HMS Royal Arthur 1

When HMS Sheffield was sunk in the Falklands in 1982 I had been out of the Royal Navy for just over a year but was living and working in HMS Royal Arthur, at Corsham in Wiltshire, as the NAAFI club manager. Everyone was very shocked in that environment by the loss of our first Royal Navy warship, of course, and a few weeks later the captain cleared lower deck and, paying particular attention to the ship’s company and myself because I worked with them so closely, he told us that we would soon have a survivor from the “Shiny Sheff” joining us when his survivor’s leave expired. We were told that our new oppo had been through a traumatic experience and we would all need to deal with him with the utmost sensitivity. Taff was a killick seaman and when he joined on the following Monday he didn’t look particularly sensitive but the whole ship’s company were walking on egg shells and really not sure what to say to him. My first encounter with Taff was in the Ship’s Company Bar just after seven in the evening shortly after supper. The lads were all involved in trying to make their new shipmate feel at home in the way they knew best by buying him stacks of John Smiths but steering well clear of any mention of his previous ship and her demise. The air was cleared after a couple of hours, however, when Taff declared, “Yup, that was the swiftest draft chit I’ve ever had and I’d recommend travel by exocet every time.” The atmosphere in the bar relaxed immediately and a great night was enjoyed by all. Good old Jack! Nothing gets him down.

The Lone Ranger

I've got a wee story about The Lone Ranger. One day, when I was still too young to read the time, I had to go for a haircut on the way home from school. Mr Bowman was the slowest barber in the world, not just Lochgelly, and I kept asking him the time because I didn't want to miss my favourite television programme. He repeatedly told me that there was plenty time and when I eventually got my haircut I said to him "If I've missed The Lone Ranger I'm no' comin' back here." Needless to say I had missed it, by over an hour and I never went back there to get my hair cut. Until about 20 years later, that is, my ship was in Rosyth after spending over a month at sea during the Cod War. I was allowed home on weekend leave but told by the Master-At-Arms that I must have a haircut before I returned. Bowman's was the only barbers open in Lochgelly the day before I was to return back on board HMS Galatea and I had little choice but to give him my custom. When I sat in the chair auld Bowman got started and smirked as he remarked "Aye, ye' came back efter a' Jim."

I Learned It In The Royal Navy

Everything I Ever Needed to Know About Life I Learned In The Royal Navy:

1. Never lie, even if it means you will go in the shit. 

2. Stealing from a shipmate is the worst thing you could ever do. 

3. If you say you are going to do something, do it. Live by your word. 

4. Clean up after yourself, and remind your shipmates to do the same. 

5. If you see a mess, but don't know which shipmate did it, clean it up anyway. 

6. Always, follow the procedure. If it goes to rat-shit, the procedure will cover your arse. 

7. It isn't who you are, or who you know, but what you know. 

8. Don't take yourself too seriously because your shipmates certainly won't. 

9. Don't brag - let your actions speak for themselves. 

10. Respect your shipmate's space. 

11. If you dish it out, you had better be able to take it. 

12. Don't leave a shipmate behind, and keep an eye out for him. 

13. Help your shipmate to his pit when he's drunk. Help him clean himself up and turn to on time. 

14. If you borrow something, return it when you're done. 

15. Be on time - always, for everything. 

16. Don't make too much noise; your shipmates may be sleeping. 

17. Don't be a slacker - pull your own weight. 

18. Be confident, but don't be afraid to say I don't know. 

19. Life isn't fair - get used to it.


Oh, yeah, I lassoed this from a retired Yankee submariner and made relevant changes to adapt it to my life.

A Matelot In Heaven

A skimmer dies and goes to Heaven and there he meets Saint Peter at the pearly gates. Saint Peter greets the skimmer and permits him to enter but before he goes in Skims turns to Saint Peter and asks, "You haven't got any submariners in here, have you?"
"Good God, no, they all go to the other place to repent for their sins." Saint Peter replies.
"Good," says Skims, "Us surface people don't get on with sun-dodgers." and he proceeds through the gates of Heaven to be shown to his cloud.
After a few weeks of sheer bliss, just floating around, having everything he wants, and his every whim seen to, in the distance he can see this strange cloud floating towards him. As it gets closer to him he can see that it is absolutely louping and sat on it is the scruffiest individual he's ever seen. The man has a scruffy grey beard, stained with nicotine and with fag butts sticking out of it. He has a grubby, once white wooly pully on and it is heavily stained with diesel fuel. He's swearing at all the angels as he goes by and he's swigging CSB. The skimmer notices his cap and it has an "HM Submarines," cap tally on it. In horror Skims rushes off to find Saint Peter.
"Hey! Peter, I thought you didn't have any submariners in Heaven?" and continues to tell him what he has seen.
"Oh," says Saint Peter, "That's not a submariner, that's God. He just thinks he's a submariner."
PS: I copied this from a post in the Submariners Lounge on Facebook and I like it but it never ceases to amaze me how much they seem to despise us real sailors who bounce around on the roughest seas for weeks at a time while they hide below the weather. They seem to think that we are jealous and despise them as much but it may be a surprise for a submarner to learn that I, for one, never gave them a second thought since the day after I left HMS Neptune, and they can rest easy as I won't tell anybody that the only reason they joined boats was that they were a bunch of avaricious bastards with queasy stomachs. They craved a few bob extra every day, didn't know how to enjoy a good run ashore and they got seasick as soon as the anchor chain rattled. I also wonder about any individual, or group of people, who spend so much time in maligning others, whether that is disguised as a joke or not. That's only my opinion, mind you, each to his own, and I've a funny feeling that if I was in now I'd slap in for boats too, just to avoid women in sailor suits at sea, but that's another story.

How I Got to AA

Doctor Bob and Bill W Co-founders of AA

I was born and brought up in a small mining town in Fife, Scotland, the only child of a middle-aged couple. My earliest memory is that I always felt different, cut off from everyone else, and somehow on the outside looking in.
The town where I lived was very much a working class area in the 1950s and 1960s, and most people took their recreation in the pubs and clubs that filled the centre of the town. From a very early age, I looked forward to the day when I could join in the drinking and then I would be the same as everyone else.
I had my first drink when I was thirteen on a school trip to Bavaria. We were taken on a tour of the local brewery, which culminated in a meal of sausages washed down with jugs of beer. I loved it immediately. I loved the taste and the feeling it gave me,that wonderful glow. No one else at my table liked the beer and that meant there was plenty for me. Everyone watched in astonishment as I consumed jug after jug and that made me feel very important, the life and soul of the party. On the way back to our hostel, lots of the other boys seemed to be drunk, staggering along the street and giggling foolishly. I felt just fine and dandy, very cheerful and very superior to all those around me.
I didn't drink again until I was sixteen and then I didn't stop until I was almost forty-one! When I started to drink at sixteen, all those good things happened to me again and even more so. I always had a tremendous appetite for booze and could consume more than anyone else around me. Drink changed me into the person that I thought everyone wanted me to be. I could sing, I could dance, I could chat up women, I could argue, I could fight, I could do anything! My shyness and insecurity just evaporated; yet the fear never left me, it was merely masked by the new persona provided by my drinking.
When I was twenty, I joined the Royal Navy and I loved it. Here my drinking was quite acceptable, most people seemed to drink like me and we had a great time. I've travelled to many places all over the world and seen very little apart from the first two or three bars outside the dockyard gate. Sightseeing was for tourists, sunshine was for posers and I just wanted to sit in a dingy bar and get sozzled. I didn't drink at sea, because we only got three tiny cans of beer a day and that wasn't enough to fill a tooth far less satisfy the capacity I had for drink.
At the end of my nine years in the Navy, I wanted to sign on again, but I was no longer fit enough and had to leave. I took the first job that was offered to me, as a club manager with NAAFI. That's when my drinking really took off. I was drunk every night. There were occasions when I would get into bother or fall over but mainly, however, I was a stand-up, top-up drunk who did not have a sober day for the next ten years. As my superiors had never seen me sober, they didn't know that I was drunk all the time and thought that all was well.
Of course, all was not well and eventually my befuddled brain was overcome with thoughts of hatred and paranoia. I hated the world and everyone in it and I was convinced that everyone hated me. The good times had gone. I no longer drank because I enjoyed it, I drank because I had to and booze had taken away my soul. I was a shambling wreck with not a good thought for anyone, including myself and I was spiritually dead.
In 1989, I was posted to RAF Leuchars. It was my first time back in Scotland, (except for visits on leave when my parents were alive) for almost twenty years. Within a few months of my arrival, I started to admit to myself that there was something wrong with my drinking and there was something desperately wrong with me.
I knew I would have to do something about it and somewhere in the back of my mind I even knew what that would be. Years previously, I had often heard my father, when he was drunk, saying that he was an alcoholic and that, "tomorrow I'm going to Alcoholics Anonymous." Well, the next day would come and although Dad felt terrible, he would have forgotten about Alcoholics Anonymous. He just had a wee bit of a drouth (a very descriptive Scottish word meaning "thirst") and needed a curer. So my dad never did get to AA, but he did plant a seed, which led to my coming to AA all those years later, when I needed it.
I first contacted AA by phone and was told that someone from St. Andrews would phone me the next day. Someone did phone and they suggested that I go to a meeting and asked that I try not to have a drink before the meeting. I promised that I wouldn't drink and I didn't, not because it was easy but because I'd given my word and I'm stubborn.
The time for the meeting arrived. It was the Tuesday Step Meeting in St. Andrews and I hadn't had a drink for two and a half days. I was shaking like a leaf, I couldn't talk, and I could hardly walk, but I got there. I didn't get into the meeting. The good people who were there that night, thought that as it was a Step meeting, it would all be well over my head. Outside in the churchyard, I spent a good hour and a half talking and listening with one of the group members. The talk did me a lot of good but I still wasn't sure I was in the right place. I was told that there was another meeting on Thursday night. It was a "bread and butter" meeting and everyone was sure I would enjoy that.
I did go to that Thursday meeting. I was made very welcome but I still felt a wee bit out of place. I'd come along here to find out if I was an alcoholic and no one had yet told me I was! All they'd done was welcomed me and said that they were alcoholics. I was beginning to wonder what all this had to do with me, when this big bearded old Yorkshireman started to tell my story. I was certain that the guy I'd been speaking to before on Tuesday had told him all about me before we got there and I wasn't very pleased. I thought that this was all supposed to be confidential and here they were talking about me behind my back!
Very soon I realized that Les wasn't telling my story, he was sharing about himself and I got instant identification. I knew that if AA worked for him, it would surely work for me. What was this, though? He was twenty-eight years sober and still going to two or three meetings a week. I thought he must be a very slow learner. I'm a bit brighter than that. I'll just need to come to the meetings for about six weeks! I can learn to live without drinking and I'll go on my merry way and enjoy all the things I've missed in life.
I attended one meeting a week for the planned six weeks and I don't think I listened to anything that was said. At the end of the six weeks, I felt quite confident and I decided to go to Germany on holiday where I stayed with some friends. On arrival I informed everyone that I was an alcoholic and that I had stopped drinking. My friends weren't too sure that I was an alcoholic, but if I'd stopped drinking that was fine. Eventually toward the end of the first week, someone said that surely a couple of bottles of German beer wouldn't harm me. I quickly agreed and that was it. I was drunk for the rest of the holiday. That first drink got me drunk. When the holiday was over, I resolved to never drink again and I wouldn't go back to AA, either. I would have to admit to Les and the others that I couldn't stay sober without them and I was far too arrogant to admit that!
So for eighteen months, I tried on my own to stay sober, but I could not. Sometimes I lasted a week or a fortnight, but eventually I would take that first drink and that was it, another night on the booze and another morning of regrets. The end of this eighteen months self-imposed solitary struggle culminated in another holiday. This time I was in Jersey, in the Channel Islands.
After three days, I went to a folk club. As usual the folk club was held in a bar and when I went in, I wasn't sure whether I was going to have a pint of coke or a pint of Guinness. Fortunately I asked for the cola and had a very enjoyable evening. The next day I felt very agitated and as I walked around St. Helier, I started to feel very thirsty. I knew I wanted a drink. I didn't know what to do. Just then I looked in a gift shop window and I saw the Serenity Prayer engraved on a glass dish. I had only ever seen or heard the Serenity Prayer at the AA meeting. I knew that I had to get in touch with AA right away.
I went to a phone box intending to get the AA phone number from directory enquiries. Inside the phone box however, someone had put a card with the AA number on it. I phoned straight away and within five minutes I was at a meeting which just "happened" to be starting in a church hall yards from the phone box I was using.
That day I believe I had a spiritual awakening and that my Higher Power led me back to AA. For that and the contentment I have been given, I am very thankful.


PS: I've just re-read this story which I originally wrote about ten years ago for publication in the Scottish Alcoholics Anonymous monthly magazine, "Roundabout." In 2005 I altered some of the language and geographical references to make it more accessible to an American readership and it was published in America in the AA international monthly magazine, "Grapevine." Now I've tweaked it a little bit again and I hope it helps everyone to understand me better and if it helps anyone else along the way then so much the better.

Sister Annuncia CP

An Enthusiastic Sister

The photograph above is not of the wonderful Sister Annuncia but nonetheless I think it quite clearly encapsulates the type of person she was. From the age of just under five until just over eleven I went to St Patrick's Primary School in Lochgelly, Fife, Scotland. Half the teachers in the school were Roman Catholic nuns from the Order of the Cross and Passion and I've heard lots of stories in all sorts of media tell about  how cruel nuns could be but I am here to tell you that my experience of being taught by nuns was entirely the opposite. Sister Annuncia was the finest woman I have ever met. She was caring, compassionate, attentive and loving. She had all the time in the world to devote to her pupils and she made every one of us feel that we were important and worthwhile and that so long as we all tried to do our best we would succeed in whatever we chose to do.


Sister Annuncia taught my class twice in the time that I was at primary school and I have always thought that we were very fortunate as most people only had her for one year but we were privileged to have her for two. The first time was in Primary 2 from age six to seven. She was ideal for us at this stage of our development not only educationally but also spiritually as towards the end of this year we received our first Holy Communion which is a very important stepping stone in the life of any Catholic child. Through her example of dedication to the God of her understanding we were well prepared for this stage in our young lives.


It was during this year that a very funny and, at the same time, moving incident occurred in the classroom. In those days we were used to all our teachers carrying a school belt or strap and this was used for instilling some discipline into unruly pupils. This instrument of punishment was, in fact, manufactured in my home town of Lochgelly by a local saddler, Mr John J Dick, and was known in most other places in Scotland as "The Lochgelly Tawse," or "Auld Lochgelly."


As I said previously, all our teachers had a belt and most left it lying on their desks as a reminder of the punishment that could be meted out as a consequence of mischievous behaviour. Many of our teachers were not averse to using this form of punishment and I believe that this produced a more respectful, courteous and attentive behaviour than is currently the norm in British schools or, indeed, in society in general.


Sister Annuncia's belt, however, was more of an ornament than a weapon and she rarely found it necessary to administer any corporal punishment as we all loved and respected her so much. One morning, alas, one of my pals crossed the line and he was summoned to the front of the class to receive the prescribed punishment which was to be one stroke of the lash on his hand with his other hand supporting his outstretched hand.


Budgie slowly approached the front of the class, amid a stunned silence, as he had been ordered to do. As Sister prepared to belt him Budgie shifted nervously from foot to foot  and as the belt came down upon the target budgie quickly withdrew his hands and suddenly he was off and with no hands to hit the belt slammed into Sister Annuncias thick skirts but inflicting no pain to either her or Budgie.


Budgie sped around the classroom with Sister Annuncia in hot pursuit and that was no mean feat for a nun clad in the long, heavy black habit that all members of her Order wore in those days. Sister also wore a long rosary with a full fifteen decades worth of beads hanging from her belt and it was this that caused the Keystone Cop style chase to come to an abrupt end. The circlet of rosary beads caught on the corner of a desk, the fragile chain broke and the beads were scattered everywhere.There was a sharp intake of breath, from all present, and Budgie came to a shocked standstill thus allowing his pursuer to catch up with him. The rest of us came to life and started gathering rosary beads from the floor while the stunned Budgie was ordered to sit in the nearest chair.


We all returned to our desks and Budgie sat there in tears as the lovely Sister Annuncia tried to calm him down. Between sobs Budgie told Sister how much he regretted his behaviour and exclaimed, even more tearfully, "Sister, you've broken your rosary beads!" In her wonderful, lilting, Irish accent Sister Annuncia replied, "Today Thomas," for that was actually Budgie's name, "You have broken more than my rosary beads, you have broken my heart!" At this point Budgie cried even more and the rest of the class joined in as none of us could tolerate such a wonderful woman having a broken heart. Very soon she had us all settled back down to work and Budgie never got the belt after all. I've always thought that it was a very dramatic way of avoiding a punishment that could hardly be described as severe as this was one teacher who would never hurt any of us as she loved and cared for us all so much.


At the end of that year we bade Sister Annuncia a fond farewell but I, for one, would never forget her and I made sure I spoke to her everyday on  arrival at school. When we were about to break up for the summer holidays in 1958 we were given the surprising and welcome news that when we returned after the break we would again be taught by Sister Annuncia for our time in Primary 4. I think that was the only time when I looked forward to the end of the school holidays. In a way it is because of that year in school that I am writing this blog today as Sister recognised that I had an imagination and enthusiasm for writing essays that ought to be encouraged and I even won two external prizes of books for my writing at that time. She also encouraged us in dramatising a poem called "Jim" by Hilaire Belloc for the end of term Parents' Day. I played a Zoo Keeper and we all enjoyed it very much, bolstered by our teacher's sense of joy, enthusiasm and fun.


There was sadness throughout the school, and indeed the whole town because she had touched many people in her pastoral work,at the end of that year when Sister Annuncia was posted by her superiors to work in Rio de Janeiro. She did return to Lochgelly some years later but by that time I had left to join the Royal Navy and I never saw her again. However, her influence on my life was profound and has never left me and I feel that I am privileged to have known her and to have been educated by her.


PS: I've just read the poem mentioned above for the first time in all these years and I wonder if our genteel pupils today would be able to accept its forthright message.
http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/hilaire_belloc/poems/626

HMS Salisbury – 1977

Fleet Contingency Ship – HMS Salisbury – 1977

I served as a Leading Stores Accountant, Killick Jack Dusty to the lads of the Royal Navy, for two years in 1977 and 1978 on board HMS Salisbury. One of the things that I enjoyed about my life in the Royal Navy was the variety of skills that I was trained in and the variety of tasks that I was required to perform as a result of that training.


My time on HMS Salisbury was a prime example of this as while my main job was ensuring that the ship was fully and efficiently stored with all the spares and equipment that she required to fulfil her task as an operational frigate in the Royal Navy my Action Station was Mark 2 Squid loader and I had an additional task of receiving all vertreps of personnel and equipment from helicopters operating with the ship. Salisbury was a Type 61 Aircraft Direction Frigate and her main task was to track and direct allied aircraft flying to and from our own aircraft carriers and to detect incoming enemy aircraft. She did not have a Flight Deck and she did not carry her own helicopter and, therefore, she carried no Fleet Air Arm ratings and that left an interesting little job for me.


On top of all this, because I was the senior Leading Hand on my mess-deck and I was adept at organising things I was also the Leading Hand of the Mess (LHOM) or Killick o’ the Mess in the naval vernacular. All in all I suppose I was kept quite busy with all these tasks and I enjoyed every minute of it and was well known throughout the ship as a hard-working, cheery and well-disciplined individual with a real love of the Royal Navy, or, indeed, an anchor-faced old devil, as some less gracious oppos might describe me.


I have been asked to tell you a little story about time spent at sea over the Christmas period and that is what I am going to try to do by telling you what I hope will be an amusing tale of Christmas in 1977 on board “The Sally B.” We had been designated as Fleet Contingency Ship for the month of December that year and that meant that we would be at sea for the whole of that time and if anything happened anywhere that required the presence of the Royal Navy it was our job to attend and carry out any task that was asked of us. So when we sailed from Devonport at the beginning of the month we did not expect to return until the start of January and all the Yuletide festivities would be over, and, indeed, for us Scots among the crew even Hogmanay would have been passed and uncelebrated before we came home.


The first couple of weeks at sea were fairly routine as we just toddled around mainly in the English Channel and the Irish Sea keeping ourselves occupied with the usual exercises, tests and trials and ensuring that the old girl was in good working order. In the week approaching Christmas, while we were making a steady but quite rough passage off the west coast of Scotland an excited buzz went through the ship as the main broadcast came to life with the words, “This is the Captain speaking…” This introduction always ensured everyone’s complete attention as we didn’t often hear from the Old Man and if he was going to take the trouble to say something to us then it would surely be worth listening to.


The Skipper carried on to tell us that he had been in contact with Admiralty and the Powers That Be had agreed that we could return to Devonport, our home port, for the Christmas period so long as we retained readiness for sea at three hours notice. This was treated with great glee by all the married men who had their homes, with their wife and family, in Plymouth, but I was rather ambivalent about it as if we were under sailing orders the whole time we couldn’t afford to have a decent drink even if we were allowed ashore. Anyway lots of the lads were really happy about it and we were soon homeward bound at best speed, in rough weather, but no-one was complaining of sea sickness as we were headed in the right direction.


We arrived at the Breakwater in Plymouth Sound early on the morning of Christmas Eve and the whole ship’s company were in jubilant mood. Ominously, instead of the anticipated pipe for special sea duty-men to fall in for entering harbour the Jimmy, or First Lieutenant to the uninitiated, came on the main broadcast and in a puzzled and anxious voice informed us that the Captain had signalled the Port Admiral requesting permission to enter harbour but had received the response, “Your request is denied, maintain station and stand by for further orders.” Well that short little statement caused a really excited buzz throughout the ship, there is nothing as unnerving as not knowing what the Hell is happening.



We weren’t kept in suspense for long though as the Captain was soon to inform us that the offer of going alongside in Guzz for Christmas was cancelled and we had to make our way as fast as our old diesel engines would take us to a point off Milford Haven where a Greek freighter had been abandoned by her crew who had been rescued by the RNLI. Our task would be to rendezvous with the abandoned vessel and put a scratch crew on board her in order that she could be steered and taken into harbour by a tug that would meet us when we got there. We were then told that the weather was horrendous in the area and we would be unable to use the sea-boats to transfer our lads to the freighter because of the heavy seas. This meant that we would be met by an RAF helicopter which would assist in transferring our personnel onto the freighter and this required my oppo and me to take on our role as Biggles’ Buddies and help get our blokes away in the helo.

Normally all the helicopter transfers were conducted back aft on the quarterdeck, which I considered to be my second home as the Squid was back there as well, but on this occasion the weather was really rough and with a heavy sea on the port quarter that area was almost permanently under six feet of water. So we mustered in the port waist, just abaft the forecastle, to await the arrival of Crabair. This also meant that the blokes who were being airlifted across to the freighter could keep relatively dry until it was their turn to be winched into the helicopter. So it was just me and Banjo, the other Killick Dusty, who got soaked to the skin. In Banjo’s case it was a waste of time as well, as his job was to use the “Earthing Pole,” to capture the static electricity before I grabbed the strop. This time we were assured that this was unnecessary as each of our guys was accompanied by the helo’s RAF aircrewman who had a magical airy fairy method of dispersing the static. So when the operation was completed I went down below, soaked to the skin, but happy because of a job well done but Banjo was dripping like a drain because his particular expertise was un-required and unused but he was just as wet as I was.

I knew that it would only be a matter of two or three hours before I was required to repeat this procedure all over again as our chaps were all coming back the same way once the recovery of the freighter was completed and before we left the area but we were freezing so we sloped off for a hot shower and changed into clean Number 8’s before having a nice cup of hot char and a lovely meal. It didn’t seem very long after that meal that the call to “Vertrep Stations,” came again and I was off to get my second soaking of the day. This time the weather had eased off just a little and we were back to our normal location on the quarterdeck. Banjo had also switched on and, as we realised that the clever crab would not require his assistance to clear away the static he stayed inside and kept dry while I ended up as soggy as Neptune’s starboard flip-flop once again. Everything went well and at the end of it my boss, the POSA, told me I might as well secure and clean into night clothing.  Thanks George, I think you rewarded me with an extra ten minutes off for all my efforts there, very generous of you.


Very soon we were on our way north and the First Lieutenant, ever anxious to keep the ship’s company informed, announced that we would not be returning to Devonport but would proceed to the Clyde Submarine Base at Faslane to take on fuel before carrying on to sea to fulfil an as yet un-named task that their lordships had in store for us. The weather was still very rough, about Force 9 or 10, all the way and the good news was that we would arrive in Faslane on Christmas Day and Christmas Dinner would be postponed so that we could have it in harbour and nobody would have to chase their turkey over the table as the roll of the ship tried to throw their dinner across the messdeck. It is tradition in the Royal Navy for the ratings to be served Christmas Dinner by the officers but this wasn’t really feasible on Salisbury as we didn’t have a dining hall, as modern ships do, and we all had to collect our meal on our individual platters from the galley counter. Our officers and senior rates did join us for the meal though and the wardroom supplied the beer and a tot of rum to help us celebrate and that was fine by me.


Almost immediately after our dinner the ship was off to sea again and it was time for the Captain to tell us how we would be deployed. He told us that a Soviet destroyer was at sea, just outside UK territorial waters, off the northern coast of Scotland and it would be our job to follow her around, take pictures, and see what she was up to for the next week or so. This was much the same as the Russians did when we were on exercise in those days of the Cold War but many of our lot thought they went to sea on purpose just to bugger up their Christmas. Now that it was clear what we would be doing and that we would certainly be at sea over the festive period we were advised that we should keep a close eye on morale and especially among the family men who might feel the strain of missing the wife and kids at this time.


The next day was, of course Boxing Day, and everything was settling down to just being a normal time at sea. I was quite surprised when Jan Weeks, one of the young chefs came rushing down the store to tell me that Old Soapy was down the mess  supping on a can of beer and crying his eyes out and it was my job to go and sort it out. This came as a bit of a surprise to me as Soapy was a rough old Three Badge Killick Chef with, as far as I knew, a heart of stone and I couldn’t imagine what could be upsetting him. By the time we had walked forward and descended into the messdeck I had decided that I was being a bit harsh on Soapy, he was, after all a loving husband to his wife and the proud and devoted father of four lovely children. So I arrived in the mess ready to comfort the distressed parent and calm the situation down.


There was Soapy, sitting in the after end of the mess, consuming his fifteenth can of McEwans Scotch Ale and sobbing loudly. I went up and sat beside him and asked what the matter was. I was ready for him to tell me how sad he was that he was missing the company of his wife and family and was sorry to miss seeing his sons and daughters playing with their new toys, but that was not what was troubling Soapy. Through the tears and the beers he exclaimed, “That bitch! She’ll have scuppered all the booze by the time we get back! I paid for it but she’ll drink it!” Grins appeared on all the worried faces of our messmates and the whole place erupted with laughter as I mumbled, “Bloody Hell, Soapy, buck up,” and headed off back to my work. Soapy went away for a kip, sobered up and the incident was never mentioned again until now.


The rest of that little trip passed without much incident as we followed our Russian pals across the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, taking happy snaps along the way. We returned to Devonport on the second of January and I for one, was quite pleased to have missed all the commotion and drunkenness of Christmas and the New Year. It was the first time that I had been sober over that period in years and I’d be able to get ashore and sink as much beer as I wanted without being encumbered by the amateurs who always appeared out of the woodwork for their annual piss up at this time of the year.