‘See the world’ – naval reminiscences

Fifty-two years ago today, I joined the Royal Navy.

I was seventeen-and-a-half and had been working in Newcastle Upon Tyne as a Junior Clerk (an office boy) for a shipping and transport firm; handling bills of lading, calculating charges, traipsing from dockside offices to the bank to the airport. The managing director, whose office was down the corridor, lived in my home town of Whitley Bay; I remember my mum saying, “Why don’t you ask him if he’ll give you a lift to work?” I didn’t, of course. I did ask for a pay rise when everyone else received one, but I was told I hadn’t been there long enough. The job was “dead man’s shoes”, so I looked around for an alternative place of employment.

I applied for a creative artist job with a Newcastle firm, but although my samples of artwork were highly praised in the interview, I didn’t have appropriate qualifications or experience. At the time I left school with two GCE O levels, the University changed the admission requirements for their course in Art & Design; I didn’t have enough GCEs, even though one of them was Art (distinction). The other GCE was Geography. Yes, I failed English!* (Perhaps I spent too much time writing a novel instead of studying or learning to pass exams…)

One lunch time, I walked past the Naval Recruiting Office near the main rail station, and then popped in on the off-chance, out of curiosity. Two of my cousins were in the RN, and my uncle had been in the Merchant Navy during the war. I lived close to the sea. Maybe some of that brine was in my blood.

My parents were naturally ambivalent about my joining the navy. It meant leaving home. But it offered what was then considered a secure career. And all the adverts said I’d ‘see the world’. I applied, sat the fairly basic exams in the Newcastle recruitment office and within a short while was accepted and given notice when to join.

I joined HMS Raleigh (Torpoint, Cornwall) on 19 October, along with several other raw recruits. I was a Junior Writer. Thus began my six weeks’ basic training – Part I training. Part II training entailed going to HMS Pembroke in Chatham, Kent . Here, I trained in secretarial (my score: 96%) and Pay (96.5%) disciplines; I also learning to touch-type (96.5%, 25wpm). I passed out from there to join HMS St Vincent in Gosport, Hampshire as ship’s company and on my birthday became a Writer. The latter establishment is now a college.  The touch typing has certainly been useful! Incidentally, part III training is reserved for submarine recruits.

As the adverts predicted, I was fortunate to see quite a bit of the world in my time. I believe that is no longer the case for RN recruits these days. They get to see the sea, mostly. There aren’t enough ships…

Here's a picture of me with a couple of Arab horses in Bahrain in the late 1960s, just before a race. Camel racing followed...

Fifty-two years. Blimey. Where’d the time go?

* I subsequently passed several GCE O and A levels and obtained an OU degree.

Reminiscences – Polka-dot parade

Fifty years ago today (19 October 2015) I joined the Royal Navy; I was a few months over seventeen.

In those early days I jotted down occasional impressions, and some of them have already been posted in my blog under the ‘reminiscences’ heading.

Here’s another, from early training days in HMS Raleigh:

The day it snowed we were the Guard. The snow did not lie very thickly, but it whitened the parade ground. Our guard marched at the slope to the rear of the parade. After the ‘Halt!’ command we were ‘into line left turned’.

The entire parade was wearing gabardines. At the ‘off caps!’ order I was confronted by an amusing sight. While the parade stood at ease, their caps (held to their rear) appeared like a series of polka-dots; this was accentuated by the white base of ground snow. And with the varying heights of numerous individuals the caps rose and fell in rows very much like lines of surf. If you can imagine the bounce of a ping pong ball slowed-down, it would look something like these rows of white caps.

Anyway, the polka-dot parade abstracted my thoughts from the cold.

I retired from the RN on 2 August 1989.

First week - new issue of uniform,

including boots;

we had to sew on our branch and name badges;

the car was not mine!

Reminiscences - where did those 49 years go?

On 19 October 1965 I joined the Royal Navy; 49 years today. I was seventeen.

The journey to join HMS Raleigh as a recruit has been covered in the blog here

Part of page 2 of my Service Certificate

 

I finally left the navy 2 August 1989, having served almost twenty-four years.

In that time I was fortunate not to be at sea for a lot of my career. I sailed in three frigates: in the Cod War our ship was holed below the waterline; skirting the edge of typhoons in the China Sea and hurricanes in the Caribbean, the ship superstructure was buckled. I’ve participated in realistic landing and insurrection exercises in Portland including nuclear and biological attacks and undergone advanced first-aid classes. I’ve been inside communications centres and on the ships’ bridges - the nerve-centres - and bounced around in Gemini assault craft.

I’ve sailed in a conventional submarine and the hunter-killer HMS CONQUEROR and also toured the ‘nuclear forests’ of a Polaris submarine. On South Georgia I walked inside a glacier and slept overnight at Leith's ghostly deserted whaling station. I’ve flown in Wasp helicopters and been winched onto a ship's deck. Having flown from Karachi to Islamabad, Pakistan, I drove up the Khyber Pass where I met some Pathans, quite forbidding characters draped with ammunition-belts; from here I looked out over the Plain of Kabul. (See this blog here ). I snorkelled in the Red Sea, trekked the mosquito-riddled jungle of Belize and stood atop the Mayan pyramid of Altun Ha.

I learned Chinese kung fu (quanshu) in Malta where I teamed up with Gordon Faulkner to write the first of a fantasy series set in mythical Floreskand – Wings of the Overlord (see below). I’ve fired automatic pistols, rifles and machine guns, though not in combat, and carried the bodybags of airplane crash victims and viewed corpses post-autopsy. I’ve manned and loaded ship's guns and my memory can still smell the cordite. All useful material, I guess, for a writer.

Before I joined the navy, I dreamed of being a writer, and had written two spy novels (unpublished). While following my career as, appropriately, a Writer in the RN, I still pursued that goal in various guises – editor of ships’ magazines, selling short stories and articles, and sending out many a manuscript that would fail. The navy taught me many things, not least to be persistent and never to give up. Finally, I started getting novels accepted in 2007 and thereafter; an ‘overnight success’ that has taken roughly fifty years.

Never give up.

[This is written from the perspective of a writer. Great joy also came with marriage, the birth of our daughter and our grandchildren].

 

* * *

WINGS OF THE OVERLORD by Morton Faulkner

 

Available from Amazon UK here

Available from Amazon COM here

Available post-free worldwide from the book depository here

 

 

Blurb:
So begins their great quest that tests the trio to the limit. Exciting obstacles include raging torrents, snakes, feuding warrior hordes, lethal fireballs, terrifying electric storms, treacherous mountains, avalanche, betrayal and torture. The travellers start out barely able to tolerate each other but, gradually, as their problems are overcome, they grow closer. The strength of comradeship is evoked and also selfless sacrifice. Their story is rich in history and threatening events that beset them on their quest.

 

 

Reminiscences, Naval-02 - 'New Entry'

October, 1965

[More notes scribbled at the time.] The preceding blog can be read here

On arrival in the Royal Naval training camp, we were informed we’d be staying in the New Entry Block for a week; virtual isolation.

New Entry consisted of a row of connecting huts (or messes, as we learned later), a dining hall, and a NAAFI hut out the back of the mess. Firstly, we were led into the kitting-room and were confronted by Mr Marney, who seemed to have adorned New Entry since time immemorial. Set out on metal counters were neat piles of bedding, with the respective cards for same. Mr Marney was Irish and spoke rapidly, and every word seemed to be learned off pat (no pun intended), for he frequently repeated himself word-for-word for the benefit of any inattentive listener: a human record which in that week we desired to be turned off many times. In fairness, it was the only way to process the new recruits – a kind of mass production line.

Outside our hut:

Mick, me, Wyatt and (foreground) Taff

We were all issued with a wooden block, letters of our name glued together to form a name-stamp. In one of Mr Marney’s ‘classes’ we stamped our names on all our items of clothing and bedding, using black paint. My stamp read R.W.N-MORTON, as Nicholson-Morton was a bit too long! We were also issued with a ‘housewife’, a small cloth bag, which contained cotton thread, sewing needles, pins, scissors, and darning wool. The scissors were inscribed with our names – I’ve still got mine, a blade incised in script R. Nicholson-Morton.

By coincidence Mick Siddle’s gear was next to mine. Having been instructed to carry our stuff and follow Mr Marney, we carried the gear and followed the man: we were learning fast.

The hut next door (down a small flight of five steps and along the connecting corridor) was Mess 11; a number of us were escorted within its hallowed walls, yet another contingent of prospective matelots. [Some 49 years later, my house number is... 11...]

Apparently, this was a bad week for recruiting numbers; only 87 had joined up. We filled three messes. I don't know what constitutes a good week these days, but I suspect that the numbers are quite low, thanks to political meddling.

***

If you want to read more about the joining process, try the book Odd Shoes and Medals. This is the memoire of Ron Hudson, who joined the RN a over decade earlier than me, but the process was very much the same.

Non-fiction from Manatee Books. “War broke out when I was eight. My short pants had holes in the backside, which was doubly embarrassing because I didn’t have any underwear and anyone could see my bum. So I used to walk sideways to school if any other kids or grown-ups came by. Miss Grafton, the teacher, let me stay at my desk during playtime to avoid embarrassing exposure. She liked me a lot and I used to take love letters for her to an American soldier. “

These reminiscences cover a span of over seventy years and will jog several memories and remind people that the so-called poverty of present times is nothing compared to the 1940s and 1950s.

Young Ron and his sister Audrey were shunted from one home to another, in excess of a dozen, ‘fostered’ by ‘aunts’ and ‘uncles’, and indeed for many years the pair of them didn’t know where the other sibling lived!  His absentee father barely gave him a thought – though he did present him with ill-fitting clogs, once…

Occasionally, he was bestowed with kindness and, despite moments of great despair, he carried on and eventually joined the Royal Navy. Ironically, for the first time he found a place he could call his home: the navy. He travelled the world, saw the sights, and ‘learned a trade’. When he was demobbed prematurely by politicians, he embarked on a career in British Gas, and has a few amusing tales to tell about (nameless) customers! He set up his own business and became the oldest registered gas fitter in the country, until he retired at age eighty.

As told to Nik Morton

 

Paperback available from Amazon.co.uk here

Paperback available from Amazon.com here

 

 

 

Reminiscences, Naval-01 – ‘Journey of 16 hours’

When I joined the navy, I’d already succumbed to the writing bug, having written two spy novels (still unpublished). So it seemed logical for me to write down any impressions and events I encountered. As life and work intruded, these notes became thinner… and stopped after a couple of years; though my letters home did contain certain impressions and memories for some years afterwards.

It was October, 1965, and I was a few months over seventeen. Dressed very smartly, my parents saw me onto the train at the Newcastle upon Tyne platform, pleased to learn that I was travelling with other young men destined to join the Royal Navy at HMS Raleigh. My two fellow travellers were Michael (Mick) Siddle and Thomas (Tom) Gibbon.

Newcastle upon Tyne central railway station

 

We waved our good-byes as the train departed at 7:05a.m from the old Victorian station and settled down. We were so polite – would you like an apple, an orange? Sure? Would you like some chocolate? Oh, it’s melted… We buried our noses in our respective if not wholly respectable periodicals.

Even a short while afterwards, when I first jotted down these reminiscences, I found it difficult to recall the entire journey. Most of the time, for me, it seemed somewhere between wakefulness and sleep, and I always felt I was on the borderlines.

Even then, Tom was pretty tall, about 5ft 7 and he masterfully contorted himself into positions unimaginable to sleep in: legs on one side seat, body on the other, his midriff sagging in between; yet, he slept. He was about sixteen. Mick remained silent most of the journey, alternating between reading and sleeping, being on the same seat as Tom. He was seventeen and a half, a few inches taller than my 5ft 6.

We all had long haircuts. And we were thoroughly bored.

I ploughed through my book, prophetically Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke, until my eyes became bleary and the words on the page floated away, far away. Then I would stretch awkwardly the length of my seat and sleep lightly, using my overcoat as a pillow.

At one station, well into the night, the train stopped. Tom and Mick left the carriage for some milk from a vending machine on the platform. I finished off my portion of Tom’s pomegranate.

Another time I was on the verge of sleep when our speed decreased, and we shunted into a station which glared out of the black night. This brightness was eye-watering to sleep-laden eyes. The place was undergoing modernisation – neon lights everywhere, cold white concrete, men’s badinage and hammering reaching our ears. Steam sifted from somewhere on the track. The train stopped there a while, then a shrill whistle and we left the raucous place behind, slid into the black night again, and the train’s motion encouraged sleep.

I felt a hand shaking my shoulder shortly after I had finished Childhood’s End, about 4:30a.m. Sluggishly, I climbed out of oblivion, reflexively but probably ineffectually chopped out at the disturbance, and checked my blow in time. Mick had awoken me as we were pulling into Bristol shortly. [In later training, all men were warned to have a care when waking someone to go on watch – many a black eye has been sustained as the sleeper jerks awake!]

 
At 5a.m. we alighted from the train onto a deserted station, which speedily filled up with sailors and airmen in uniform. Mail-trolley wheels rumbled, echoing. Doors banged. A porter was whistling somewhere. In the British Rail café, while we ‘partook of a light refreshment’ – I used to write like that, then – we looked about, at a couple of sailors and civilians. We must have appeared a woebegone sight, lost to our mothers if they could have seen us.
 
Around 5:30 we boarded the train for Penzance via Plymouth. As the train pulled out, a cock crowed and a Petty Officer in our carriage exclaimed, ‘Bloody hell!’ at realising he hadn’t returned the BR café’s cup.
 
A little later on, we glimpsed the red sunrise.
 
The second half of our journey was as tedious as the first. My stomach was in knots and I was just waiting to be sick, it seemed inevitable, but just then, as we passed through Teignmouth I was surprised to see phosphorescent breakers. The sea was angry, a brownish-blue, the cliffs coloured red. I ducked my head out the window and the wind thrashed my hair; it was exhilarating and quelled my roiling stomach.
 
We slept, if restively.
 
About forty-five minutes out of Plymouth, I glanced out to see a thick seething mist that meandered about skeletons of trees. Shortly afterwards, we pulled into Plymouth station, an ultra-modern building of glass panes and light brickwork. Outside the large glass doors, the three of us met up with a group of new recruits. It was easy to identify them; we all looked about the same, lost and all-in. Lads of all sizes, from towns and cities, from Scotland and Ireland, even Rhodesia, we gathered outside the RTO office to the left of the station entrance. A large well-built lad (we later learned his name was Mick Deering) collected the forms we’d brought with us.
 
Tired, in a cold station, surrounded by strangers, my first impression was resignation: I’d come this far, I wasn’t turning back now. I was blessed – or cursed – with a good imagination and it was tempting for it to go on overtime, but I decided to leave my mind open, prepared to meet anything. Those who had been in the Scouts were probably better prepared than most. Maybe my time in the Sea Scouts would serve me in good stead.
 
We clambered onto an RN bus which drove us down to the River Tamar, where we boarded the Torpoint Ferry, which was pulled across on chains. On the other side, we were herded into another bus, and some of us by then broke out into song, started up by Mick and Tom in typical Geordie fashion. Already, new friendships were being forged. What seemed like fifteen minutes’ later, the bus turned into the gateway of HMS Raleigh, our home for the next few weeks.

HMS Raleigh

 
We were in, almost beyond the point of no return. Silence fell then.
 
This was our journey’s end – at least as far as those who stayed were concerned.
 
Next reminiscence: New Entry