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
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(unpublished).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
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.
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