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.