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I don’t think I ever entirely accepted the Navy philosophy of calling any accommodation, be it a house or a concrete bottomed wreck, a ship. I could never thought of myself as being ashore when I went out the gate. In fact I thought the whole concept childish and foolish, but it was surprising how simply it rolled off the tongue without thinking, and does even now when talking how the Naval Instructors and senior staff at Leydene were allowed to live ‘ashore’. This gave the married men the opportunity to have their families with them, which I think was at the back of the privilege, but the single men also profited. I was not at Leydene long before I was introduced to Madam Spirella and her concentration camp. Although we were given a living allowance and still enjoyed all the facilities of Leydene, including retaining our bunks and being fed, living ‘ashore’ was inevitably dearer, added to which there were the local attractions in the form of the pub, The Jolly Sailor, the cinema and Portsmouth just down the road, all were a drain on an insubstantial income.

My mate Frank had suggested Madam Spirella’s as a suitable pied a terre and I was duly ensconced. I rented a single room on the first floor, furnished with a narrow, single steel-framed hospital bed, a card table, two cane dining chairs, a dressing table and a wardrobe which trebled as a food cupboard cum cleaning store. With linoleum on the floor and a worn mat in front of the fireplace which contained a 500 watt cooking ring that doubled as a heater, for which we paid some extortionate sum – this was to be home for quite some time. It was bleak, inhospitable, but a relief from the years of communal living, the claustrophobic atmosphere of mass humanity, repeated expletives, noise, perpetual noise, the constant demands of the public address system and Vera Lynn at every hour of the day from the wake-up call to lights out. Don’t believe all they tell you about the popularity of the Stars of the past, even they had a sell-by date and constant repetition can pall Madam Spirella was our name for the woman who ran the house. I say ran, that is an overstatement because all she did was collect the rent, the tenants had days when they were responsible for the cleanliness of the hall and stairs and they were totally responsible for their own rooms. On the front of the house was a brass plate which said ‘Madam XXX, Corsetier and Spirella Specialist’, or words to that effect. She was not unlike Madam Arcarti in the film Blithe Spirit, detached from reality, on a higher plane of artistic genius, but that didn’t stop her coming down to earth with a thump if anyone digressed from the list of do’s and don’ts pinned up everywhere, or on rent day. We were a happy band of refugees from authority. One of our number played the trumpet in a dance band at a nearby seaside town on the weekends when he was not on duty. He constantly amazed me how every night he would take out the sheet music of the latest tune to hit the streets and proceed to orchestrate all the parts for the band, without playing a single note. Frank and a one-time school teacher from Huddersfield called Don, also had rooms and the three of us would sometimes eat together, generally on the first day of the weekly ration. At that time, 1944, with the Second Front in full swing, rations were fairly strict and only those in the know could take advantage of the black market, with the result that on Monday of every week we had a blow-out of almost all the week’s ration at one go, and then ate in the local Salvation Army canteen for the rest of the week.

Sophie, coming from Ireland, when she came over to stay at Christmas, she brought a good deal of food she had gathered up, for the two of us, or so she thought. What she had not realised was that we, at Madam Spirella’s, tended to share and share alike and so her precious butter and eggs were destined not only for us, but my mates. It was more than a shock to her, I think it took her a day or two to get over it, especially as in our chauvinist society she was expected to cook her provender as well. It was the first morning after Sophie had arrived in Madam Spirella’s prison camp when, as I knew the ropes, I decided I would make the breakfast. Staying there were two Wrens and one was in the kitchen when I arrived downstairs. It was clear she was not in the best of form by her posture, from the way her dressing gown was holding her up rather than the reverse, and by her reaction to my breezy ‘good morning’. When I asked her what was the matter
she looked at me with the most jaundiced look I have ever seen and said, ‘I hate this place,’ meaning Petersfield, ‘its full of Irish and Plymouth Brethren.’ For a moment there was silence, but she was totally unaware of her gaff. For me, there was no way I could let that go, it was too good an opportunity to be a chauvinist, so I made her bad day even worse, I told her my wife was Irish. The size of the hole which opened at her feet and into which she disappeared was just enough to accommodate her and make my day.

The examination techniques we adopted at the Royal Naval Signal School should have been the norm for the Country’s education system in genera . Education is not a case of knowing information, but knowing where to find it and how to apply it. The Leydene examination organisers had obviously taken this theory to heart. We, the students, were a mixed lot. If we qualified we were going to be far from land and advice for weeks on end and solely dependent upon our own resources, so while we were thoroughly taught how to carry out repairs and the basic fundamentals of radio technology, the course was based around the fact that the Mechanic would have a text book at his elbow. The examiners also knew that cheating had to be lived with as, for the students, passing the exam was the aim, how was secondary. To combat cheating, talking during exams was forbidden, but any written matter was allowed in with us to the examination, on the principal that if we had to look anything up it would waste valuable time, compared with those who knew it all. As the students ranged from the school-leaver to the hardened telegraphist, with a few university graduates thrown in to make the life of the instructor that little bit more difficult, they designed the papers with the questions graded, starting easily and then progressing in difficulty with each question. They tried to maintain a fair balance between pure knowledge and a sensible amount of referral. The person who knew the answers would have the advantage while a reasonable referral would not place a person beyond passing. The marking system was equally advanced The lecturers had a good idea who would come out on top, and the general quality of his work. Having marked all the papers they examined the top three of four, first to make sure there was no doubt of reaching the standard expected, then they took the highest mark and proportioned it to receive between 90 – 95 percent, depending on the candidate’s ability and the quality of his paper. They then graded all the papers by the same factor. Someone hopeless who spent much time referring to cogs and text books would fail miserably.

The Vagaries Of Teaching At Leydene It is one thing to sit in a classroom and criticise the poor devil standing in front trying to teach and another thing entirely being that poor devil, especially if it is what the Navy terms a ‘pier-head jump’, being volunteered without a word to say about it. Some of the instructors had been teachers in civvy life, but I was chucked in at the deep end to make the best of it. We had a day’s instruction which I totally forget, but one little jewel did stick. They told us that students learned one third through what they heard, one third through touch and one third through what they saw, and we were to instruct accordingly.

I was teaching people to be practical technicians, not theorists and if truth be known, when I started, my theoretical knowledge was a lot more sketchy than my grasp of the innards of the great many sets I was teaching. Initially this left me open to attack from men who had just come down from university with bright shiny degrees and who proposed to run rings round me for the aggrandisement of their own egos and the delectation of the rest of the class, a not uncommon syndrome, especially among university students.

That I was at a disadvantage was patent, what I was to do about it was more difficult and gave me hours of discomfort in the beginning. I had two aspects in my favour, the classes ran only for a matter of weeks, or a couple of months at the most, and then my tormentors would have left and any reputation I had created left with them and I started with a clean slate. The other plus was that I am a quick study and with every encounter I learned – oh how I bloody well learned! The one stance I had to avoid was the Uriah Heap affliction, the ‘I’m not as well educated as you’ ploy, seeking sympathy. I soon discovered that the best method of defence is attack and I also learned how to dig a hole and then lead the charging bull elephants into it. I had the advantage of knowing the sets inside out and soon discovered the difficulties the students were finding. Sympathy with the difficulties the class was encountering and a feigned amusement when I might be tripped up by a brain-box, tended to balance the class attitude in my favour and as time elapsed I was very often able to impart what these university graduates had taught me as if I had known it all along. One situation did frighten me, though. We were not supplied with duplicated notes, we spent hours dictating. The routine was such, we could predict what we’d be teaching at any time weeks or months ahead and the same was true of the dictation. It was so repetitive I was able to talk and think of something entirely different, my brain on auto-pilot. So that I had to lift an exercise book from time to time to see exactly what I had been saying. I never remember having to alter a word, but, it says something about the loss of spontaneity short repetitive courses can produce in the teaching staff if it is not watched.

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.