大象传媒

MY LIFE MY WAR

By
Bernard Hallas

Chapter 6 - Back to the Grime

I did however visit home and looking at the down at heel district of Chorlton on Medlock only served to convince me that I had certainly done the right thing that morning when I left. I think that one of the best things about my visit was the obvious pride of my Father, badly crippled as he was, he insisted that I joined him in the local pub and always it was the same introduction, 鈥淭his is my youngest, he鈥檚 a Royal Marine, first to land and last to leave鈥�.
He was so proud and pleased when I was with him, and I couldn鈥檛 deny him that small pleasure. It was as if he was saying 鈥淚 may be a cripple, but this is my son鈥�. I have to admit that I considered my visits home to be a duty and I was only too glad to return to my friends where I enjoyed a much better lifestyle, I did not at that moment in time realise that I was acting as a first class snob.

My friends were an Irish family from Sligo, as I explained previously the mother was a widow with seven very beautiful daughters and two younger sons. The youngest daughter, Georgina was a really good looker, she had everything and it was all in the right place, but a poorly paid Royal Marine was not her idea of a good time. She was more interested in the well-heeled bookies and those of the racing fraternity who were frequent visitors to her mother鈥檚 house. Maude, the eldest was a real classical Irish beauty.

Unfortunately for her, one of the visitors, a married man took her eye and they became lovers. It had to happen, she became pregnant and the married man, a well-heeled Manchester garage owner, to avoid a scandal, arranged a back street abortion. It went wrong and Maud died a short time after. I suppose that in a way I enjoyed the company of the easy come easy go gambling men and they enjoyed showing me the town, money was no object and frequently I became the recipient of a large white five pound note which came in very handy on my leave which was over far too soon.
I eventually tore myself away from this lovely family, who gave me food and lodging and asked nothing in return, and caught the train back to my ship.

My stay on HMS Resolution lasted for one year. In that year I qualified for my higher gunnery rating and became a QR2. On my transfer to my next ship, HMS Royal Sovereign, I became a Gun Captain and in the Marines鈥� fifteen-inch turret I became the churn lever operator, the main job in the turret. I was already proving myself. The other churn lever operator on the left gun was a much senior Marine who had been in the corps for many years, I can鈥檛 say we became very good friends but he tolerated the youngster who worked opposite him in the gun house, and that was as near as we got. It was a natural state of affairs in the service, men tended to stay in circles comprised of those in a similar seniority and it was accepted without question.

Going back to gunnery, we, the Marines, manned only one of the four turrets and Seamen manned the other three. In addition we manned four of the AA guns on the port side and four of the six-inch guns on the starboard side; the Marines also manned their own magazines.

The Royal Marine Bandsmen were also employed in the gunnery system and it was a very important function and a very dangerous one. Deep down in the bowels of the ship they controlled the Transmitting Station, a small compartment reached by a vertical ladder, and there they co-ordinated all the information relating to the ship鈥檚 armaments, distance of targets, wind velocity, range, direction of targets, opening and closing speeds and a host of other important features. Needless to say, if a ship was sunk, by virtue of their confined and difficult to reach position, percentage wise, they suffered the most casualties.

Finding my way around my new ship posed no problem. She was a sister ship of my last one which made life much easier, however she had the same problems, the boilers could only cope at the most, with only one bucket of water per rating; showers, washing and shaving had to be performed in cold salt water, not a very pleasant pastime. In peacetime, service in the Home Fleet was not a very exciting place to be.

Mostly going to sea for two or three weeks at a time, carrying out gunnery exercises and performing all sorts of Fleet manoeuvres, the Admirals enjoyed themselves, moving the huge ships around like toys and giving out stupid orders, designed to keep every one on their toes. An example might be 鈥淗MS So and So, prepare to fry eggs on the forecastle.鈥� You may think that I am joking, but ordering a ship to send it鈥檚 postman round the ship on a bicycle was just another Admiral鈥檚 idea of fun, there were many more and they came under the hated title of 鈥淓volutions鈥�.

To cheer us up there was the inevitable visit to Scapa Flow. This was an experience. Usually three battleships with their attendant cruisers and destroyers, each giving leave to half of their ship鈥檚 company at the same time in Kirkwall, was something to behold. One very small pub, rationing the beer to one pint per man, and obviously not enough glasses to go round, was not a sailor鈥檚 idea of fun. The officers of course had no such problems; their wardroom mess was well stocked up with every kind of drink.

I suppose to have talked like this all those years ago would have been classed as mutinous. It certainly would not be accepted nowadays. Two or three days in this 鈥淕raveyard鈥� of the Orkneys, as it was of course, with the German High Seas Fleet lying beneath our keels, was more than enough. Then it was back to sea and more 鈥淓volutions鈥� and testing the versatility of the various units, what it actually did was to create the idea that our Admirals had nothing better to do than make bloody fools of themselves and I am fairly certain that this view was held by most of the executive Officers aboard each ship in the fleet.

During these spring manoeuvres some lucky units would proceed to the French Riviera visiting Juan le Pais, St. Jean de Luz, Gibraltar and Lisbon.

After a time, all of these places came to be well known to the older hands, the brothels and bars all had their own type of entertainment, and Lisbon in particular was so cheap it was a joy to spend an afternoon going round the souvenir shops, after which, having spent three months away, it was expected that we would return to our home port and with a bit of luck go home on leave.

鈥淗ome on Leave鈥�, as soon as I stepped off the train in Piccadilly, Manchester I became an object of attention, perfectly turned out in best blues, brasses gleaming, white gloves and a silver headed swagger cane and a blue hat with the globe and laurel badge on a red background, I could walk tall. I was back in my hometown and Royal Marines were rarely seen so far north.

Mothers smiled and apologised as their children crept up behind me to read my buttons. It was a nice feeling.

PR-BR

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