondency we started to reassess the real Belfast and more to the point, the real Belfast people. We had a small office, really a shed, on the edge of the largest dry-dock in the shipyard, the Thompson Dock. From there we telephoned our headquarters, Belfast Castle, and reported to the Port Wireless Officer, (the PWO), that everything was going well, even if it was not and enquired what his pleasure was at the same time. The Castle had been the property of Lord Shaftsbury and had been used for public functions prior to the war. When I joined the crew of HMS Caroline, the Castle had already been taken over, divided into small offices and ours was one of the nicest, with a view over Belfast Lough and was part of what had previously been the old ballroom. There is a tower at the North end and in that tower was a large signalling lamp, which Wrens used for asking ships coming up Belfast Lough to identify themselves.

The shed on the dry-dock had a couch which doubled as a bed, the usual office equipment, together with our tools and spares for many of the radio sets we were intended to fix. I was not the best riser in the mornings, and as I often had to work through the night, as the shipyard was on a round-the-clock shift system and there were only two of us. It could also be said that my extra curricular activities sometimes kept me out late also. Anyway, I considered that provided I was efficient and diligent, I should be able to run my life as I liked, rather than on the preconceived tramlines of the Navy’s way. Once I was in the routine I had little compunction in bending the rules. One of the slants I employed was to get up, throw on enough clothing to appear in public, walk down the road to the corner shop and use their telephone to inform the PWO that everything was all right and make the standard enquiry. It was only years later that the daughter of the person he was billeted with, the daughter I later married, informed me that he knew of my deception. He was a close one, he never said anything to me, perhaps his views on the Naval straight-jacket coincided with mine. Apparently he said to her, “Riggs telephones me from the shop at the bottom of his road and he thinks I assume he’s at the shipyard,” – sneaky I call it – on both sides.

When I arrived in Portsmouth barracks I found yet another illustration of the practical use of psychology, and while it was on a more lowly plane it was no less effective, it was the axiom of the ‘Messenger’. Those who wished to remain in barracks without let or hindrance, as the lawyers might say, fully vitalled, fully paid and with their rum ration intact, possessed themselves of several ports-of-call and a piece of paper. The specification of a port-of-call was firstly a place one could legitimately be heading for, with said piece of paper. Secondly it also had to be near a ‘caboosh’. A caboosh was somewhere one could disappear into, sleep in, was personal to one or shared with someone one trusted, and had been forgotten. It could take many forms. It might be a tiny room amounting to little more than a very large cupboard, rarely used and large enough to sling a hammock. It could be a small room or even a separate building, in which generators or some other self-operating piece of machinery could operate without much, if any, maintenance. It had to be forgotten by the establishment, or surplus to requirements, and it had to be lockable so a new lock could be fitted, for obvious reasons. Cabooshes were often shared.

It was then merely a matter of passing from one caboosh to another throughout the day, making sufficient appearances to be known by sight by authority and therefore become accepted as an essential part of the system. The Messenger had to travel so fast it was unlikely he would be stopped and questioned, and the paper, probably one of many, if it was examined at all, should fit any situation and would add that final patina of legitimacy. Authority, with its hundreds appearing and disappearing, every week, could never have policed the assemblage.

At nineteen I was obtaining an education which in future years made me the most suspicious person Soph had ever encountered. I was not in barracks for long, but it was an unforgettable experience. For a start, up until then I had either bought cigarettes at six pence a packet on the ship or rolled my own from my tobacco ration which consisted of a pound of tobacco, cigarette or pipe, once a month, in airtight half-pound tins, for about one shilling and sixpence. However, somewhere in the bowels of the barracks was a small community, who manufactured cigarettes out of the standard tobacco issue and sold them in boxes of 400, at three shillings and four pence.

The quarters had varied little since Nelson, steel framed buildings like warehouses, with tall factory-like windows and rooms so high one had to put one’s head back to see the ceiling. In the centre were lockers and running down the centre and two sides were the rails on which the hammocks were tied. This in itself was interesting as on rare occasions, drunks would come ‘off shore’ – navalese for coming back from a night out – quietly tie a sleeping man in his own hammock as he slept, using his hammock lashing, then they would climb up onto the beams and raise the poor devil until he was about ten to twelve feet from the floor and tie him there. It would only be when he wakened that he would be aware of his predicament and by then the drunks would be too fast asleep to enjoy the joke. He, meanwhile, would be scared to move in case the hammock was not secure.

By the time you have read this you will appreciate that there is more than one meaning to ‘passing out’ and the one in a military sense is not intended. We had suffered more than our fair share of bad weather and our convoy duty had not been so much dangerous as stressful as well as extended, with the result we were ‘chocker’, lower deck slang for disgruntled and fed to the teeth, and when chocker is said with venom, and is preceded by an epithet, it can hold considerably more emphasis, as it did then.

For some reason we dropped anchor at Southend, the only time we ever did, and those off Watch could not wait to belly up to the nearest bar, yours truly included. To get from the ship to the pier we were ferried in small boats we called ‘trot boats’, manned by locals. We then had to take a train, the one mile length of the pier and no sooner had we arrived on the promenade than we surged into the first pub we reached. Because the trot boat’s capacity was small, the number disembarking at any one time was also small, hence, when we reached the pub we found a crowd had already beaten us to it, and this was the story of the whole afternoon.

At that time there was a distinct lack of booze available of all descriptions and the landlords of the inns and pubs liked to keep most of it back for their regulars. It was not unheard of for a publican to aver that he had run out of beer or spirits or whatever, which often proved to be a lie, but who could blame him, we were there for a round or two, his regulars were there for life. The first pub where we achieved success said they had no beer, only a limited supply of gin, in the next it was only beer, in some it was even only port, with the result we had a brew swilling about in our stomachs which represented everything in the vintners list, consumed in the shortest possible time because we only had a few hours ashore; this was topped off with a greasy mix of fish and chips; but the real trouble was, we were still all as sober as the moment we had stepped from the train on arrival, and fed up about it, to boot – chocker!

There we were in the rain, waiting for the next train, apparently sober, chocker to the ‘n’th degree, after a shocking time at sea and the worst run ashore imaginable. The grumbling was vicious and the mood bad. If the Skipper had thought to release some of the tension by letting the Off-Watch ashore, it had misfired. In due course the train arrived and we boarded and sat silent through its long slow run to the end of the pier, at which point in the story I have to rely on reports as my memory of what took place is not so much vague as non-existent. Apparently I stepped from the train stone cold sober and then, without a sound, measured my length on the deck of the pier , out for the count, the alcohol fumes and the witches’ brew had caught up with me.

My comrades manhandled me into the trot boat and from the trot boat into the ship and down into our Mess where I was stretched out on a bunk, non compis, but my Samaritans had a problem. Immediately prior to the anchor being raised, it was part of my duty to examine the radar and radio gear and report to the Captain on the bridge. I was in no state to stand up, let alone look intelligent or talk sensibly. They drowned me in black coffee and salt water alternately until I surfaced, at which point it was ‘Show time’, I was due on the bridge. I remember saluting and mumbling something, but my condition must have been patent. The Skipper gave me one chance by asking was everything in order. My reply of “I’m —–ed if I know”, helped my case not one jot and I was dismissed. The fact that I then proceeded to trip over him, he was only about five foot in height, was the last straw. “Get off my bridge,” he shouted. “Clap that man in irons”, he roared, and they did. That is to say, I was not handcuffed, instead I was unceremoniously dropped through the hatch of the tiller flat on to a greasy steel deck where the chains leading to the tiller were connected to the gearing, and I was left there, in the dark, in the stink of oil and in my best suit – my ‘Tiddly Suit’, my pride and joy, made to measure of the best doeskin and embellished with badges picked out in gold braid and gold wire, while the ship set off on convoy once more.

I have to admit, I slept like a baby and next day appeared before the Officer of The Watch charged with being ‘drunk and incapable, ship under sailing orders’. I received a bit of a rollicking but I suspect the true circumstances had reached the ears of the Wardroom because I was awarded a loss of privileges for a period which meant I would lose one run ashore. I later found that the incident was not recorded on my papers, another sign of leniency