I Sank The Bismarck Read online

  I thought that I might be able to improve my position if I saved up enough money to put myself through university. As an extra source of income I joined up with some of my old classmates to form a small dance band. I played the violin and the banjo, and we toured around, performing at weddings and giving concerts at dances in local church and community halls. One of the band members, the only one who could drive, would use his father's milk-delivery van to get us around to wherever we had to appear. I continued to live at home and paid my mother half my wages each week, which was 18 shillings, or 90 pence in today's money. I had to buy my own clothes and fares out of the money I had left. At the end of the week there was precious little to put by for my university fund.

  While I was languishing in the bus company, there seemed to be a great deal happening in the world outside. There was no television, of course, but the cinema was extremely popular and provided great entertainment. Not only was there a supporting picture before the main feature, but there were also the newsreels, Pathé or Movietone, which dealt with the main news of the day. Germany appeared to be extremely dynamic and exciting, not suffering as we were from high unemployment and poverty. They were building roads and constructing Zeppelins that crossed the Atlantic. It didn't seem to be the same country that had been so badly defeated in the First World War, when many of the population were on the verge of starvation.

  In the winter of 1936 a couple of hundred unemployed shipyard workers set off from Jarrow on Tyneside to march on Parliament, over 300 miles away in London. They wanted to highlight the poverty and desperate circumstances of the industrial cities and coal-mining areas of the north. In some parts of England and Scotland, such as Clydeside, there was 70 per cent unemployment. But in the summer of the same year we had seen newsreels in the cinema of the Berlin Olympics, which appeared to show that Germany under Hitler was booming, with plenty of jobs, holiday camps for the workers and recreational activities for youngsters, all organized by the state.

  Other news from overseas was more disquieting. Italy had invaded Abyssinia, causing the Emperor Haile Selassie to flee to safety in Britain. Under their dictator, Mussolini, the Italians were seeking to expand their empire in Africa and were enlarging their navy. Civil war had broken out in Spain, and Italy and Germany had sent some of their forces to fight on behalf of General Franco, who was trying to remove the socialist government in Madrid. Of course, none of these events stopped me getting up in the morning, having breakfast and going to work; I was at least fortunate in having a job to go to.

  The biggest event, however, and the most talked about, was the abdication of Edward VIII, forced to choose between the crown and the woman he loved, Wallis Simpson. It was the subject of considerable gossip the length and breadth of the country, with expressions of great disapproval of affairs with married women and of divorce in general. There was no doubt a great deal of hypocrisy over the whole issue. I was not a prude about sex, and never have been; in fact, I was beginning to be extremely interested in women, young as I was. It was at about the time of the abdication that I had the first encounter with a woman that made me realize they knew what they wanted and were quite capable of getting it. During one of my rugby matches I injured my foot and the wound became infected. I went into the local hospital to have a small operation on my big toe and had to stay in for several days. I was extremely well looked after by the night nurse, who was a lovely woman. I won't go into details, but even now I can remember the rustle of her starched aprons and the warm feel of her breath as she leant over me. If we had ever been discovered she would have been instantly dismissed, and probably prevented from ever working as a nurse again. Why she took the risk I don't know, but when it comes to romance and sex, reason flies out of the window. It certainly made Edward abdicate the crown and become the Duke of Windsor instead.

  There were other incidents that relieved the soul-destroying boredom of the office in the bus depot, and one in particular stands out, though at the time it did not seem particularly out of the ordinary. Southern Scotland was used to falls of snow in the winter months, but in 1937 the weather was particularly severe. I was in the bus office one day – I think it was shortly after New Year – when we received a phone call late in the afternoon. The scheduled bus service from Newcastle to Edinburgh, which went via the town of Jedburgh, had not arrived there. Clearly something had happened, but there had been no news of an accident. The situation was worrying: it was snowing quite heavily, it was very cold and it would not be long before it got dark. The depot manager asked one of the bus drivers, a chap in his fifties called Turnbull, and me if we would set out along the route to see if we could discover what had happened. Turnbull was a wonderful chap the way he prepared us; he must have known what to expect. He secured boots for both of us, an extra pair of breeches, jerseys, greatcoats and piles of rugs. We loaded them into a small bus, along with torches, ropes and shovels, and we set off, driving as quickly as we dared into the teeth of a blizzard along the Kelso to Jedburgh road. It was by now eight o'clock in the evening and pitch dark. Eventually we could go no further; the snow was piling up in the road and we decided that we would press ahead on foot. We covered our heads with the rugs, leaving small gaps in the folds so that we could see ahead. The gale-force wind was whipping the snow almost horizontal, creating a complete white-out. Great snowdrifts were building up. Our torches barely penetrated the darkness more than a few feet, but we set off. Turnbull and I were roped together, and he led, trying to make a path in the middle of the road where the snow was mostly waist deep. We knew that if we wandered off the road we might stumble into a ditch or fall into a field and be over our heads in a huge snowdrift. Our situation was getting dangerous, and we moved forward slowly and cautiously. I remember thinking how isolated we were and how very careful we must be. Strangely, neither of us considered abandoning our search, although it would have made much more sense to head back to our own vehicle and return to safety in Kelso. There is a strange conflict in people, and very often a sense of duty or responsibility will provide as powerful an impetus as a sense of self-preservation. Accompanying this is an equally strong motivation not to give up or admit defeat. Whatever was going on in our heads, we never discussed the possibility of turning back.

  We couldn't hear ourselves against the wind and had to put our heads close together to speak to each other, fighting down the noise of the gale. My companion, who had driven that road many times, used the telephone wires as a guide; it was a blessing that they had not been brought down by the heavy snow. Without them we might easily have wandered off the road and headed into the surrounding countryside, not to be found for days. We struggled on, and as we neared the summit of a steep hill we noticed that the snow suddenly felt different underfoot. We had been walking through very dense snow, when suddenly old Mr Turnbull realized that we were walking on a firm surface that seemed to be higher than the surrounding verge.

  We paced out the length of this mound – and then it hit us that we had found the bus. We dug down with our hands to where we thought the door would be. It took some time, but we eventually broke through the snow and banged on the window. Inside there were about six passengers, the driver and the conductor. They were not in very good shape. The bus had skidded to the side of the road and after coming to a halt had quickly been covered by a snowdrift. They were badly shaken and of course extremely cold. Nobody on the bus had warm enough clothes to venture out into the blizzard to seek help. They had kept the engine going for warmth, but that had run out of petrol and they had started to cut open the seats and used the stuffing to build little fires on the bus floor. It was surprising that they had not succumbed to the smoke and fumes.

  It took a lot of coaxing to persuade them to come out into the blizzard, but they could not stay there over night. They were so cold that I doubt they would have survived for another twelve hours. Eventually we persuaded them that they would be safer coming with us, and they clambered out to be roped together and led back down the
hill that we had made in the snow to our waiting bus, where we wrapped them in blankets. One lady insisted on putting up her umbrella as she left the stranded bus. I tried to dissuade her, saying it would be of absolutely no use, but she wouldn't listen. Naturally, as soon as she got outside it was whipped away by the wind, never to be seen again.

  So we made our slow journey back to Kelso Hospital, where they were given food and hot drinks and checked by a doctor.

  Turnbull and I received a letter of commendation from the bus company, and a reward of £5 each! Looking back, it seems remarkable that just the two of us ventured out on this rescue mission to find a lost bus and its passengers. Nowadays there would have been a mountain rescue team, an emergency helicopter in the air and the mobilization of police and ambulance services, but we did the job ourselves without much thought for the dangers involved.

  For the most part, working in the bus office day after day made me more determined to find an alternative, and when I was eighteen years old I saw an advertisement in a newspaper asking for applications to the Naval Air Service Reserve. This was a new organization, being set up because, after a long fight, the navy was finally going to take control of its own aircraft and the men who repaired and flew them. The Naval Air Service had existed in the First World War, but in 1919 all its aircraft had been handed over to the Royal Air Force. The latest change back to Admiralty control was due to take place in 1939. If I had understood this a bit better at the time, I might have been spared some depressing months.

  The advert that I saw was the first stage in setting up a reserve force. Successful recruits would be taught how to fly and would be required to spend several weeks per year on duty in the Reserves, for which they would be paid. The idea, of course, was that in the event of a war there would be a group of trained men who could be called up rapidly to enlarge the regular service. When I saw the advert I suddenly thought that, at last, here was a way that I could learn to fly – something I had secretly set my heart on ever since I climbed out of the cockpit of the Avro 504 that had flown me over the rooftops of Kelso. In those days the prospect of flying was so remote for ordinary people that I had buried the desire deeply, but seeing this advert brought me fresh hope. I would be absolutely crazy not to apply: I might be able to learn to fly after all, and I could say goodbye to my boring life in the bus office.

  I wrote off and, within a couple of weeks, received a note asking me to appear for interview in front of a board in Govan, Glasgow. It was a long journey, involving a bus to Edinburgh, then another bus to Glasgow, then a long tram journey from Glasgow to Govan. About eight other applicants were being interviewed at the same time as me and they all seemed very confident. The members of the interviewing panel were all dressed in civilian clothes, but they had ruddy faces, I assumed from a lot of time spent out in the open air. The gentleman at the head of the table had mutton-chop whiskers, and two of them had full beards. To my eyes they seemed very nautical. When they introduced themselves, I realized that they were fairly senior men.

  They invited me to sit down and I was asked some simple questions about my local town and the job I was doing, and was asked to read a logbook. The interview then took an odd turn, as the chairman of the board, who seemed by far the oldest man there, realized that I lived next to the Tweed and Teviot rivers. The rest of the interview became a discussion about trout and salmon fishing, the effectiveness of various fishing flies and the best techniques for tying them. I was very interested in fishing and I had caught my first salmon when I was eight or nine, although entirely by accident. It came on to the end of my line when I had been hoping to get trout, and it was too strong for me to land. Eventually my trout rod broke and I wound the line round a bush near the river and raced home to fetch my father, who helped me gaff it. I told them this story, and the chairman brought out his fly box and we talked about the best flies to use in different parts of the river. He knew far more than me, but I was content to listen and make the odd comment. Then the interview was over. It was very strange, and I did not know what to think as I journeyed back home to Kelso.

  Back I went to the office again, with nothing but winter rugby to look forward to. I heard nothing from the navy and was once more beginning to sink into despair, when one day I read yet another advert – as you can imagine, I was scouring the newspapers in desperation. This time it was for recruits to the Southern Rhodesian Mounted Police. I knew little about Southern Rhodesia, or Zimbabwe as it is now called, but clearly this offered enormous possibilities: travel to a far-off land, a marvellous climate and, most important, the opportunity to work with horses, which, after rugby, was one of my greatest passions. So I applied and was invited to an interview at Rhodesia House in the Strand in London.

  I had been to London once before, in a school party that had visited the Houses of Parliament, but this time I was more able to appreciate how different it was from Kelso! I found it daunting as I got off the train at Kings Cross and asked a porter for some directions, my small case with a few clothes in it clutched in my hand. I was staying at the YMCA, near London University in Bloomsbury, and the porter directed me to the nearest bus, but there seemed to be hundreds of them outside the station, and more taxis than I had ever seen before. I decided to walk and found that my destination was not that far from the station, but I had never seen streets so busy and crowded. I should have been excited by the huge bustling city, the hub of the Empire, but to be honest it was dirty, and for a young lad with not a great deal of money it was not very inviting.

  The staff at the YMCA were a great help and I managed to find my way to the interview. It seemed to go well – they appeared impressed with my knowledge of horses – and on leaving I was confident that my life was about to change for the better.

  Back in Kelso, I did what I had been longing to do for the past two years: I resigned from my job at the bus company. This caused some problems with my parents, principally my father. The economic situation had not improved greatly and there were still a lot of unemployed people looking for work. He thought I was being reckless in throwing away a secure job without any firm prospects, and neither of them wanted to see me join the navy, or go thousands of miles away to central Africa. I suppose deep down they felt that my ambitions were too great for my talents and that I would end up disappointed. They knew how hard life could be, and they valued the settled life they had established in Kelso. But I could not be persuaded: I gave up my job. That year I travelled as a reserve with the Scottish rugby team to Ireland, but, unfortunately, we lost.

  This was the winter of 1938/39 and, now without a job, I decided that I would move down to London. Not that I liked the place, but I thought it would be only a matter of time before I was offered a passage to Rhodesia. Also, staying with my parents in Kelso, unemployed and just kicking my heels while I waited for a letter, was not very attractive. My father had been good to me, but relations between us had soured somewhat. He told me that I would be back within six months, but I thought, 'Will I hell.' So back I went to the YMCA and managed to find a low-paid job in the parcels department of Harrods.

  Weeks passed and I heard nothing further from the Rhodesian High Commission or the Southern Rhodesian Mounted Police. I was very depressed, and beginning to wonder how long I could stick it out before going back home with my tail between my legs, when out of the blue I received a letter from the Royal Navy. It was a request to go to Queen Anne's Mansions for a medical exam. The address turned out to be a row of Georgian houses just off Harley Street in the West End. The letter was not what I wanted to receive. I had abandoned any thoughts of taking up flying, having convinced myself that I would be accepted into the Southern Rhodesian Mounted Police. This was the aim on which I was now focusing my ambitions, and I waited impatiently for the letter of acceptance with details of how I would be expected to travel to Rhodesia. However much I wanted to learn to fly, all that the navy could offer was a part-time job in the Reserves, while the Mounted Police was full time, a career with lon
g-term prospects, clearly much more of a vocation. It was, after all, nearly six months since I had attended that rather strange interview with those sailors in civilian clothes in Glasgow and it seemed odd that I had heard nothing more. But there was no reason why I should refuse to take a medical, so I duly presented myself before the men in white coats, coughed, had my eyes and hearing tested and kneecaps hit with a hammer, and then went back to my dismal job at Harrods.

  Within a week or so of this appointment I received a second letter telling me to report on board HMS Frobisher at Portsmouth naval base to begin my training. This caused a bit of soul-searching. I still had heard nothing from Rhodesia House and, despite my reservations about the navy, it did offer an alternative to the storeroom at Harrods, so I went.

  On the train going down to Portsmouth my thoughts were mixed. I was still coming to terms with the sudden interest shown in me by the navy, and I was apprehensive about what I was letting myself in for. I had absolutely no idea what naval training entailed and was beginning to wonder whether this really was a wise move. I managed to find my way to the naval office in the harbour, from where, with my small suitcase, I was eventually given a lift on a motor launch out to the ship at her moorings. My feelings of trepidation were compounded as I approached Frobisher. She was a big cruiser that had been detached from the Atlantic fleet a few years previously and designated for cadet training. The boat I was on tossed about in the harbour and, as we got closer to the ship, I could see that there were rust streaks on her hull, and she looked grey and forbidding above me. This was the very first time that I had seen a warship, or been out on a small boat. The experience was unsettling.