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.