VE DAYI cannot leave the story of Leydene without mentioning VE Day. Not because of the day itself or because of the fact we were given a holiday, but to remember the generosity of the people of Hampshire towards the Services. At every pub there was a hog’s head of beer sitting in the garden or out front on the street for the services to help themselves. There were tables of free food for us and there were parties everywhere. During the hours of daylight I managed fifteen pints of beer and as the evening wore on we went inside and started on the hard stuff. It was not a case of how much one could manage to consume, more a matter of how much one could avoid drinking without offending our hosts. Everyone wanted to treat us.
THE HEDGEHOG
At Christmas Sophie managed to spend the holiday with me at Petersfield. We went up to Dulwich for Christmas Day and Boxing Day and spent the rest of the time freezing in Madame Spirella’s. It was a good thing we were so thin, Sophie only weighed seven and a half stone and I, ten and a half. The little single iron bed was barely enough for the two of us. The journey back to Petersfield was an eye-opener to Sophie, finding such a mass of humanity in every imaginable uniform cramming the train, all going back off leave.
The following summer Sophie gave up work because she was pregnant with Gilly. We found another one-room flat, this time with a put-U-up settee which converted into a double bed and I commuted to Leydene every day. >From here at weekends we sometimes went to see Willie and it was on one of these occasions I introduced Sophie to the hedgehog.
I had aquired a dog called Josey. For some reason Sophie had gone to bed early at Glenlea, possibly because she was tired. I had taken Jose for a walk and as we returned I saw, in the distance, silhouetted in the moonlight reflecting off the shiny road surface, a small bundle. Josey saw it too and shot off to investigate. When I reached it I found it to be a ball of hedgehog cowering from the dog. Like the adder, I knew nothing about hedgehogs and I think this was the first one I had ever been close to. I took off my uniform cap and dropped it over the creature, lifted it and carried it back for Sophie to see.
With the vagaries of the comings and goings of the Dutch Boys at Glenlea, this weekend there had been no bed available for us and Sophie and I were sleeping on a mattress on the floor of our room. She was in bed reading when Jose, I and the hedgehog burst in, eager to see her. I put the hedgehog on the floor for her better to examine it when we were suddenly aware of hundreds, it looked like hundreds anyway, of fleas jumping everywhere, onto the bed, onto Sophie and all over the carpet. My hat of course was full of them. City dwellers can be unaware of rural matters where as any youngster in the country would know that hedgehogs were the preferred home of the flea.
Ellen, calm and practical as ever, merely brought DDT and a Hoover and proceeded to Hoover them up while I transferred the frighten little beast out to the garden. In the same ignorance I didn’t stop to wonder if I had taken it away from a family which would now starve. When we were satisfied that all was clear we settled down for the night. The following morning when I sat up on the mattress I saw in the very centre of Sophie’s forehead a flee, like the red dot on the forehead of an Indian girl. I said nothing until it had hopped away and she was fully awake.
In the garden of Glenlea was a huge mulberry tree on which grew mulberries the size of large strawberries. If one has never tasted mulberries one should remedy that at the first opportunity, they are the most ‘meaty’ fruit I have ever tasted and those at Glenlea, eaten with sugar were something very memorable. I have never ceased to wonder why mulberries are not more common in the shops, they are so delicious, and indigenous, far better than Kiwi fruit and they don’t have to come so far.
RUM AND ‘VJ’ DayVJ Day, Victory over Japan, the 14th of August 1945, the day declared by President Truman as a holiday, was a holiday for us too. I was Duty Petty Officer in the Chief’s and PO’s Mess at the Signal School, and part of that duty was to issue the rum. behind a table covered with a white cloth, at the head of the Mess. I stood with the Dixie full of rum in front of me, a jug, a measure and also I had a pint of bitter at my side. As each member of the Mess approached I ticked off his name and then dispensed his ration. Excitement was intense because, although we had been expecting it for some time, the reality meant so much to us. It meant release, demobilisation, home and hearth for ever. It was a carnival day, all classes had been suspended, the news had been read out and it was a day’s leave for those who could take advantage of it. The immediate result as far as I was concerned was that everyone who came to collect their rum offered me ‘sippers and, if I had drunk all I was offered I would have joined the twins, but after all I was on duty, so I limited myself to the odd pint of beer, my own tot and perhaps sippers from a few close friends. However, the rocks I ultimately perished on were the fumes coming from the Dixie as I stood over it handing out the rum. I found it was affecting me. From that point I was careful not to drink any more. To be drunk at the rum table could have been interpreted that I had been illegally sampling. In due course my duties ended and at mid-day I was free to catch the bus to Petersfield where my new wife awaited, booted and spurred for a trip by train to Portsmouth and perhaps Southampton, places she had never seen.
I arrived at our one-room flat in fine fettle, not inebriated, but close, the fumes had not yet had their full effect. Lunch was ready and we were due to leave soon after the meal but then, one minute I was totally compus mentus, the next I was fast asleep, (shades of Southend), and poor Soph never did see HMS Victory. Needless to say I have been attempting to recover lost ground ever since, but Brownie Points are hard to come by in some quarters.

The hotel we stayed in was almost opposite Glenlea. I have a phobia, I hate having strangers in my bedroom, with the result Sophie has never forgiven me for denying her breakfast in bed throughout the honeymoon. Because the hotel was so far from London we mostly ate out either in the City of with the family in Balham, so we rarely had meals at the hotel at the proper times. We would come home from London on the train at all hours. Each night as we handed in the ticket to the collector on the station at Dulwich he would say ‘Sorry you’ve got to walk!’ until this became a family saying. When we arrived back at the hotel there would be two cold platters waiting for us which were sumptuous and we would sit in front of a fire and review the day while we ate.
It was while we were at the hotel that Sophie first became acquainted with the Buzz Bomb. During one night, as she was a lighter sleeper than I, the siren must have woken her and then she heard the wavering, sometimes stuttering buzz of the bomb, sounding for all the world like a two-stroke motorbike with fuel troubles. Unsurprisingly she woke me and then followed a conversation for which she also has never really forgiven me. She has always considered that I acted boorishly, while I was only being logical. The difference between our outlooks rested with the facts that while I had become hardened to the vagaries of war in all its guises, she had only experienced a few air raids, and being half asleep I reacted normally instead of in my new role as protector of the Soph.
“What’s that?” Soph, fearful.
“It’s a Doodle-bug.”
“Its a what?”
“It’s a Doodle-bug, a flying bomb.”
“Oh my God!”
“Don’t worry, Dear, if you can hear it you’re safe and if you can’t its too late to do anything about it.”
“You’re dead?”
“Yes. Go back to sleep, it’ll be all right, we get hundreds of them all the time.”
“You expect me to go to sleep? Shouldn’t we be in a shelter?”
Then followed the placation, the reassurance, all of which was worth being woken up for, but in spite of that I was never really forgiven.

We spent our honeymoon in Dulwich because it was near Willie who had never met Sophie. From there it was easy to commute to Central London and all the excitement, if not bright lights, but much more difficult to reach Balham and the rest of the family. Indeed it was quicker to walk than ride. GLENLEA
Willie was living in a house called Glenlea in Dulwich. It was a huge house standing within its own grounds and had been taken over by whatever Department of the War Office was responsible for receiving, training and returning Dutch escapees from German occupied Holland, who wished to become saboteurs and Resistance workers. A cousin of ours who was a ship’s captain pre-war, and had lost a leg in an action earlier in the war, was now a Commander in the Navy, liaising with the exiled Dutch government officials. It was uncharitably suggested by some in the family that he had been a smuggler before the war, so this might account for his close association with the Netherlands.
For whatever reason, he set up this sort of spy school and then persuaded Willie to take charge as housekeeper. When I went home on leave, Willie had obtained permission for me to stay there at Glenlea with the ‘Dutch Boys’, as she called them, and I was privy to much that went on. They had a radio room where they learned to use radio transmitters and, one assumes, code books although that was never discussed. On one side of the garden was a very tall tree growing close to a wall and from the tree a thick rope hung. Although I was never there when it was used, I understand that the routine was to climb onto the wall with the rope and then, like Tarzan, swing until it was at full extent and then let go and thus learn the technique of landing with a parachute.
Every Sunday evening, a ritual was performed. The BBC would play, in turn, the National Anthem of each country which was in exile. The radio was on, the evening meal was over and we sat smoking or drinking, all were listening. Then it was the National Anthem of the Netherlands. The men would stand, some would sing, and at the end they would toast Queen Wilhelmena in unison.
Over weeks the men would disappear from time to time to go on courses in other houses or at some other location and then they would return, all without comment. The idea was that no one should know if they had gone on an operation or merely a course, but in spite of these precautions many were caught as they landed in Holland. It was said later that one of the men I used to go to London with for nights out was a Nazi spy who had been passing information. I was never able to confirm that.
I remember one of the men in particular, but not his name. He had been caught by the Nazis and had escaped. I forget how he arrived in England, there were two main routes, one through Sweden and the North Sea, the other through Europe to Spain and then to London. When he arrived in England this man had a strawberry mark on his face which made him very easy to distinguish, yet he was so keen to get back into the fray he was prepared to undergo a skin graft. When I last saw him his face had not healed enough for him to leave our country.
Many of the men had come from the Dutch East Indies and when the school broke up they gave Willie two beautiful silver bon bon dishes of Javanese origin.

MARRIAGE – AND ALL My family could not travel to Ireland because of wartime restrictions and so were not at the wedding. Willie, my mother, had made some protestations about my age, 22, the fact that I was marrying a school teacher, anathema to her, that I was being precipitate, but when she saw it was useless she capitulated with dignity and wished us well. Josie, my aunt, was enthusiastic and kept making ‘Broth of a boy’ jokes and my aunt Min, a school teacher and brilliant mathematician, was pleased that someone with some authority would at last be taking me in hand. I had always believed that if she had been marking my reports she would have been another who would have written, ‘Could do better’. When I was small and perhaps had not been doing all that was required of me, my Gran would open my hand and show me the ‘W’s in the creases of my palm, she would tell me that stood for ‘willing to work but won’t’. Min, I’m sure, would have agreed with her.
I collected the family wedding presents, put them in my green Naval suitcase and headed for a friend’s house in Ireland via Euston, Stranraer, Larne and Belfast. I have always had a phobia about being late and so I left a day early in case there was an impediment on the way. It could be fog, it was November after all, a V2 rocket, anything, and so it turned out – there was a storm so severe the boat could not sail.
When we arrived at Stranraer we went aboard the Cross Channel Ferry but that was it – no sailing. We sat about until nearly ten o’clock that night when we were de-shipped and sent to Nissan huts to spend a cold, uncomfortable night. We were given some food and shown to bunks which had no mattresses, just half inch wide steel slats at four inch intervals both ways. I had all the Riggs’ possessions in the case and trusted no one, so I slept with my head on the case and my body, even wrapped in my overcoat, oozing between the slats. The management – soldiers of course – ‘thoughtfully’ woke us up at two o’clock to tell us they would be waking us up at four to receive breakfast which they duly did – it was slabs of cold, fatty ham on doorsteps of bread and tea the colour of syrup-of-figs, and about as acceptable. Then we were ushered on board and later that day set off for Ireland, Larne and, for me, marriage.
When I eventually arrived at Sophie’s house I was so tired I was almost incoherent, so when she showed me the presents she had received on our behalf I was in a daze and could barely summon interest let alone retain who had sent what.
All weddings are extraordinary, especially for those closely involved but in our case, apart from a couple of incidents, it was the aftermath which was unusual rather than the ceremony. The first of the incidents was the welcome return of Sophie’s paternal uncle, Jack, who, as a merchant sea captain had been a prisoner of war and his return coincided with the day of our wedding. The reception was in the hotel beside the railway station, I had been taken by Sophie’s mother round to meet the guests who, apart from a handful were all strangers to me. Allowing I had not fully recovered from the trip over from England, the sea of faces as I went from group to group melted into oblivion to the extent that someone remarked they had already met me, to the surprise of both Liza and myself, I think she was as bemused as I was by that time. I was then allowed to join my new father-in-law and his returned brother in the bar. The two of them were sitting on high stools, and lined up in front of an empty chair were five glasses of rum, one for every round in my absence. The tension must have had its effect because although I caught up within minutes I was totally sober and remained so.
We were seen off on the train to Larne with the greatest shower of confetti ever, to such an extent that two mill girls who entered the carriage spent the journey gathering it off the floor and throwing it at one another until they left the train at Carrickfergus.
The second incident occurred on the train to London from Stranraer. We were sharing a sleeping compartment with a husband and wife and their child. The wife was moaning about having travelled from Dublin to Belfast and finding the restaurant at the terminus in Great Victoria Street closed. They had travelled to the York Road Station in the hope of finding food only to discover the restaurant occupied by a wedding party and some fool on his feet giving a speech. The fool, of course was me. Sophie and I withheld that piece of information, we just commiserated.

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 outré. 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.

To those who hate technicalities I apologise for this entry, For me it records something gone and lost never to be recovered. Whether that is good is debateable. In ’43, I was drafted to Belfast to supervise the radio installations on the warships being built there. The shipyard was vast, there were at least six dry-docks functioning concurrently and ships of every size were issuing continuously. Today the area is almost a wasteland. Then, no sooner was a ship off the slipway than the keel plates of the next were down. The noise was deafening and vibrant. The very place itself seemed to be alive. One could see it transforming day by day, ships grew, they changed colour, they left, others were planted, while the men, tens of thousand of them, were like insects, dwarfed by the ships, the cranes and gantries which they served and which served the ships.

The men were working round the clock on some contracts, so it was only at the end of a shift that one realised the size of the workforce when the men issued in their hordes from every gate, running for the trams which were lined up along the Queen’s Road. Every day, at knocking-off time, it was like the end of the match at Wembley on Cup Day. The trams were old, many with no cover to the top deck. As they gathered speed men came from everywhere along the road, from design offices, accounts, drillers, platers, electricians, joiners, rivet boys and me, jumping onto the running board, and when the inside of the tram was full, which included the stairs and standing on the upper storey, we would then stand on the heavy steel bumper round the back and hang on as the tram swayed and rattled over the tracks set in the granite blocks. This was all standard practice and just to show there was no favouritism, the conductor would collect the fares of those hanging on as well as those impeding his ascent of the stairs.

Many would have a small haversack slung over one shoulder carrying the remnants of their ‘piece’, the midday snack, the little tin for sugar and tea, and, perhaps, something which should have remained in the shipyard or been shown to the Customs Man at the gate. I was advised to get the little tin. It consisted of two of the small size, oval Coleman’s mustard tins, soldered together by their bottoms to form two compartments, one for sugar the other for tea. Most people also had a can – a tea can. I had a tea can, a disused food tin, blackened by use and with a wire handle – an essential piece of equipment as necessary as my Avometer with which I tested the radio sets. Holding just over a pint of water, managed by the rivet boys when they were not heating or throwing rivets, they would take the cans at break time, fill them with water and put them on the rivet brazier.. When boiling they would bring them to the men who would stand, hold the tin by the wire-loop handle, put the tea and sugar in and then, with a back-and-forth swinging motion start the build up of momentum and finally complete the ritual by swinging the tin in a vertical circle, described by their arm fully rotating round their shoulder, so the ingredients went to the bottom – the principle of the centrifuge. The tea ceremony was then complete and all that remained was to drink it out of a stained enamel mug

The skill of the rivet boys had to be seen to be appreciated. They were apprentice riveters. One would heat the rivets to orange heat and then grasping one with long tongs, hurl it up to another boy, the catcher, standing precariously high on the scaffolding, who would catch it in a bucket, remove it with tongs and fit it into holes in the two plates which were to be riveted, so the riveter and the holder could then together hammer it to a tight fit. Targets aren’t new. Men, although officially on the workforce of the yard, worked in gangs selling their combined services to the Company, contracting the work and being paid as a group. A man was paid a rate for producing a product in an agreed time, based on a Rate Fixer’s assessment having watched the man work, and the man under scrutiny was very particular to cut no corners. Once the rate had been agreed the man upped productivity to get a comfortable wage and set aside enough products to go to a Wednesday match without being missed, while a mate was handing in his work.

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.

The shed on the dry-dock had a couch doubling as a bed, the usual office equipment, plus our tools and spares for the radio sets we fixed. 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, – 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.

Belfast Shipyard Part 3There were other rackets, the pokers with the multi-coloured handles were in nearly every house in the city and most workmen carried a cigarette lighter, which had been made either in the ‘yard or the Aircraft Factory.
Sailors were not averse to rackets either. There was a ferry, which ran from Pollock Dock to the shipyard. Naval vessels, which came in for minor repairs sometimes went to Pollock Dock, where the Customs officials were a dour strict lot. The sailors would then take the ferry to the shipyard, still ostensibly being within the precincts of the Harbour, and then take a tram out of the shipyard gate with their cigarettes and rum intact,
When in barracks, and at sea, we lived on tinned milk to such an extent that I have never been able to drink it since, I hated it so much. There was a saying that the ships at Scapa Flow could run aground on the milk tins, which had been thrown over board over the years. This meant that crates of milk tins were forever being brought aboard or transferred from naval vessels.
There was a story going the rounds in Pollock Dock which while seeming far fetched, was sufficiently technical and detailed to be true. With plenty of time at sea it was a simple matter to collect carefully opened and emptied tins of milk, solder the lids back on, another one inside about and inch from the top, and after filling the small compartment at the top with milk, finally sealing it with a lid taken from another tin. The perpetrator had therefore created a tin with two hidden compartments, one shallow and one comprising the rest of the tin, with the smaller one containing milk. All that was required then was for the larger compartment to be filled with rum and this was allegedly done through holes in the tin beneath the label and sealed with some form of glue as soldering would have caused an explosion. Once made the tins could be used repeatedly.
It only remained for the crate of rum to be carried through the gate in a Naval vehicle. If the Custom’s men were suspicious, the tins would seem to be the real thing in all respects and if pierced would spill milk. The excuse for the transfer would be that the milk was thought to be off and was being replaced. Whether it was actually true I never discovered, but as I heard it from a number of quarters I am inclined to believe it. Rum, after all was fetching a good price, with shortages in every pub.

After leaving the ship, in due course I reached barracks in Portsmouth to await another draft. It was the first time I had been there to stay for more than a couple of days and I soon discovered it was a world of its own.

Immediately on arrival in barracks everyone went through the ritual of keeping appointments at the various departments in which records of his career were held. These records followed the service men and women round the world and no matter how short the stay, or even if it was a return visit after only a brief departure, the tradition of the appointment was an essential part of the first few days. It was a game – that was for sure – as the appointments were more a ritual than having any serious intent, it was a game which was an amalgam of ‘The Stations of the Cross’ and Monopoly, and those who were good at the game, the nefarious rogues, who never went to sea, never did any work, they were the lost legion, who had, in their eyes, won the game. If they were very good they kept it up for the whole duration of the war, never having to pass ‘Go’, never going to ‘Jail’, just picking up their cash and cigarettes, drinking their tot and being bored out of their minds.

That was the key to failure, being bored. To be a single minded rogue requires ingenuity and intelligence, being part of a gang requires only obedience to the head rogue. The ones I came across were single, running their own rackets and trying to remain anonymous while being ostensibly part of the system. The real rogues were the ones on the strength who were never transferred and never drafted. Sometimes this was a bookkeeping error, sometimes as the result of greasing the right palm, but these men were legitimate members of the barracks and as such received their full pay, their rum ration, their cigarettes and even their leave

A Brush With Psychiatry My first encounter with psychiatry was in my last year at school to find what I was best suited for. In Pompey Barracks I had my second, there the Psychiatrist was universally called the ‘trick-cyclist’. I was on my way round the Monopoly board. I had arrived at the building housing the medical staff where I was due for yet another cursory examination. There I sat in a queue waiting my turn while others were there for many reasons

As I have previously said, I was a Wireless Mechanic, also only in for Hostilities Only, an HO, a new type of rating , dressed in what was picturesquely called ‘fore-and-aft rig’, a suit with shirt and tie and was generally ignored by the ‘real sailors’, who tended to talk to one another across an HO as if he was not there and this happened at the medical wing. I recall that at least one of the men in the waiting room was handcuffed to a sailor in gaiters, which would indicate he was a prisoner in custody, he had offended in some way, committed a violent act, jumped ship, stolen, anything which could result in a sentence of imprisonment to be served either in a naval establishment or a civil jail. Men in this category were automatically sent to the ‘trick-cyclist’ for examination prior to arraignment.

The conversation between the man in handcuffs, and others there for the same reason but not under guard, was enlightening to someone who had barely heard of the word psychologist at that time, a not uncommon state as the profession was in its infancy – but not as far as these sailors were concerned. They not only knew why they were there, having in most cases been there before, they knew the questions which would be asked, could reel off the right answer for standard Rorschach tests, knew the various other tests they were to undergo and advised one another on the answers the psychiatrist would need to be given if they were to be declared unfit for duty at sea. It was a fascinating approach to delinquency, one I never forgot, but more, it was a salutary illustration of the triumph of experience over theory.

The Big Bang I relate this because afterwards I found the incident in a way, rather funny, and contrary to all I had been led to believe about the imperturbability of the Navy in a crisis. We were sitting at lunch in the Chiefs’ and POs’ Mess. The table ran fore and aft of the ship which meant that the senior men sat farthest from the draught coming down the ladder leading to the upper deck while I, the despised cuckoo in the nest, the interloper, was seated immediately beside the ladder. I suspect we were either eating roast beef and potatoes or corned beef hash, depending on which end of the trip it was, when we were surprised by a bang which caused the side of the ship literally to move, in and out, like a biscuit tin which has received a thump. These Hunt destroyers were designed for speed rather than to resist the onslaught of attack so we had no real armour plate except in vital areas like the bridge and the gun turrets. Indeed the running joke was that the designers had purposely made the hull thin so that a shell would go in one side and out the other without exploding – an impossible suggestion but intended to amuse.

“We’ve been hit” several voices shouted and as some of the Mess had been in the drink already during the war, they were a little apprehensive, not to put too fine a point on it. Like the rest I jumped up and started to grab the handrail of the ladder intending to get out as soon as possible, but a big hand grabbed the back of my jersey and I was pulled out of the way and a number of the men were up the ladder like monkeys. Again I got my hand on the ladder and the same thing happened. In the end, although I was first to the ladder I was last out. I would not suggest for one minute there was panic, just determination not to be left behind.

When we reached the upper deck all was made clear. Near the horizon, yes, all that distance away, a sister ship was dropping depth charges and what had shattered the lunch was the tremendous pressure-wave which had travelled miles through the water undiminished to almost deafen us in the Mess.

Edinburgh For some reason I have never fathomed, the sailors called Edinburgh ‘The New’ – pronounced noo; we would ‘go up the Noo’. To me it was a cold city, closed to strangers and especially sailors. I remember the chap in our Mess who was a one-time lecturer, I’ll call him Reg, invited his wife up there during boiler cleans. He had arranged a completely irregular code with her which could have put him in jug if he’d been caught. She was able, from his letters, to know when we expected to dock and would meet him when he was on leave for the four days. She would book a room and he would join her. I believe it was the hotel at Prince’s Street Station, which annoyed him. When he received the bill at the end of his stay it was made out to Mrs XX (his name) and Friend. In 1942 that was just not on, the implications were implicit. He took the place apart including the manager.

On my first visit I initially went to the Salvation Army to book a bed for the night and was told that there were only beds in the Annexe. Annexes were quite a common feature of the ad hoc bunk bed doss, so I took no notice and went about my evening’s enjoyment with my bed ticket in my pocket. Come midnight I went in search of the Annexe and the bed. I found the former, but when I was dispatched to a pile of used blankets set in a rectangle scratched in chalk on the floor of a church hall, I jibbed, left and went to find accommodation elsewhere.

I met a policeman on Prince’s Street who directed me to the Station where he said they were putting Servicemen up for the night. They were, in the left luggage office, in the racks usually used for suitcases. There I was pigeonholed, cramped, and, by morning, indented like a waffle because no palliasse or support whatever had been provided to cover the slats of the racks and they had bitten into me. This experience reinforced my conception of the attitude of the locals to Servicemen. They still seemed to be in the era of the ‘No Dogs, No Sailors Admitted’, a sign, which I was told by embittered Regulars was prevalent in Southsea before the war, Southsea being the posh part of Portsmouth. I suppose there was error on both sides – they were certainly cold, and we could be a bit rough at times.

In the sailor’s induction course we were taught to handle a whaler, a thirty-foot, double-ended, clinker-built life-boat,. We rowed in unison with cries like ‘Give way together’. Our instructions were laced with colourful language by, the Coxswain, or ‘Chief’, and there was swearing in the body of the boat as the blisters began to build. Tethered in Butlins’ swimming pool, the oars with holes in the blades, instead of us passing through the water, water swirled past us and we were rock still. We were preparing, for abandoning ship -, a worrying thought – not for shopping for fish,

The rank of the Captain decided which Naval ship in a convoy was Flotilla Leader, a cache which carried privileges, not least the convoy Doctor. The other ship, or ships were the sheep dogs of the convoy – in Naval terms ‘tail-end Charley’, the canteen boat – whipping in the stragglers. When our Captain was promoted, we inherited a Scottish, ex-Merchant captain, RNR whose rank sent us to the rear of the convoys with all that entailed. There was considerable muttering aboard.

The new Skipper played the bagpipes, liked fish and when he played, usually in the small hours, his personal hound would howl like a banshee. The new Skipper was as popular as an outbreak of bubonic plague. However, fresh fish was a rare luxury, so his antics were a welcome respite. Sailing along in home waters in daylight, at six knots, if the Skipper spied a couple of trawlers plying their trade under very tricky circumstances, his attention could be distracted. The Bosun would pipe ‘whaler’s crew fall in’ and we, those who could be spared, would climb into the whaler and were lowered over the side of the ship, which by now had swung away from the convoy and was heading at a rash 20 to 25 knots for the trawlers, with us clinging to the boat and the boat whacking against the side of the ship. Who needed a fairground ride when we had him to guide us? Approaching the trawlers, the engines reversed to bring the ship almost at a standstill, when we would be dropped onto the waves, literally, with the sudden release of the falls, and then we would be rolling in the ship’s wash as it shot off back to the convoy. We, alone and abandoned, rowed sedately over to the fishing boats bearing our cargo of cigarettes, tobacco and rum from the Lower Deck Messes and the gin and cigarettes from the Wardroom. There was banter with the fishermen while we were passing up our bribes and they were sending down baskets of fish which we stowed in buckets, the surplus had to find a place at our feet. With a final flourish of cross-talk, the fishing boats would rapidly head off, not wanting to be associated with the convoy and within minutes they were over the horizon. We, out of sight of anything and wallowing in a rolling sea. would one minute see the horizon, the next we were beside a huge wave which seemed to be falling down on us, but actually rolled under us. With a full crew plus the fish, our gunwales close to the water, time past slowly.

With the sea empty, the look-out would ultimately see smoke on the horizon, the ship would be steaming towards us with a bow wave like a typhoon, a greyhound of the sea.. Momentarily it came almost to a stop and then, once we were hooked on to the lines and pulled just clear of the water, she would be off, accelerating back towards the convoy, while we were being hauled in foot by foot until we were swung inboard and lashed in place. Meanwhile the Messmen had been gathering in the waist of the ship. The skipper left the bridge and came to the well to inspect the prize emptied on the deck, and always said, ‘All flat fish into the Wardroom bucket.’, hence his nickname, ‘Fishcake McKay’. Then he would march off back to the bridge because we were in sight of the convoy once more; The Wardroom Steward collected flatfish for his bucket, but while he was gathering more, others would be taking then out of his bucket for their own, As a member of the boat’s crew I was not involved in divvying up so I was well placed to stand and watch this hilarious pantomime.