J W Booth AUTOBIOGRAPHY C5

Chapter 5. The Navy Ashore
a) Skegness.
At the time that I, like my father before me, 'answered the call' the bombing of London had largely ceased, my mother and aunt were still living at Peckham Rye and my sister was firmly established in an Admiralty branch called Seamen's Records in Bath.
She had a knack of getting interesting jobs and in this one she saw files on practically everything of note that happened in the Navy because sooner or later it had to be recorded by hand on the record cards of those concerned. This could be anything from the award of a stripe to the chillingly final 'DD'(Discharged dead.) I remember she had to check the Dunkirk honours list and some of the citations read like something out of the Boy's Own Paper. One man who had saved the lives of 50 soldiers by acting as a human tow-rope between their raft and a destroyer's motor-boat in an air attack had been recommended to be mentioned in dispatches. The King had struckout the recommendation with his own hand and awarded the V.C.
Throughout the time that I was keeping the sea-lanes open, Ada knew far more about the Navy than I ever saw. It is notorious that the rank and file never know what the hell is going on and I am not at all sure that those in command know much more.
Our class arrived at Skegness in dribs and drabs on a dark cold afternoon. The town was plastered with signs saying 'Skegness is so bracing' which it wasn't, and on the main block at Butlin's was the famous slogan 'Our True Intent is all for your Delight’ which wasn't true either. This latter had been made up of illuminated letters which the Navy had removed, but as the words remained quite clear in the plaster they might just as well have left the thing alone.
We were accommodated in the chalets and the large blocks were used as mess-halls, clothing stores, etc. There were some 4,000 men under training there, and there had been three mess-halls, but one had been burned down shortly before I arrived. The Navy had solved this problem by the simple process of pushing the tables closer together in the other two which packed the chairs so tight that one could only get out by walking down the middle of the table.
We spent several days getting kitted out and there seemed to be at least one funeral each day. This was because a sneak daylight raider had dropped a couple of bombs among the ship’s company chalets a few days before, killing a number of night-duty men who were asleep. I heard a sad echo of this sometime later from my sister. Apparently one of the victims was a re-employed pensioner who had been caught smuggling duty-free tobacco off the base a week or two before and had been deprived of a long-service and good conduct medal which had taken him at least 15 years to get. The Punishment Warrant with the medal had been returned to the Admiralty. When the man's effects were sent to his widow she wrote to the Commodore Commanding 'Royal Arthur' asking for the medal. She did not know that it had been’ deprived' and the Commodore did not want to tell her at such a time so he wrote to the Admiralty to get it back, quite illegally of course. The man in charge of the Medals Section, who was a stickler for the letter of the law, took the letter in to the Head of Branch and said 'We can't do this'. The Head, who was older and wiser, said 'Don't tell me you've lost the damn thing*. Assured that they hadn’t he said 'Well don't just stand there, send it off'.
Incidentally, we were never bombed again while I was at Skeggy but we were machine-gunned one afternoon by an R.A.F. Blenheim. He didn't hit anybody and the A.A. gunners on the roof of the Main Block, who instantly returned fire, didn't hit him so in terms of inter-service rivalry I suppose that counted as a goal-less draw.
When I had been at Skegness about a week I was summoned to the Commander's office and told that my mother was dangerously ill. He gave me compassionate leave and I went home to find that she was in Dulwich Hospital dying of stomach cancer. She knew it was terminal and was not deceived by my feeble efforts to lie about the reason for my arrival. She died a couple of days later the brevity of her illness being the only mercy shown her, unlike her own mother who had lingered and suffered for eight years with breast cancer.
Mother died in the firm belief that trials and troubles here below are compensated for in the hereafter. I cannot be sure that this is true but for the sake of people like her it ought to be. If a blameless life under continual adversity can get one into heaven, she is there.
I returned to Skegness to be trained as a Convoy Signalman. Royal Arthur was mainly a reception base and the majority of ratings stayed about six weeks kitting up and square- bashing before going elsewhere for technical training. Communication ratings were fully trained at Skegness and we were there for six months. Visual Signalman used flags, morse lamps and semaphore and were a separate rating from telegraphists whose sphere was wireless. Convoy Signalmen were a war-time animal working as Commodore's staff and borne in merchant ships in convoy. Thus I had, in a sense, missed the Navy again.
Our class numbered about 40 and we were paired in chalets which had been intended for married couples - well couples anyway. Each had a double bed and, the Navy's reputation being what it was, these beds were divided into two narrow halves by several boards set in grooved posts at top and bottom, but there was only one mattress. It was bitterly cold in these flimsy huts in February and the boards made it impossible to tuck blankets improperly. Everyone took out the boards and made up the bed using both lots of blankets and slept in it together, not for any improper purpose, but to avoid frostbite.
Signals instruction was given by two re-called Chief Yeoman Pensioners who were fatherly and easy-going and altogether the regimen was much less strict than that at Holbrook. The food wasn't nearly so good, each meal being served on one plate even if it was porridge and a kipper. At 7.30 breakfast we could see the dinners, each on its plate, being put into electrically-heated wagons whence they emerged at lunchtime either clear cold or burnt black and stuck to the plate depending on whether the heater was working or not. It was an example of good food, which the rationed civil population would have envied, being ruined by mass catering of the worst kind.
We did a bit of marching in belts and gaiters with rifles and I was every bit as bad at it as I had been at Holbrook. Come to that the general standard would not have satisfied a P.O. boy. One day we had a ceremonial parade to assist 'War Weapons Week, a savings boosting effort, at which the Mayor of Lincoln took the salute with the Commodore. We were all drawn up awaiting his arrival when a black limousine turned into the entrance and a Warrant Officer in full fig with sword stepped forward and opened the rear door, stood back and saluted. Out stepped two bewildered rookies under training. It actually was the Mayor's car but he was driving it with his lady in the front and these two had thumbed a lift. They made good their escape before the W.O. had recovered and the rest of the officers present had stopped falling about and restored order in the ranks.
Technical training consisted of learning International Code flags and their significance in the Merchant Ship's Signals Book. (Mersigs.) We also learned the Morse code and the semaphore alphabet and did practical exercises reading a Morse lamp at up to 10 words a minute and semaphore at about 20. The first half of each semaphore exercise was made with the Chief Yeoman facing the class and the second half with his back to us. One of our Chiefs was a fat man and as he wasn't fussy about stretching out his arms one could just see two flags flapping about and not much else. He answered all complaints by saying that if you could read his semaphore you could read anybody's. He was right too. Passing out tests were made by the Signals Bosun who made copy-book stuff. It was like reading large print and we all sailed through.
The Navy always gave everybody the full course on any subject without enquiring about previous experience and as they usually put you on something totally unfamiliar for which you had no natural aptitude this was just as well. But they occasionally came unstuck. We heard of a man on a Sparker's course who seemed to be incapable of reading Morse at beginner's speed on a buzzer. They thought he must be dyslectic or something until it came out that he was a Post Office Telegraphist who could read Morse at 25 words a minute standing on his head. Beginner's dots were longer than his dashes.
Boat rowing, another thing I never really got the hang of, was taught using old Naval cutters moored in the ornamental lakes with four wire ropes secured to the four corners of the lake. We noticed that the oar blades were all perforated with one inch holes. Apparently they had started without these holes and it worked fine for normal trainees but when they got a crew of brawny Norwegian seamen their first couple of strokes tore the stern off the boat. Another case of inferior coals to Newcastle.
In the middle of the course we were given 7-days leave which involved a morning circuit of the ship's offices to get pay, ration cards, railway warrants etc. The arrogance of ship's company to men under training was legendary and as it happened both our Chiefs were away, one on normal leave and the other attending the funeral of his father a Naval pensioner who had died at the age of 90. With only a Class Leader who was one of us in charge we wondered if we would make the train that day. We were saved by our Sub Divisional Officer, a Fleet Air Arm Lieutenant named Latham, who knew all about office wallahs and went with us himself. First stop was the Pay Office where he had us break ranks and line up at the counter in alphabetical order. As we clattered in a stroppy ink slinger shot out of the inner office and snapped 'Who is in charge of this party?' Latham rested his gold braided arms on the counter, gave him a wide grin and said 'I am. Tell the Paymaster I'm waiting'. After a start like that we got round in record time.
This sort of thing was not confined to Skegness, it applied to all shore bases. There were individual exceptions, of course, but generally senior regular officers were less stroppy than junior reserve officers, C.P.O.'s were more tolerant than Leading Hands and shore-based office staff, many of whom had no rank at all, were the worst of the lot. Many of them were Wrens and they didn't usually have much time for anyone below commissioned rank.
I could never understand the adulation heaped on Service women during the war. I'm sure that many of them did a good job and the minority who manned A.A. guns, barrage balloons and the like deserved all the praise they got. But most of them were clerks, typists, stores assistants, cooks, etc. doing the same jobs as they would have been doing in civvies in peace time. This was necessary, of course, but there was nothing particularly noble about it and most shore bases were safer than the towns anyway. The Women's Land Army, on the other hand, worked as farm hands and many of them were town bred girls to whom it must have seemed like a different world. They never got half the kudos enjoyed by their sisters in the Armed Services and were much less favourably treated when the war was over.
(b) Southend.
On completion of training all Convoy Signalmen were drafted to Southend-on-Sea which was in Chatham Port Division. No one could go anywhere in Chatham Port Division without passing through Chatham Barracks and we did so but being new entrants we were escorted round under constant supervision. Thus I did not get much of the flavour of this nautical Alcatraz until later and only one incident sticks in my mind.
Everyone was ex-rayed in a place called K Basement to detect any signs of tuberculosis which was a disease as much feared in the 1940's as cancer is today. Some recovered from it, but mostly it killed or crippled, so when I was 'chitted up' for a further check I was terrified. I reported at Sam but no one knew or cared anything about so I hung around till noon when everyone started bawling my name and demanding to know where I had been. It transpired that there was nothing the matter with my chest but there was some slightly unusual feature about the bones in my neck and the Surgeon Commander was professionally interested. After taking a few more shots for his family album they sent me on my way rejoicing and feeling as though the reprieve had arrived just as I was standing on the trap door.
Southend Naval Control was based in a row of houses on Royal Terrace overlooking the famous pier which was also under Naval control throughout the war. We were billeted on the locals just as we had been in Harrogate but on the whole we were much better received. Many of our hostesses were seaside landladies and as Southend was closed to casual visitors at the time it was us or nothing and most of them made the best of a bad job. I had experience of many middle-aged landladies in one way and another in my younger days and usually got on very well with them, although I had little success with women of my own a geat the time. If it is true that all the nice girls love a sailor it must have been some other sailor. If I had known then what I know now I might have tried my luck with the landladies, but its too late to think of that now.
Southend was the convoy assembly port for the Thames serving the coastal route up to the Firth of Forth and round the Dover corner to Portsmouth. When between ships at Newcastle-on-Tyne or Portsmouth we were billeted on the YMCA on which I make little comment because it made little impression on me, but in Methil on the Forth we were in civvy billets, easily the best I ever had.
The landladies there were miner's wives, many with sons also down the pit and although taking in sailors was surely unprofitable the way they treated us. They regarded it as their war effort. Perhaps they felt some guilt about their men all being in reserved occupations, but God knows they needn't have done. Miners worked far harder than we did and usually in far more dangerous conditions.
They treated us more like their own sons home on leave than lodgers and even on irregular visits of two or three days at a time we soon became members of the family. Sod's law decreed that if you arrived on a dark wet night your usual digs was ram-jam full but even then they got a meal going and dispatched one of the kids to find out who could accommodate you and show you where it was. Failing that they crammed you in and still made you comfortable and, above all, welcome. We frequently went out to the pubs with our landlords and their sons in the evenings. At the time women were not actually banned from Scottish pubs but they were very severely discouraged. On one such occasion a couple of our lads were being barracked a bit by some noisy locals. Before they could re-act their host stepped across and floored the noisiest one remarking with an air of finality “That’ll be enough about Sassenachs. These lads are with me."
(c) Chatham Barracks.
I had been at Southend some time before I got another look at Chatham Barracks being sent there in connection with a leading hand's course in 1943. This was the nearest I got to the real Navy, I suppose, and it completed my experience of Naval life ashore.
About a dozen of us travelled to Chatham by train and from the station to the barracks by lorry. Most of us were in trouble for a variety of minor crimes before we got over the gangway. I remember that one offence was wearing oilskins on a day when they had not been 'piped' at Chatham. The fact that we had been miles away at the time of the pipe was no excuse. It was pouring with rain at the time but that didn't matter either.
Before we could savour the delights of the barracks we had to do the 'joining routine'. This was a theoretically reasonable idea which had become distorted in practice. Each man was required to visit a number of Departments such as the doctor's, dentist's, chest X-ray, gas mask store, pay office, etc. for appropriate checks.
In order to do this we went to a window in the Drill Shed where a P.O. gave each of us a piece of paper about 12 inches by 4, completely blank. We had to make the rounds finding each place as best we might and each rubber-stamped the chit when theyhad made their check. When we thought we had done them all we returned to the P.O., who was probably a re-employed stoker, and he laboriously counted the stamps and said there were not enough of them. Apparently there were only 18 and we needed 22. So we said "Which ones have we missed, Chief?" and he replied "How do I know? You're four short". This tended to confirm the popular belief that the people behind these mysterious windows could neither read nor write. Be that as it may, they certainly were not picked for their brains.
Incidentally, in calling him 'Chief' we were playing it safe as I believe he was only a P.O.. It paid to address all N.C.O.'s as Chief, except a Master-at-Arms. His title was an ancient one dating back to the days when he instructed the ship's company in the use of the cutlass and he out-ranked all other C.P.O.'s. The proper form of address was 'Master', but as this sounded too much like something from 'Aladdin' most people just called him 'Sir'. Nobody could object to that and as a modern M.A.A. is a kind of chief of police it was better not to annoy him.
We were still standing in the Drill Shed at a loss and one lad said "How the hell do we find the other four?" I was becoming less innocent by the minute and suggested revisiting the nearest four of the eighteen we had already done. This was carried unanimously and when we had done it the P.O. said "That's right. Told you so" and honour was satisfied. I had had a bad moment when the Dental Commander took one look in my mouth and said” treatment" but as soon as his back was turned his assistantsaid "As you are going on to Cookham, get treatment there”. At Cookham, I assured them that I had done the routine at Chatham and thus ducked between two stools, so to speak. Months later when a tooth started playing me up I had it yanked out by a civvy dentist in Southend for half-a-crown.
I have never served on a large Naval unit afloat and whilst I am sure that they could not be as chaotically run as Chatham Barracks and remain afloat, I am quite happy to have missed the experience.
The Navy has a thing about moving at the double, which means running, as distinct from moving at the quick which is walking. Its origin is obscure but it has nothing to do with being in a hurry. Even Skegness had a bit of tarmac which was called the quarter-deck and had to, be crossed at the double. Chatham bristled with such areas. I remember seeing a wartime propaganda film about the crew of a Greek ship rescued from the enemy who were being trained for the Navy at Chatham. In the background of one shot was a huge notice reading:
'All ratings below the rank of P.O. will move at the double in the Gunnery School Area during working hours'
If the Greeks could read English they must have wondered if they had made the right move.
These doubling rules always excluded P.O.'s and upwards and they jealously guarded the privilege. I bet no P.O. ever doubled to the boat deck on a sinking ship. I heard of a Chief Yeoman of Signals below on a battleship when a signals panic broke out on the bridge and the Officer of the Watch sent the bridge messenger to tell the Chief to come up at the double. Assured that those were the officer's words not the messenger's, the Chief said in measured tones; "Go back to the bridge, at the double, and tell the Officer of the Watch that the Chief Yeoman is coming up at the quick. Tell him my doubling days are over". The officer apologised.
There was a strong rumour that two men spent the entire warcarrying a ladder to and fro in Chatham Barracks without being challenged or given any other duties. I don't doubt it, though a piece of paper would have served just as well as the ladder and not been so heavy. This was probably a case of service men putting more effort in to avoiding work than would have been required to do it.
I always had the feeling of being lost in some vast impersonal place controlled by remote gods who were not so much malignant as indifferent. If anyone had murdered me and not left the body lying about where someone could fall over it no one would ever have known. At the height of the war thousands of men idled around there and hundreds more were on 'accommodation leave'which meant that they lived at home until further orders and got pay and ration cards by post.
My impression that the whole place was out of control and no one knew exactly who was there was confirmed by my sister in the Admiralty. In wartime all letters to sailors at sea were addressed to:
A/Seaman Bloggs,
H.M.S. Unsinkable,
C/0. The G.P.O.
If the addressee was no longer on board the Unsinkable the letter was sent to the Port Divsional H.Q. to be re-directed. If they could find no trace of Bloggs in their records they certified that he was not and never had been, in their Divsion and sent the letter to the Admiralty. My sister's branch got so many from Chatham that they selected a test batch of 100 and traced them all. All of the men concerned not only had been, but still were, in Chatham Port Division and 60-odd were actually in the barracks
After this she visited Chatham to discuss the problem with the Drafting Commander and while in his office overheard two revealing telephone conversations. In the first, the captain of a ship rang to ask why a P.O. cook whom he had asked for had not turned up. The Commander said a man had been sent to join the ship in Grimsby a week before. The ship was under repair in Chatham Dockyard. Then the Commander had words with the telephone operator and afterwards said to his Chief Writer "Find out who that rating is on our exchange". The Chief replied; All our operators are Wrens, Sir", to which the officer retorted: "I know the difference between a man and a woman, you fool. Find out who he is and draft him to sea". If anyone finished up on his way to Murmansk as a result of that, I wouldn’t mind betting it was the wrong man.
After one night at Chatham we did the 'leaving routine' which was mercifully brief, and then went to Cookham where the joining routine was nominal. The course was a repetition of our original training in a more concentrated form and to a higher standard.We were given no instruction in the exercise of authority as such and the final tests were on Morse code and semaphore with written papers on Mersigs and Coding. I never had occasion to use semaphore at sea as it was virtually unknown in the MerchantNavy.
It was at Cookham that I had my only experience of being a member of a patrol. Unlike the army, which had its 'redcaps' who were full-time policemen with the authority of one stripe as Lance-Corporals, the Navy used members of the duty watch on shore patrols usually in pairs under a P.O.. Patrols operated in all naval ports and anywhere else where substantial numbers of liberty men were ashore and their main duty was to control drunkenness and arrest obstreperous offenders. Arrests were made by the two members of the patrol not the P.O., so if the drunk hit one of them they simply hit him back and little harm was done. Had he struck a P.O. this was a serious offence and to strike an officer was still punishable by death. Later on the Navy came into line with the Army and created a new rating of Leading Patrolman but I think this was a retrograde step.They had it right in the first place.
The Navy had a policy of leniency towards drunkenness off duty and particularly sought to avoid any serious offence by a man under the influence of drink. Officers and P.O.'s were expected to avoid confrontations and leave drunks to the patrol. One rating was court-martialled for striking an officer ashore. Apparently the man was improperly dressed - coat open, cap flat aback etc. - and was reprimanded by Lt. Brown R.N.V.R,, one thing led to another and he struck the officer with his fist and was immediately arrested by the patrol. At the trial Lt.Brown said that in his opinion the offender was not drunk but the P.O. of the patrol thought he was. The Court took the view that he certainly had 'drink taken' and he was dismissed the service and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment. Agreeing with this exceptional leniency, the Commander-in-Chief said he thought that Lt. Brown had been led astray by his zeal for the good name of the service into approaching the man when he should not have done so. He added: "I have interviewed Lt. Brown and am satisfied that he will show greater discretion in future". I felt rather sorry for Lt. Brown. Just a little excessive zeal and he finished up being punched on the nose and then carpeted by a full Admiral.
I remember my mother once told me she saw two sailors in the street in Portsmouth who were absolutely legless, leaning on each other and falling about and she was horrified to see a Commander approaching. As they passed him, however, the two drunks straightened up and saluted him quite correctly, an effort which left them more 'palatic' than ever. Being a regular senior officer, the Commander affected not to have seen them before the salute and did not look round after it. The course finished, successfully as far as I was concerned, we returned to Southend, by way of Chatham of course. Either we were more skilful or luckier in negotiating the routine as I don't remember it as being quite so onerous as before. While we were there I met one man who quite liked the place. He had been put on a foreign draft some months before and given the 'freedom of the gangway' which was normal in such cases and meant that he could pass in and out the barracks unquestioned. However, he was failed medically and taken off the draft without being put back on the duty rosters or deprived of his gangway pass. He lived quite handy and came in once a fortnight to collect his pay and ration cards. I don't know if he stopped doing it at the end of the war or kept it up until they pulled down the barracks.
Shortly after returning to Southend Base I was put on Leading Signalman's duties, acting unpaid, but was never actually rated up. Duties at sea were little different but more interesting as you had the ear of the Commodore. Ashore between trips LeadingHands did little or nothing except play snooker very badly at the Constitutional Club or Shove Ha'penny very skillfully in the Church Hall.