Page 14.

So I marched into the third week with better teeth and more skill. I now knew how to do eyes right, easy really, you just turn your head to the right whilst still marching. Mind you, I had to have a few goes at it, which earned more abuse from the Petty Officer, but you know, I was beginning to pick a lot of this military stuff up. Marching, saluting, ironing, washing, eating with a knife and fork and keeping your mouth shut whilst you did it, something a lot of other Sailors couldn't do. The one thing I had done successfully yet was lay my kit out for inspection. I didn't get walked all over on the second occassion, I just every article kicked all over the mess. Not only me, though, a few others had it happen too. I thought the Petty Officer probably came from a very unhappy family, all this banging Sailors on top of their heads and kicking their kit all over. He was a bit of state, was the Petty Officer, needed some hugging, but I wasn't going to volunteer for that. Anyway, the day arrived for a meeting with the Physical Training Instructors, the P.T.I's, the only men who dressed only in white and were the only branch of the Navy who were allowed to march with straight fingers. I haven't mentioned that, of course, but when you march you have to keep your arms straight and your fingers curled with your thumb straight. I could do that. Now. After a bit of practice. But P.T.I's didn't have to learn how to do it, they could march straight fingered. We all crowded onto chairs, I was in the front row next to Fergy, and in front of us was a vision of white, four P.T.I's who had come to advise us as to our physical betterment. We listened patiently for a while, then it got interesting. The subject of swimming came up (we had had a visit to the main camp, a walk around so-to-speak, we were Trogs to all the other Sailors in the camp, after Troglodyte, a low form of human life - I would of course arise above this title, I would become a Sailor, the lowest form of sea-life!), and on this visit we had visited the swimming pool, 33 and one third yards long, three lengths to the hundred yards. It was a terrific swimming pool, one of the best I had ever seen, and I'd seen a few. Twelve feet deep at the deep end, with a five-metre fixed diving board and a one-metre springboard. Tiled throught, and with a huge balcony that could hold hundreds of people. On the far wall there was a board with every different stroke and distance and the best time ever recorded for each. Fergy said to me, "See any times you could beat, Taff?" I nodded, "Yeah, Fergy, a couple." He nodded sagely.

We were in the room with the P.T.I's when they asked the question. Had we seen the times on the board? We all nodded. Was there anyone in the room who could beat any of them? A kid on the opposite side of the room jumped up, arm in the air. "I can," he exclaimed. "I can beat a few of them." Fergy turned to me. I sat frozen in my seat. I'd only recently got over complete shyness and had never before leapt to my feet to proclaim my greatness (it wouldn't last). Fergy nudged me. Still I sat. In the end Fergy jumped to his feet. "You can beat some of the times on the board?" the P.T.I. asked. "Nae," Fergy stated. "But he can!", and he swung his hand around to point at me. All four P.T.I.'s jumped to their feet. "We have a contest, boys!" one of them shouted. "We have two great swimmers. We will gather this afternoon and discover who is the best amongst them." A cheer went up. Fergy grinned at me and dragged me to my feet. "You can swim, I presume?" a P.T.I. asked me. "Oh, yes, Sir, I can swim," I replied. The race was on.

Page 13.

As the first week ended, I began to learn how to march in a group with the rest of the class. I said 'Sir' a lot, got the top of my head knuckled a lot, saluted an enormous amount of people and I became quite proficient in doing that. My shoes and boots shone like mirrors, my gators were whiter than the heart of a virgin, my name was sewn into every item of clothing, creases in shirts and trousers could slice meat, my hair, though never long, was now cut in the pudding cut that would become only to familiar to me, I was shaving even though I didn't yet have a hair on my face (this may amaze those sailors with whom I served who only remember me for my full beards), my hatband was perfectly bowed even though I didn't bow it and all in all, things were going swimmingly, so to speak. I even began to understand how to make a bed and how to wash clothes without them forever coming back as unwashed.

The second week started with much the same. More marching, more saluting, more washing, ironing, mostly doing what we were ordered to do. Then I had to go to the dentist. I had only ever been to the dentist once in my life, in Mold, and I had gas and was incredibly ill afterwards. Mam said I didn't have to go again. But now the Navy said I did have to go. I went and discovered a very enlightened dentist. In the corner of his room of torture was a huge tape recorder and on the tapes, rock and roll. Chuck, Jerry, Elvis, Gary 'US' Bonds, the greats of our music, and it played all the time and took your mind off what he was actually doing in your mouth. In my case this was a good job, because when he looked in my mouth I swear he screamed. "What has been going on in that mouth?" he asked. I explained to him that because my Dad was killed in the war Mam had allowed me to go to bed every night with a sweety, right up until the day I joined up. These sweets, of course, had rotted my teeth. So began my almost daily visits to the dentist who tried to repair the damage. Today, when I visit any dentist, especially for the first time, they always comment on the number of fillings I have then they ask when I was in the forces, because those fillings I had in '59 are, mostly, still in my mouth.

There was a bizarre incident that involved the dentist. As part of our initial training it had been decided to hold a series of boxing matches involving all the boys of our recruitment, 25 recruitment actually, but instead of matching everyone up by height, they matched us up by weight, which meant little fat boys like me were put in the ring with what I considered to be giants. There were a series of elimination fights, and you have no idea how much I hated, and hate, boxing in all its forms, but I got through all my early fights by dint of the fact that all my opponents were more cowardly than me. They all fell flat on their backs the moment I landed the lightest of touches. I wish I had thought of it first. Bang, down they went as if they had been shot. So I found myself in the semi-final against a kid who was about six feet five inches tall, he may have been shorter, but it still meant that I spent a lot of time staring up his nose. Anyway, at the time of the fight I had a dentist appointment. Bloody Hell, but I was clever. No way I could fight and go to the dentist. I had just had the injection, I was getting used to the needle now after so many visits, my face was going nicely numb, when there was a knock on the door and a messenger entered to inform the dentist that I was required in the boxing ring. I knew, of course, that the dentist being a medical man that he wouldn't let me go. How wrong I was. He turned to me and blasted me for not telling him that I was expected in the ring, told me to get out of the chair and return when the match was over for my treatment. I tried to explain that my face was numb but only slobbered all over the place. Five minutes later I was in the corner with boxing gloves, shorts, shirt, plimsoles and socks on with my face becoming more numb by the second. Ding. The bell goes, I step out against this kid who is a giant and he hits me in the face. Never felt a thing! He hit me again, still never felt a thing! How good was this? He could hit me all he wanted and he would never hurt me. I was so elated that I swung at him. My fist missed him by at least six feet but he still crashed to the canvas as if I had connected with a piledriver to his chin. I stared down at the cowardly bastard and hated him with all my heart. I was in the final. As the final was later, I stayed and when it started I went down as if I had been hit by a piledriver, except in my case, I had. The kid I was fighting came out of his corner at about ninety miles per hour, throwing punches in an almost invisible whirl, one caught me at the side of my head and down I went. At least I had the sense to stay down for the whole ten count. After that it was back to the dentists. He congratulated me on reaching the final and let me listen to rock and roll while he drilled.

Page 12.

It was my first full day as a Sailor, and I stood in my brown trousers, brown shoes, white shirt and V-necked jumper Mam had knitted for me and I stared down at all my new uniform laid out on the bed below me.

"Right," the Petty Officer bellowed, "out of your civvies, stow them away, take them home with you and never bring them back, and into your Number 8's."

I stared at Fergy and he nodded towards the blue denim. Number 8's. I must remember that.

"Your rough serge is your Number 2 uniform, and the finer serge is your Number 1's, your Sunday best, the one you will the greatest care of."

I pulled on my Number 8's shirt and noticed that my surname and initial were stamped above the pocket on the left side. In fact, everything was stamped with my name; trousers, socks, underpants, shirts, white-fronts, everything. I pulled on my pants, tucked in my shirt and slid on and buckled the belt. I looked a bloody mess. I looked scruffy and untidy, like a sack of spuds tied in the middle, and I realised almost immediately that uniforms just didn't suit me (the Navy took about ten years to catch up). I turned to look at Fergy, who looked absolutely immaculate, but when he looked at me he began to titter. I pulled on black socks and black shoes, as did everyone, then we all stood by our beds as the Petty Officer strolled up one side and down the other inspecting us. When he got to me he said, "You look a bloody mess."

"Yes, Sir," I replied.

He moved on without comment, but shook his head sadly as if he had discovered a new kind of virus lurking in the corner.

At the bottom end of the mess he wheeled round and said, "Right, we are going to learn how to clean shoes and boots."

Well, I thought, I know how to do that. If you want shoes or boots cleaned you give them to your Mam. Ha! No Mam. I had never cleaned a pair of shoes or boots in my life, just like I had never made a bed until last night. We picked up our boots, as we were wearing our shoes, and went outside where we sat in the warm autumn sun and with our boot cleaning equipment supplied by stores, shoe polish, brushes, cloths, we polished our boots. I looked around to see how everyone else was doing it. Some spat on their boots, some rubbed coins, polishing and vigorously rubbing with brushes. I tried to do the same, but while all around almost every boot shone good enough to shave in (if I did shave), mine took on a kind of dull glimmer. I began to panic. I brushed and spat and rubbed coins and polished like a sort of demented idiot until, at last, mine began to glow just like everyone else's. It had just taken me twice as long that was all. Then it was shoes off to polish those. This time I kept up with everyone, and soon my shoes were shining. Back on with the shoes, back into the mess carrying the boots. Down boots, down shoes, sit on beds, start sewing. Hey! Sewing? I had never sewed in my life, though I had done a bit of knitting, but pretty soon I had my needle threaded with the red silk and I was sewing over my printed name on every article of uniform. Everything. Shirts, trousers, socks, underpants, silks, everything that could be stamped had been and we had to sew in a kind of looping movement to copy our names.

"Needle in, needle out," the idiot Petty Officer chanted, over and over again. "Needle in, needle out."

We sewed for days. If you spoke too loudly or laughed at anything, the Petty Office would swoop and crack you on the top of your head with his knuckles, lean forward and scream at you, "Needle in, needle out. Be quiet!" He cracked me on the head so many times I thought the top of my head would cave in. Even in those early days I began to fester with thoughts of revolution, of disobedience, almost overwhelmed with the desire to answer back. I had no idea where these kinds of thoughts came from, because I had never answered anyone back in my life. I was a cowardly child, servile, easily led, I had been unbelievably shy prior to learning to swim and learning to win. It was those experiences that had moved what I had of a personality along. (When I was fourteen, a girl I fancied once said that I had all the personality of a dead slug - I'm hoping it's improved a bit since then).

Sewing and polishing shoes and boots, that's what took up the first few days of my Naval career, then it was washing clothes and ironing. Of course, I had never washed my own clothes, though I had been allowed by Mam to iron a few hankies in my time. Washing clothes by hand in the wash house, in huge basins, all us boys bollocky buff, water as hot as the hands could stand, and in the centre of the room a huge bath of cold water for rinsing, or for dunking boys in. I got dunked a lot, mainly because every item washed had to be presented to the Petty Officer for his inspection and he was always shouting at me, "Clean! You call that clean? Wash it properly, boy." So it went on, hands raw from washing clothes over and over again, it was a wonder there was any material left, then once cleared by the Petty Officer into the bath of cold for a rinse. Every week we did that, then the clothes went into drying racks, and once dry they were ironed. It took me an age to learn how to iron. Everything had to have creases, of course, down the arms, across the back, down the trousers, Number 8's, but with the serge, seven creases down the length of the leg, one for each sea or so I was told. Every crease had to sharp enough to shave with (I had started shaving on my second day when the Petty Officer told me to. I told him I didn't shave, I was only fifteen, but he told me I did, so I did. He also told me I was a trouble maker for answering him back). The first week passed in a haze of red silk, shoe polish, washing powder and ironing boards. At the end of it, we had to have a mess inspection. All the beds were pulled into the middle of the room and we organised ourselves into teams to polish the wooden block floor. First were the ones who put the polish on, then the ones who took it off with brushes, then the polishers following up with cloths. Never mind about being able to shave from your reflection in shoes and boots, we could do it in the floor of the mess. Then the beds went back and the centre of the room was done. All the beds, of course, were made up, not for sleeping in, but rolled back, mattress bent double, pillow, blanket and sheet piled up neatly. Then all kit had to laid out on a towel, all laid out in a particular order, each section secured by white tape that had to lined up to give order to everything. As I stood by my bed, stiffly to attention, hands at me sides, the Petty Officer made his way up and down. When he got to Fergy he said, "Very good, boy. Very good indeed". When he got to mine he didn't say anything at all, he just walked all over my kit and told me go and wash it again. I stood all alone in the wash-house, naked, with tears streaming down my face as I washed my kit all over again. I was never going to make it as a Sailor, I thought, but not for a second did I consider going home to Mam. I didn't even consider it on the second inspection when he walked all over my clothes again, but by the third time I was expecting it and he didn't bloody do it.

Towards the end of the first week, the Petty Officer began teaching us how to march in a group. That was okay except I didn't know how to march on my own. I knew how to walk, but marching was a completely different kettle of fish. You had to swing your arms in a particular way, right arm left leg, left arm right leg, arms up to level with your shoulder. Needless to say, this small talent was beyond me. I marched with my right arm and right leg at the same time, left arm left leg. I didn't so much look like a member of an Armed Force but a drunken penguin. I wobbled and rocked, as I threw my arms up with my face screwed in concentration, but still I couldn't get it right. In my head I was thinking right arm left leg, left arm right leg, but once I moved it was just right right and left left. The Petty Office screamed at me, called me all kinds of idiot, gave me extra marching practice, which barely helped, grabbed my hands, kicked my legs, yelled until he was purple. Then, all of a sudden, without thinking about it, I bloody got it. Legs and arms in the proper order. The rest of the class cheered and laughed, and I smiled at the relief of it all. I could march.

I couldn't salute, though. Which was the next skill I discovered I didn't have. When asked to salute I ripped one off in a manner learned from all the war films I'd watched, mostly American. I kind of waved my hand around close to the side of my head, then nearly got that head blown off from the blast from the Petty Officer. He went bonkers. This time I was hundreds of kinds of idiot and moron, and and unmentionable underclass of subhuman who I hoped only existed in his own mind. A full-length mirror was produced and I had to stand it front of it until I learned to salute in a proper Naval fashion. Fingers of the right hand together and straight. From arm by the side take a long half circle up to the right eyebrow, the hand turned slightly inwards, then snap the arm down to the side. Long way up, short way down. That was the way to do it. And after a couple of hours stood in front of a mirror, that's how I did it, too.

The first week ended and I had learned millions of different skills, though I was quiet sure that none of them made me more or less of a Sailor. I certainly knew how to iron (and I would iron in that same fashion all my life; no child, wife, girlfriend or parent ever asked me to iron anything for them twice - no matter what the article, you got creases to shave with - and you still do!).

On Sunday we were allowed to walk down to the foreshore.

It was all too wonderful.

Page 11.

After we had stowed away all our gear, made our beds, written our letters and addressed our envelopes, we were gathered together and herded out of the mess, I wouldn't say marched out because I couldn't march, and we turned left along the length of the parade ground and proceeded towards a building that held a dining room. I was soon informed that it was the galley, where we had an evening meal, eighty of us all noisily chomping away, constantly being ordered to keep quiet. I sat next to Fergy because I knew him, he was my new friend, my only friend so far. He told everyone at the table that I had joined the Navy because I could swim and they all laughed. It seemed that I was the only one who hadn't been in some kind of quasi-military organisation as a boy. They had been Sea Scouts, or Boy Scouts, or Boy Soldiers, all kinds of things, but I was the one who would go down in history as the one who joined because he could swim. I tried to tell them that it wasn't just that, that I joined because Selwyn and me thought it was a great idea, but they wouldn't listen. We finished our meal and were herded back to the mess. We were ordered to shower and get into our pyjamas, and be in bed by nine. Nine! I had never been up that late in my life. At home I had to be in bed by eight or eight-thirty, even when I was fifteen. I had only recently got my first suit with long pants, bought for a wedding. Nine o'clock, hey. I knew I was going to enjoy this Navy. I pulled off my clothes and wandered down the middle of the mess totally naked with a towel over my shoulder. I'd grown up in the swimming baths, I'd been wandering around naked or semi-naked most of my life, with boys of my own age, in the cellar at the baths where there were cubicles in a long room which also included long benches. Nakedness had never bothered me. Off I went to the showers as the other boys looked on and slowly followed. I showered, dried off, returned to my bed, climbed into my pyjamas and sat on the bed, determined to stay awake until nine o'clock. I only just made it. It was the end of my first day as a sailor, the beginning of my career as a defender of the realm and considering I was a small town boy from Wales, a member of a close and extended family, I didn't have a single moment of home-sickness. Not one second. I didn't then, and I never have since. I slept like a brick.

The following morning we were awakened by the Petty Officer screaming and shouting and banging beds. There was a lot of moaning and groaning about the fact that it was six a.m., but I had been up at that time for years to get to my paper round, so wasn't bothered. We all had to wash and clean our teeth, then get dressed and back to the galley for breakfast. Once finished we were lined up and herded across to the other side of the parade ground where we queued to enter a low building. It was a store. Inside there was a long counter with loads of old Sailors behind it. As we walked in these sailors began to shout: "28 inch waste" - "30 inch chest" - "29 inch leg". Heavy blue denim trousers and shirts were piled up my arms, blue serge uniform, white square-necked, blue trimmed shirts, cap - "6 and seven-eights" - I never knew that, just as I never knew that my hat size would be the same today, fifty years later. Shoes, socks, underpants. The pile in my arms grew. Kit-bag. Training manual (I still have it, it still has my name stamped on the pages!). Shaving kit, toothbrush, needles, a ball of red silk. A gold-threaded black silk hat band with H.M.S. GANGES written in it. Eventually I staggered out carrying clothes and equipment from my knees to my eye-brows. Off I went across the parade ground, back to the mess, to my bed, onto which I dumped everything. I stood back and gazed at it all. There was so much uniform. I tried the round, flat, white hat on and it fitted like a glove, so to speak. I was getting quite excited about all this Navy stuff.

All the class came back from the stores and we all stood by our beds. How quickly we learned not to sit on them, without actually being told. The Petty Officer charged in. He always seemed to be charging around and shouting. "Right!" he shouted. "Stow all your civilian gear. On your first leave, which will be Christmas, take it all home with you and leave it there, along with any civilian suitcases. Try your uniforms on in a moment and if anything doesn't fit, and I shall be surprised if anything doesn't, take it back to stores and exchange it. Get to it!"

The whole mess burst out in noisy laughter and chatter as the long room was turned into a changing room for a short of small boy edition of a fashion show. I tried on the blue denim trousers and shirt. They fitted perfectly. As did the shoes. I tried on the rough serge, then the smooth serge and the white fronts. They all fitted too. There were bits of uniform I didn't know what to do with, a bit of string, a lanyard Fergy called it, and a large piece of black silk that apparently was to be worn around the neck when wearing the blue serge. There was nothing that didn't fit me perfectly and I don't remember anyone taking anything back to stores. What magicians worked in there? I wondered. They could the size of almost every part of the body simply by glancing at it. Surely only magicians could do that. Or undertakers.

"Put the cap band on your caps, boys, and be quick about it."

I picked up the band with H.M.S. GANGES on it, wrapped it around the hat and tied it on with a neat bow. Except it stuck out at ninety degrees and I was sure this wasn't right. I looked at Fergy's hat. The bow, on the right hand side, stood flush with the side of the cap. I undid mine and tried again. It still stuck out at ninety degrees. I glanced at Fergy with pleading on my face. He did my hat band in about thirty-seconds and the bow stood flush. I had found something I couldn't do. And I never improved. Everywhere I every went during my Naval career, every shorebase, every ship, I had to find someone to tie my hat band because it always stood at ninety degrees when I did it.

Bloody hat bands!

Page 10.

The bus I was on was alive with excitement. Boys moved around, though we had been told to sit in our seats, boys chattered, a Petty Officer sat down at the front with the driver, and I thought that those people who watched the bus pass must have just seen little blue balls of energy, so alive was everyone on board. All luggage was stored on the rack. It was early evening, just going dark, when the words went around the bus like electricty.

"Look out for the mast," the words went. "Look out for the mast."

Mast? I thought. What mast? And why should there be a mast on a shore base? I felt a little alone on the bus. All the other boys seemed to know where they going, what was waiting for them, what it was all about. I still had no idea what I was going to. The only information I had was gleaned from a book Mam had bought for me. Was there a photograph of a mast in it? There must have been, I supposed, but I didn't remember. In fact, I didn't remember anything about H.M.S. Ganges I had read in the book. Though my personal sense of excitement was as great as anyone else's, I suspected that mine was for different reasons. I had never been away from home before and what excited me was the sense of unknown. It didn't seem that way with the rest of them. They all seemed to know what it was they were going to.

Then a great surge from one side of the bus to the other, nearly turning the bloody thing over. And there it was. The Mast. A huge white thing pointing to heaven like a skeletal finger. All lit up. Massive. Wooden bits to either side reaching both right and left. It looked wonderful and dominated the countryside. But what was it for?

The boy next to me by the window whispered, "We have to climb it, you know."

I turned and looked at him. Was he mad. Climb it. You couldn't climb anything that big. It was huge. It was high. And I was frightened of heights. Climb it? Surely not. We were just small boys. We couldn't possibly be expected to climb something like that.

"Surely not," I said.

The boy turned to look at me and he had a maniacal smile on his face, "Oh, yes," he said. "We have to climb it. My brother was here last year and he had to climb it. All his class had to."

I looked away from his crazed expression. I still didn't believe him.

The mast grew and grew as we neared it, as all the boys on the bus stayed on the left side staring at it, until the Petty Officer shouted, "Back to your seats." There was a great scrambling as everyone moved around the bus to find their seats. "And be quiet!". Where we sat in silence.

The mast remained on the left side of the bus, but the bus itself turned right and passed through a barrier, pulling to a stop just inside. The other buses pulled alongside.

"Stand up!" the Petty Officer shouted. "Disembark in silence and in single file. Don't forget to take all your possessions with you."

I reached up and grabbed my little brown suitcase and pulled it down, then shuffled off the bus. I was standing on what appeared to a parade ground or some such, not that I had ever seen one before, it's just what it looked like. There were buildings on all four sides, some bigger than others. Other Petty Officers were gathered around and they began to shout. It seemed to me that they did a lot of shouting. But there were at least eighty boys to be organised. I found myself in a group that was being shuffled forward towards the first of the low buildings to the right of the parade ground, in through the door, past showers and toilets, up some steps, into a long long room with beds lockers and windows down either side. Immediately above us was a huge round speaker that was playing Jerry Keller's 'Here Comes Summer'. He sounded a lot like Cliff, but I loved the song.

I was ordered along until I was told to stop by a bed about half way down on the right side. On each bed were brown blankets, white sheets, a pillow and a pillow case. All boys were allocated beds and lockers and we were told to stand by them. I stood. Eventually the mess was full, all beds and lockers allocated. There were twenty of us, ten beds down each side, ten beds, ten lockers. A uniformed Petty Officer marched up the centre of the mess.

"Welcome to the annex of H.M.S. Ganges, where you will undergo some basic training. I am your instructor for the next four weeks," he said, loudly, as if we were in a building on the other side of the parade ground. "You will call me Sir at all times. Do you understand that?"

"Yes, Sir," we all shouted, emphasing the capital 'S' in his title.

"When I give an order it is to obeyed immediately," the Petty Officer continued. "When I tell you stop doing something, you will stop immediately. Do you understand?"

We continued with the 'Yes, Sir-ing" for several minutes, as he laid down the instructions we were to live by for the next four weeks. I thought I was doing pretty well for someone who had never before been asked to say 'Yes, Sir." Okay, I had said it quite a bit at school, even "Yes, miss," but it had always been with a small 's' or a small 'm'. I had never said it with a capital.

We were told to unpack our suitcases, stow (stow? the Navy was already teaching me a new language) away our gear, make our beds (which was a problem for me, I had never made a bed in my life - well, my Dad had been killed in the War and I was a bit spoiled), then after we had completed those tasks we were to make our way to the front of the mess where four desks, for chairs and a blackboard stood. On the blackboard written in white chalk were the words, 'Dear Mum, Dad, Brother, Sister, Granddad, Grandma, Aunt, Uncle, Cousin, Guardian. I have arrived safely and everything is well. I will be all right so do not worry about me'. It was something like that anyway.

I was trying to make my bed when the lad next to me spoke.

"Fergy," he said, holding out his hand.

I told him my name and we shook on it, then he said something unintelligible. I begged his pardon. He spoke again. I still couldn't understand what he was saying, but I realised that he was Scottish and I had never heard, or spoken to, a Scottish person in my life and I couldn't understand the accent. Eventually I worked out that he was asking me if I had been in the Sea Scouts. No, I said. Army Cadets? No. H.M.S. Aruthusa? What? It's a training ship for boys in Portsmouth Harbour. No. Boy Scouts? No. Fergy worked his way through every organisation every set up for boys. I had belonged to none of them. A look of puzzlement came over his face.

"Whae'r'yeer?" he asked.

I worked out that he had just asked me why I was here. I thought about my answer.

"Errr, because I can swim," I said at last, feeling proud of myself.

He looked in amazement. "Y'can'swim'an'thas'a'reason'fae'joinin'the'navy?"

I was also quite proud of the way I was beginning to understand him, not that I was very good at it (I still am not. Programmes on the television like 'Taggart' and 'Rab C. Nesbit' go right over my head because I can't understand what they are saying), but at least we were communicating. I told him that I joined because I wanted to but that I swam very well on the side, as a way of explaining what I was good at. Fergy had been in the Sea Scouts. He told me that he knew already how to march, salute, iron his uniform, wash his clothes, the morse code, semaphore, knots, all kinds of Naval things, and I did wonder what he was doing in a class with me, considering I didn't know how to do any of those things. To prove how good he was at doing things, he helped me make my bed when he saw that I didn't have a clue. I was going to like Fergy.

I made my way down to the front of the mess and sat at one of the desks. I picked up a pen and pulled a sheet of paper and an envelope towards me and began to write. Another boy sat at the desk next to me and he began to write too. I glanced over and he had written 'Dear Mum, Dad, Brother, Sister, Granddad, Grandma, Aunt, Uncle, Cousin, Guardian' along the top of the sheet of paper. I began to laugh loudly, a sound that was abruptly cut off by the knuckles that landed on the top of my head with enough force to loosen my teeth.

"What are you laughing at, boy?" the Petty Officer roared in my face.

"Nothing, Sir," I replied, not wanting to embarrass the boy at the desk next to me.

"Then you must be an idiot, boy, if you laugh aloud at nothing. Are you an idiot, boy?"

"No, Sir."

"What is your name, boy?"

I told him my surname only, I was sure he didn't want the full title.

"I will be watching you boy, you look to me like a trouble maker."

He had no idea of how prophetic his words were. And neither did I.

Page 9.

When I was twelve, Mam had a very serious breakdown. Dad came in off nights and found her ironing, with the dinner on. Shortly afterwards she was taken to the dreaded Deva Mental Hospital in Chester. It emerged that she had suffered the breakdown because she hadn't grieved properly for real Dad. There had been no time to grieve. There was a war on, there was me, only eleven months old. Thousands of people every month were suffering the same fate. No-one had time to grieve. But it caught up with Mam when I was twelve and she cracked. I didn't know how ill she was, I was only a kid and was kept out of the loop. Minor details only came out years later, with living Dad barely talking about it at all. He became a hero though, just like he'd been a hero during the War. One day he walked into Deva, picked Mam up, threw her over his shoulder and took her out. The hospital were getting ready to lobotomise her. When I read the novel 'One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest', at the end the anti-hero is lobotomised and I didn't know what it was, so I had to phone my father-in-law of the day. He told me what it was. A needle through the eye that kills part of the brain. Doctors, hey, the can up with great ideas and not so great ideas. German doctors during the war, they weren't so clever, and neither were the ones who wanted to lobotomise Mam. Anyway, Dad got her out of there and she recovered (well, almost!).

So I was a bit worried that me joining up might tip her over the edge again, but I needn't have worried. She had living Dad this time round, and my little brother. She just cried for three days.

Which was a waste really, for from the very beginning I had a great time.

At the Recruiting Centre we were fed, then given ten bob each and told to go and have one last night out before becoming sailors. Ten bob! All to myself. I could barely believe it. Out we went, led by the Scousers, who knew the area. We boarded the Ferry and went to fair that was on at New Brighton. The Scousers smoked and drank bottles of beer! Nash was quiet, as he always was, and I just wandered around with eyes that must have been as big as plates. I knew this was how it was going to be. I knew life was going to be exciting, different, well-paid (I had ten-bob). I was going to love it.

We almost spent up, saving just enough to get the Ferry back to Liverpool, and we were fed a supper and put to bed. All in the one room. The only time I had ever slept in a room with anyone else was when little brother was having nightmares and wanted to sleep with me. I cleaned my teeth, washed my face and climbed into a bottom bunk (that was what the bed was called) and I rolled over, gave a great big happy sigh, and fell instantly asleep. What a wonderful start to my Naval career.

The following morning up early, washed, dressed, teeth cleaned and fed breakfast. Then off to Lime Street Station, escorted by two Petty Officers, where a huge steam train was waiting for us. Not just us, you understand, but for lots of people including us. We were put in a carriage, all of us together, cases were stored in the rack, we were told to sit then given a lecture on our behaviour. We were members of the Royal Navy now, we were told. We represented the Queen, the Head Of The Nation. Our behaviour from now on must be immaculate at all times. We must be polite, quiet, sensible, proud, we must do nothing to upset other passengers and we would be checked up on at intervals by the train guard. We all sat side by side, facing each other in the carriage while the Petty Officer who lectured us stood in the doorway and the other stood in the corridor. When the lecture was over we were asked if we understood everything that had been said, we nodded and said that we did. Eventually, we were all given our tickets and the Petty Officers bade us farewell and good luck in our chosen career.

They had barely left before the Scouse kids brought out their bottles of beer and began to drink. Nash and me stared on in disbelief. They laughed and fought as the train pulled out and began our trip to Euston, black smoke billowing all around as I stood in the corridor with my head out of a window and watched Liverpool drift away. Pretty soon we were up to full speed at the train felt as it it was flying. Clickety-clack. Clickety-clack. Now I really was beginning a new life.

Just past Rugby and there were empty beer bottles all over the place. Nash and me had declined the offer to try one, and the problem was how they were going to be disposed of. The Scouse kids came up with a great idea. Throw them out of the window. But not just throw them at any old time, throw them out when there was a train coming in the other direction. Oh, what a laugh! What a scream! What a bloody good idea! They thought.

With one looking out for trains, the chuckers ready themselves. Here was one, throw the bottle, huge celebration. A direct hit, apparently. Nash and me were frozen in fear of these kids, they seemed to be from another plant completely. Another train, another bottle. Oh, yes, got it. Another celebration. And so it went until all the bottles were gone. The Scouse kids settled down in their seats again, occasionally laughing at their own brilliance.

When we arrived at Euston, not only were the Navy waiting but the police were too.

One day I had been in the Navy and already I was in trouble.

Each of us was taken to a separate room and interviewed about the bottles that had been thrown at trains, causing some damage. I think I was probably quaking in my shoes. The only time I had ever had anything to do with the police was when I was caught scrumping and got a clip round the ear from the local plod. Now I was being interviewed about criminal damage. I convinced them it wasn't me or Nash, mainly by telling them who it was who had done it. By the time our journey continued under escort to Liverpool Street Station, our little group was down to only four people. I never saw those Scouse kids again.

At Liverpool Street there were hundreds of us. And many men in uniforms that I now recognised as Petty Officers. There was a lot of screaming and shouting going on, orders being given, lines being drawn. Order was rising out of chaos. We were filed on to a train, given seats and sat down. We were ordered to keep quiet, to sit in an orderly fashion, and to wait for further orders. All along the train boys were boarding, there was shuffling movements then silence as everyone obeyed the order. There were just too many Petty Officers to argue with. The train drew out and after what seemed to be a very short time, but couldn't have been that short, we arrived in Ipswich. Our destination.

We were ordered off the train in an orderly fashion, an orderly quiet fashion. I felt as it was hours since I had actually spoken to anyone. A Petty Officer strode along the line shouting, "Line up in single file. That's one behind the other once."

That made me laugh.

The Petty Officer stopped and wheeled round on me. "Is something funny, boy?" he screamed at me.

"No," I replied.

The Petty Officer went purple in the face. "No, Sir!!" he blasted at me. "When you speak to me you say No, Sir. Do you get that, boy?"

"Yes, sir," I said. I would have said anything to get him out of my face.

"Louder, boy."

"Yes, Sir!!" I bellowed as loud as I could.

"And did you find anything funny?"

"No, Sir!!"

He glared at me. "Good," he said, before continuing on his way, telling hundreds of boys to line up one behind the other once.

When we were all in a single line right down the platform we were filed out to where coaches were waiting and we were marched on to them. With the charas full, off we went.

Our next destination. H.M.S. Ganges.

Now I really was in the Navy.

Page 8.

Except it hadn't. And it didn't. Not as far as Selwyn was concerned anyway. He failed his medical. He smoked even then, where I was as clean as the driven bloody snow, fit as a butcher's dog, a no-smoking, non-drinking, Mam dominated good Methodist boy. Selwyn couldn't inflate his lungs to the required degree, even though he had quite a few tries. His part of the dream, of the adventure was over, but that affected me not at all. I felt sorry that he wasn't coming with me, but I was still going. I was still going to be a Sailor.

After he left school Selwyn found work as a projectionist in a local cinema and I remember being dead jealous because I loved the films. I was a Saturday morning boy, going with cousin Glyn and the Gatehouses. We would all gather every Saturday for the early morning matinee, hundreds of us. From above it must have looked like miniature workers clocking on at the factory as we streamed along the road towards the picture house. I loved the movies, the serials, the noise, the stamping of feet, the booing, the hissing, the laughing, especially at the Three Stoogies, even the other kids. It was terrific and without the picture house and the swimming baths my childhood would have been particularly bereft. I saw my first naked female breast at the Saturday morning matinee. I forget her name but she was very well endowed for a young girl and took great pleasure in letting everyone have a look. If she really liked you you could have a feel. Mam would have hit the roof if she had known what I was up to in the pictures.

But those days were behind me now. I was going to be a man. I was going off to defend my country. I was going to be a hero. A Sailor. I didn't know a single other person in our town who was, or had been, a sailor, though there must have been some. But after me, many followed. Both Gatehouse brothers, for a start, young Mickey, who loved the Navy almost as much as me, and loads of others. Single handedly, I turned our town into a Navy recruiting centre. Lots of Mums and Dads hated me.

Time ticked away towards the 31st. I kept swimming. I won the North Wales backstroke championship at Llandudno, my relationship with Elaine was still going on, I still met with Glyn, and the Gatehouses. We would listen to rock and roll. Mam and Dad had bought me a record player for Christmas and the first two records I had were 'On The Street Where You Live' by David Whitfield (one day I would work right opposite his house), and 'Bird Dog' by the Everlys.

My life had been transformed by rock and roll. Bill Haley, Elvis, Jerry Lee, Cliff, Chuck, Johnny Kidd, The Shads, we loved the Shads, Buddy Holly. The late great Buddy Holly. One minute I was a hymn singing chapel-goer, the next I was a child of rock and roll. It didn't only affect me, of course. John Lennon loved it, and Paul. Mick Jagger, all of the greats of the sixties, who were, like me, affected by rock and roll. The King Of Skiffle, Lonnie Donegan, we loved him too, but skiffle came and went in the blink of an eye. Ballads continued, as did balladeers, there was folk, and country music, but rock and roll, that was here to stay. I am still a child of rock and roll and can hold my own in conversations with almost anyone of any age about popular music. These days I even write lyrics.

Then the 30th of August arrived. Mam's birthday. I gave her a card and bought her a present. Then I went to my beloved Swimming Club and bade them all farewell. I almost cried. I saw Elaine for almost the last time, though I didn't know it then. I said adieu to all the relatives and woke on the morning of the 31st almost breathless with excitement.

The day had arrived. I was going in the Navy.

Once again we set off as a family on the bus to Birkenhead, then on the Ferry to the recruiting office, me carrying a little brown suitcase of clothes Mam had packed for me. Dad gave me five shillings, little brother laughed a lot, but then again, he always did. We arrived and entered the foyer. There were two or three men in uniform, Petty Officers they said, who came out to speak to Mam and Dad. The Navy would look after me, they said. There was no need to worry or fret, I would be fine. I think Mam said that I had never been away from home before. That's all right, said one of the Petty Officer's. Everything will be just fine. If he gets homesick, the Navy will let him come home. If he doesn't like it, I wouldn't have to stay, and this blatant lie was said with a reassuring smile. I had signed a contract which tied me to the Royal Navy for nine years after reaching the age of eighteen. Which meant, as I was only fifteen years and nine months old, that I would be doing two years and three months that didn't count.

None of this bothered me. Not the first time away from home, not the fear of homesickness, not the contract, nothing. I was going to be a sailor and that was the end of it. Goodbye town, goodbye Elaine, goodbye Swimming Club, goodbye school, goodbye Mam, Dad and little brother. I had a duty to serve.

Finally, I was dragged apart from Mam, and Dad led her away along with little brother. I stood where I was and waved them goodbye until they were out of the door and out of sight.

"Right, son," a Petty Officer said, "follow me."

We climbed some stairs and went up several floors, they were making sure we couldn't escape, and eventually I entered a room the Petty Officer described as a mess. It didn't look a mess to me, I must admit, but then he informed me it was the name of the room, not the bloody state it was in. There would be many Naval words I would never come to terms with. Head, avaft, galley. I would never stop referring to them as toilet, backwards and kitchen. Beds were piled up on one another in the mess and no other boys had yet arrived. They soon did, until there were six or eight of us, including Nash from Chester, who I would go through training with and who looked about twelve years old. Years later I would meet him at a fair in Chester, by the Racecourse, and he still only looked about sixteen.

We were the recruitment. The elite. The ones who had passed the educational test and the medical. We were the best of the best. Oh, yes!

Page 7.

We all traipsed into the foyer, out of which I was ushered whilst the rest of the family went shopping and I was glad that I wasn't with them because Cities terrified me, they still do. All those people charging around like panicked beasts, all that noise, that dirt. I am strictly a small town boy and want to stay that way.

Inside the centre I was weighed, slightly over weight, the story of my life, I had to fill my lungs with air and exhale several times, look at coloured lights until they disappeared, have my hearing tested, my teeth (lots of tut-tutting about them), and do all kinds of other tests which seemed to take hours. Then it was over and I was returned to the foyer, where I found my family nervously sitting on a bench. Mam didn't seem to be very pleased about the fact that I was in glowing health.

That would be at the very end of July, or the beginning of August, because we had broken up from school and I said my goodbyes to everyone who mattered, which was no-one really, because my best friend, Selwyn, was coming with me and I was never very popular with the girls in my class.

About ten days later I received another letter. Joining papers, in fact. Telling me I was to report to the Liverpool Recruitment Centre on the 31st August for transportation to H.M.S. Ganges on 1st September. The 31st was the day after Mam's forty-first birthday. It was not good timing. Not that I gave the date a second thought. I was so thrilled to be asked to join, it was the first ambition I had every had that I had accomplished (I never expected to pass the scholarship, so that was a surprise, and I only took up swimming because Auntie Ada said I needed to do something other than sit in the house and read and draw all day, no-one was expecting anything to come from that). I was going to be a sailor. A member of the Royal Navy. Mission accomplished.

I hadn't seen Selwyn since we'd broken up from school, and I didn't have his address to write. He was, after all, only my school best mate. At home I had cousin Glyn and Gatehouse brothers who I knocked around with all the time. And the members of the Swimming Club, of course. But I expected to see Selwyn on the 31st at Liverpool. Our adventure was about to begin.

Page 6.

I received my reply in July and I was thrilled to bits. I was going to be part of history, I was going to fight great battles against evil people and survive covered in glory by being the last man on the gun, or the one who sent the signal that proved to be vital, or do something that save the day.

I still didn't equate battles with War.

Off I went to Wrexham to sit the educational test.

There were about fifteen boys gathered in the Navy recruiting centre, all flushed with the excitement of joining up. There were also a couple of older men in uniform who ordered us around. I wasn't that taken with being ordered around but the thought that this might continue once I had joined up never occurred to me. Yeah, I know, I have no vision, cannot see what's ahead. That's just what my wife says, fifty years later.

We were all told to sit at desks and then we got a lecture from the men in uniform. I didn't know what rank they were because I didn't know anything about the Navy, and even when the said who and what they were it still meant nothing to me. A Chief Petty Officer? What the hell was that. After the lecture, and the usual warnings of exams, no talking, no cheating, we were given exam papers and told we had three hours to finish them.

I finished mine in fourteen minutes.

I looked around. Everyone else was beavering away. I thought I must have made a mistake, missed some pages out or something. I checked all the pages and all the answers. I was done. When Selwyn said the exam was easy, he hadn't been kidding. The first question was a rough sketch of a hammer. It asked, is this a) a chisel b) a screwdriver c) a hammer. And the questions didn't get any harder. After sixteen minutes I stood up and wandered down to where the two uniformed men sat.

One looked up. "Given up?" he asked.

"Finished," I replied.

"What?" the both of them said, as one snatched the papers from me and began to scrutinise them.

I left while they were doing it. I passed, apparently I got one hundred percent. As far as I know, I never met any of the other boys ever again.

The following day Selwyn and me had a right laugh about how easy the exam was. Mam and Dad weren't so impressed. The first hurdle had been jumped and still my enthuiasm for my chosen career remained undiminished.

And they weren't the only ones to be concerned about me joining up. The beautiful Elaine wasn't that keen either, and though I loved her deeply, as only a fifteen year old can, I still had to follow my destiny. She would eventually leave me for Mel and I wouldn't see her again until my service days were over and I was myself, the manager of a swimming pool. She appeared on the balcony one day, looking as lovely as ever, with two lovely girls who looked like twins, but who were born almost exactly a year apart. They would be grown up by the time I saw her again.

School was drifting towards the summer holidays and I had received permission to leave and join the Navy, and my period of not learning anything was coming to an end. Grammar School had been wasted on me. Well, not exactly wasted, I think I am feeling the benefits of it now, fifty years after I left.

It had been a shock to my whole family when I became the first of my generation to pass the Scholarship, as it was then known. On the day I was told the result I raced home to tell Mam and Dad of my brilliance, and was immediately sent out to deliver the message to the rest of the family. Auntie Nora and Uncle Stephen, Auntie Florence and Uncle Wilfred, Granddad, Uncle Arthur and others on Mam's side, then it was to all those who belonged to Dad. I was gone most of the day. Only Uncle Jim didn't give me sixpence. The only problem that year was that, pertaining to my brilliance, , there were more passes of the Scholarship than there had ever been in history from our town, or my school. Either us kids were getting brainier or the exam was getting easier. I have always leaned towards the latter. Dixie, Mike, Zoff, Trevor, Stan, me, loads of us passed and went en masse to ruin the education of more serious students at the Alun Grammar School in Mold. None of us did very well out of it, I don't think. Although I think Stan went on to be a scientist of some kind and Zoff got a decent job, but that was only after he left to join the Met Police, got a hammering, and went back to school to finish off. I remember him getting 4% in an algebra exam once. Still, it's not everyone's subject, algebra. The rest of us did get jobs, though, all except me who just joined the Navy.

And Selwyn, of course, who wasn't from my town, and who I met at Grammar School. He came from some unpronounceable place in the mountains and spoke Welsh. I didn't. Neither did Mam, nor any of my family as far as I knew, but one day I was walking down the main steet with living Dad and someone spat out some Welsh, it's a very spitting language, and off Dad went, babbling like he'd learned the language as a baby. Which, in fact, he had. God, I had some good times with living Dad. He died of a heart attack some years ago after going into hospital for tests. He was halfway through decorating the bedroom he shared with Mam. It took little brother ages before he could bring himself to finish it off.

Selwyn and me spent days huddled together every day, plotting what we would do when we both joined up. We made plans about where we would go, things we would do, people we would meet. To say we had a totally unrealistic notion of what the Navy was all about, would have to be a total understatement. We didn't have a clue what we were getting ourselves into.

I received a letter telling me to go for a medical in Liverpool. Selwyn didn't get his. Somewhere along the line I had overtaken him. I had only ever been to Liverpool once or twice in my life, with Uncle Bill, who built things, he once built a hovercraft for his son, so when I went for my medical, we all went. Mam, Dad, little brother and me. We went on the bus to Birkenhead, then across the Mersey on the ferry, the same one Gerry and the Pacemakers would sing about years later, then to the huge Navy recruiting centre just by the tunnel

Page 5.

The Scouser, by the way, was hung for murdering a cinema manager after the war.

He was wonderful to me all his life, was living Dad, and my real Dad could not have done a better job at bringing me up.

I was four when he married Mam. When he came back from the War and discovered that real Dad had been killed, he went to see Granddad and told him that he had loved Mam from afar for years and that to win her would would give up drinking and behaving like a lout and would get a job and looked after her and me. He was as good as his word. My Granddad grew to adore him, as did almost evryone who knew him. I was at the wedding, of course, and I cried and screamed in the pavement when the climbed into a taxi to take them to the station for their honeymoon. So they put me in the taxi with them and Auntie Hilda and they dropped me off and where we lived at that time in Liverpool Road, with Auntie Hilda, Great Granddad, who lived to be over a hundred years of age, Elizabeth and others, where I would stand at the bottom of the garden and watch the pigs as they rolled in the mud in the field on the other side. Mam and Dad went to Blackpool for their honeymoon.

I loved living Dad, and I don't think I ever told him either, and he never let me down, though I let him down all the time. The occasion I feel most guilty about is the time when he asked me to go to Wrexham with him to watch them play football. I said I would, but on the day I sat in the cafe next to the baths with all my friends, listening to rock and roll on the jukebox, and I watched him through the window as he looked up and down the streets waiting for me to turn up. Which I never did. Then I watched as he trudged back home, head down, hands in his pockets. He looked awfully sad. I have never forgotten that day, and I must have only been twelve or thirteen, and it haunts me even now.

Mind you, if real Dad had lived I would have been brought up in the Midlands and I would have one of those really awful Midlands accent, unlike the accent I have now, after being brought up in Wales. I have a Scouse accent.

Selwyn showed me the application form he had filled in for the Royal Navy, then he showed me the reply he got back some short time later. I still hadn't sent off my application, but that night, when I went home, I filled it in and gave it to Mam to post. Then I waited. And waited. And waited. Every day I would get up, deliver my papers, come in, eat breakfast, look for the mail, find there was none, go to school, not learn anything, talk to Selwyn, come home and listen to Top Of The Form or Journey Into Space (I still have one of the books). I'd go to bed each night expecting to receive instructions the following morning, but nothing happened. Nothing came. The Royal Navy didn't want me. Only swimming kept me going. I carried on training and winning as if I had no problems in the world. I began stepping out with the gorgeous Elaine, who I adored and who moved like silk in water. She was a backstroker too, which gave us something to talk about.

April came and went. May. June. Nothing from the Navy. Selwyn went for an intelligence test in Wrexham and passed. He told me the test was easy. As the weeks passed I moaned on and on about the Navy not wanting me for the Defence Of The Realm. It is terrible to be rejected at the tender age of fifteen and it is something from which I have never recovered. I live in absolute fear of being rejected from anywhere, from anything or by anybody. Imagine how I felt later in life when I decided to become a novelist (!), poet (!), songwriter (!) or when relationships crashed an burned and I always got the blame. Can you imagine?

In July I got a reply.

It was only years later I discovered that Mam had carried my application form around in her pinny pocket for months before Dad convinced her to post it on the grounds that I would either be rejected or change my mind.

Neither of those things happened.

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Page 4.

Mam had married again when I was four, to a local man, as opposed to my real Dad who came from the Midlands and who she met whilst she was in service at some rich Doctor's house. I can't remember my real Dad, of course, I was only eleven months old when he was killed, so living Dad was my Dad with no reference to anyone else. All I knew is that I had a lot of bloody relatives. There were the ones in the Midlands who belonged to real Dad, then there was living Dad's, then Mam's.

I absolutely adored all the ones in the Midlands, mainly because they spoiled me to death and I only saw them once or twice a year. When we went we stayed at Auntie Ada's, who was married to Uncle Norman, who was a steeplejack. They lived in a tiny house right alongside a canal, so close that Uncle Norman used to fish from inside his front door, in the days when there were fish in canals. The house had no running water or inside toilet but I used to love filling buckets from the black-handled pump in the yard that served the whole row of houses. I didn't even mind using the outside toilet becasue whenever I had to, I was on holiday and holidays are fun no matter what you do. I would swim in the canal in the days when you could do so without cathing every known terrifying disease. We made friends, little brother and me, with the children of another rich Doctor who lived in a big house next door. It had fantastic gardens and we all would play there for hours every day. Little brother fell in the canal once, before he could swim, and I dragged him out by his hair through a patch of nettles. He had a rash for a week.

In his younger days he never had much luck with water, did little brother. We all once went to stay with living Dad's brother in Oxford, where he ran a pub. I had never heard of the man, didn't know he existed before we went, but while we were there little and brother and me went to have a look at the river. We stood on the banks of the Thames, or is it the Isis in Oxford, watching rowing eights racing up and down the river when all of sudden the bank gave way just where he was standing, and plop!, he was gone. When he surfaced he was twenty yards away. I raced along the bank, very unusual for me because I hated running, still do, and I slid along on my belly, reached out, grabbed him and pulled him back up on to the bank. It was only years later that we realized what a close call it had been.

He passed away a couple of years ago, did little brother, at only fifty-odd years of age. Such a waste. He was a terrific guy, a wonderful family man, and the funniest person I have ever met. I miss him and I loved him, though I don't think I ever told him.

He swam almost as good as I did by the time he grew, but he didn't want to be a swimmer, he wanted to be a footballer and he was bloody good at that. Whereas, I loved swimming and just went for it after being picked out to join the Swimming Club by the man who ran the baths. Over time I would become all kinds of champion, a little fat kid who swam the stroke all wrong but who won. I loved it.

So on that first day when I came home from school and announced that I would be joining the Royal Navy, I ate my tea then went swimming. Mam didn't see anything wrong with eating first then swimming, rather than the other way round.

The Swimming Club was the social centre of my young life. Everyone I liked was a member, Mike, Zoff, Howard, Annie, Elaine, amongst others. They were the kids I looked up to but who were also part of my life. They could all swim like dolphins when I joined the Club, but I soon caught up. I practiced a lot, even on Friday afternoons when I was supposed to be at school. For years I went to school on a Friday, signed in, then bunked off at lunchtime to catch a bus back to the baths. It had several advantages. I never got any weekend homework, for starters, and the pool was empty which meant I could practice my backstroke turns which were quite difficult to do in those days. He who could do the turn, won the race. Finally, I got the undivided attention of the man who ran the Club.

One Friday I was blasting my way up and down the pool, arms windmilling, as stiff as ever, head back, legs pumping when I did a perfect shallow-end backstroke turn. Exalted, I pushed off with power, began kicking my legs, surfaced and opened my eyes. On the balcony was my Headmaster, dressed in all his black-robed glory, and Mam, just all dressed up. The man who ran the Club sat with a sheepish expression on his face. I think he was quite proud of my swimming prowess, or it might have been the fact that I never went to school on a Friday afternoon.

Anyway, that was the end of swimming during school hours.

Maybe when I joined the Royal Navy, they would let me swim all the time.

When Dad came home from the afternoon shift at the Steelworks, where he worked in the Blast Furnaces, now there's a job conjured up by someone from Hell, I told him all about my joining the Royal Navy. He nodded at me, patted me on the head and gave Mam a funny look. It wasn't exactly the reaction I was expecting. Then I realized what a shock it must have been, me dashing in and screaming it out. I decided to give them a couple of days to get over it.

Mam never got over it. She's nearly ninety now and still thinks I joined up just to spite her (it's not quite true).

Days passed and nothing more was said, the Royal Navy was not a point of discussion in our house. Selwyn and me spent hours talking about it, though, and other kids would listen in with amazement because their parents would never let them leave school. There was a law in those days that a kid at Grammar School couldn't leave until he was sixteen. There was only one way a kid to leave before that age. Join an Armed Force. But just as I never saw the Navy as an Armed Force, so I never for a moment thought my parents wouldn't let me go. They would be delighted for me. Wouldn't they?

After all, both real Dad and living Dad had served in the Army. All right, I concede that we were fighting those nasty Nazis, but a military history is important in a family and all I was trying to do was to keep the tradition going. Where real Dad was killed, living Dad survived, though it was some kind of miracle that he did.

I was at home once, on leave, and we had been for a pint and come back to watch 'The World At War' on our black and white in the afternoon. Suddenly he leaned forward to stare very intently at the images on the screen.

"What's the matter, Dad?" I asked.

For a moment he was quiet, then he lifted a finger and pointed at the screen. "That bridge is in Italy," he said, "and the ground forces had moved forward faster than the knobs at the top had realized. See those men on the bridge?" I peered forward and mumbled that I could. "Well," he continued, "one of those men is me. We are mining the bridge, we are just about finished, when this happens..."

I sat open mouthed as I watched aeroplanes swoop down and bomb the bridge.

"There I am," Dad said, as his finger followed a tiny figure as it flew up in the air then crashed back down into the river. "I went to Switzerland to get repaired."

I looked at him a new light.

"The planes belonged to the R.A.F." he concluded.

War, hey. What a bloody laugh.

He limped for the rest of his life from the shrapnel that remained in his legs and much, much later he got a war pension from a Government who didn't want to give it to him.

He'd never mentioned the War before then, just as Mam will never talk about it even now, but he chatted for a couple of hours that day and told me an amazing story.

As a young man, he'd been a bit of drunken lout, not much of anything, and when he was conscripted he was sent to a camp on the Isle Of Wight. While he was there he met a Scouser and they became friends. Together they decided that they didn't want to got to War, so they went home. They went home, scarpered, went absent without leave, deserted during a time of War. I don't think they thought it through. They stole a boat and rowed to the mainland. Dad went back to his parents and they built a hidey-hole in the coal shed, under the coal, which was never discovered. I don't know how long he'd been home, but one day the Scouser turned up on a stolen motorbike. My Gran told Dad to go out and tell him to go away, but the moment he stepped outside the Military Police rushed out from the houses on either side and got him and the Scouser. Both of them were sent to prison, but to different ones. Dad was eventually visited by an Officer who laid out his options as they now where. For deserting during a time of War. To be shot until dead. He gave Dad a moment or two to take this in, then he told him he other option. He could volunteer to join a brand new military unit being set up by the Army. And that's how living Dad became a Paratrooper. He fought with distinction and without injury throughout in North Africa, Sicily and Italy but got hospitalised by the R.A.F. Life is a bugger.

Page 3.

That was in the April of '59. And joining the Navy was the first happy thing that had happened since Buddy Holly died in a plane crash in February of that year, and rock and roll so young, the music lifting us war babies away from our misery, the endless ballads and hymns in the Chapel on Sundays. I sometimes thought I knew every hymn that had ever been written, what with two visits every Sunday, one for the service, the other for Sunday School. Just think, in the Royal Navy I wouldn't have to do things like that. I would be free to listen to any kind of music I liked, rock and roll was a bit of a problem with most parents, and I wouldn't have to go to Chapel on Sundays.

But Buddy's death had affected us all. He was so good, a real hero, an ordinary looking guy who could do the most extraordinary things. He was idolised by many of us, and we thought if he could do it, then so could we. Many did, of course, The Beatles and Stones to name just two. Buddy didn't die alone, though. The crash also took away the Big Bopper and Richie Valens and we shouldn't forget them because they were the people who were re-shaping us, though what that shape would eventually be was a bit of mystery.

I rushed home from school on that day in April of '59, burst through the back door of my home, a nice council house on an unfinished estate in a village on a mountain in North Wales, the front door was only ever used for very posh occasions or funerals, and I exclaimed to my startled Mam, "I'm joining the Royal Navy!"

She stared at me in silence for a moment or two, as if she were staring at an alien spaceman, then she smiled, patted me on the head and said, "Eat your tea. Haven't you got swimming tonight?"

I'd been so excited about joining the Navy that I had almost forgotten that I was an ace swimmer. Backstroke, of course, none of that face down in the water rubbish for me, none of that breathing at intervals stuff. with backstroke you never got your face wet and breathed whenever you wanted to. At least, I did. I swam the stroke all wrong, stiff-armed, head back, no class whatsoever, but because I was reasonably fast and won things, no-one ever bothered to tell me. Instead of growing tall and thin, like all backstrokers, I grew wide, then wider still.

I was lucky enough to be born in a town that had the only public swimming baths in North Wales, if you didn't count the Lido at Rhyl, which only opened during the summer. Our baths were built with money donated by miners who worked in the area and on the day it was completed it was handed over to the Council for the use of the townfolk. When I was growing up I have no idea what I would have done without it. I didn't know anyone who couldn't swim, except Mam, who I tried to teach once but I couldn't get her into the water and it's damned hard to teach someone to swim without the additon of water. We all swam, all my cousins, my little brother, all my friends, all my schoolmates, all the girls I adored. Everyone. And mostly we were good competent swimmers and members of the local Swimming Club.

The Club was run single-handedly by the man who managed the Baths, who sold the tickets, who kept order in the pool, who cleaned the water and the changing rooms, who did the books, who looked after our safety and who would shrug his shoulders with helplessness when Mam called in to get me out of the water.

"I've been trying to get him out, Mrs," he would say, "but every time I turn my back, he's back in."

During school holidays Mam and Dad never had to worry about where I was during the day. I was always in water. Not always in the baths so, sometimes I would sneak off and swim in the quarries, until I was shopped by some old guy on a bike.

Anyway, the tap on the shoulder. It came from one of my best mate's at school, and school would be the only time in my life I would have more than one mate, whose name was Llewellyn but as this was too hard for me to say, as I didn't speak Welsh, I called him Selwyn. So it was that Selwyn, who sat directly behind me in class, tapped me on my right shoulder during a lull in a maths lesson and we had lots of lulls in maths lessons did Selwyn and me. He said, and these were the words that changed my life forever and made Mam cry, "We're joining the Royal Navy."

We're joining the Royal Navy.

I never did find out where Selwyn got these words from. Whether he dreamed them, or discovered them while standing in goal for our school football team when he had nothing to do, which was quite often, he once went a whole season and only let in seven goals, or whether he fashioned them in his own mind. Had he done some research? Seen an advertisement? Heard something on the radio or seen something on his black and white television? I never discovered. I never asked. The words flooded through me and took me over.

We're joining the Royal Navy.

It was a fantastic idea.

I didn't know what I was going to do when I left school or whether I would be qualified to do anything at all. My exam results so far hadn't actually been things upon which great careers could be built. In fact, my results qualified me to work behind the counter at Woolworths and very little else. But now Selwyn had come to my aid. He and I would join the Royal Navy and travel the world together. We would do amazing things, enjoy wonderful sights, maybe even made the occasional young lady. The thought that Selwyn had just suggested joining an Armed Force didn't occur to me for many years. I never saw any violence in my future. I never envisaged wars or conflicts or anything like that. All I saw was calm blue seas under blue skies, empty sand beaches of a tropical kind, and half-naked beautiful young ladies dancing just for me. War? It never entered my head.

"Oh, yeah," I said to Selwyn, as I slewed in my chair and smiled at him, automatically leaning to one side just as a huge piece of chalk whizzed by. Selwyn caught it with both hands, a reflex action for any goalkeeper.

Of course, I didn't know the first thing about the Royal Navy. It was as foreign to me as Latin or Welsh. We had ships, didn't we? We'd had a Navy for years, hadn't we? Didn't I learn something about it in history, another subject that was beyond my capabilities. Yeah, it was coming back now. Jutland, Trafalgar, Nelson. The Navy had a glorious history.

I was overcome with emotion. Not only was I joining the Navy, but I was to be part of that history and of its historic battles. Oh, yes, here I come.

And yet, I still didn't equate battles with war. War was terrible and lots of people died, as I should know because I lost my Dad to the Second War, he's buried in Belgium. War was terrible, awful and your relatives died in it, but battles were glorious things, weren't they?

I was so carried away by my dreams of the Royal Navy that I almost didn't duck and weave and almost got hit square between the eyes by first a ruler then a duster, both of which Selwyn caught with his usual panache.

the defence of the realm and my part in it

THE DEFENCE OF THE REALM - AND MY PART IN IT

AS FAR AS I REMEMBER

BY TAFF

Mam cried.

For the best part of three days she sobbed, wept, dabbed, wailed, refused to eat but did accept the occasional bottle of stout.

I didn't hear her cry nor did I see her. I was nowhere around and it was that fact that caused so much wailing. I had left home, left school, upped sticks, packed my bags, gone and joined the Royal Navy only one day after her forty-first birthday. It was bad timing, but what can you do? A call to the Defence Of The Realm is like a call from above, almost like a call from God. I just had to go.

Actually, it wasn't so much a call from God, or a call from anyone, that started me on my path to the Royal Navy. It was a tap on the shoulder. I was fifteen, drifting through Grammar School, not studying French or Latin, or even Welsh which was the language of my ancestors. Half of them anyway. I was not learning anything about science, I was hopeless at maths and had been given up on in religious studies. I regularly had rulers, chalk and dusters thrown at me in an effort to kick-start some kind of intellectual stimulus and not only did these missiles not work, but I had developed an instinctive feel for when things would be thrown and ducked or leaned and saved myself from serious injury. One day, though, when I was asleep in class I got hit under the right eye by a set of keys thrown my the French Master, but that doesn't count, because I was asleep and it's very difficult of have an instinctive feel for things when you are zedding.