大象传媒

JOHN BARTLETT
Life in the Services, 1939 鈥� 1946

Chapter 2
鈥淪eaman at Sea鈥�

After many visits to the Royal Marine Sergeant at the local recruiting office, he reluctantly agreed to give me the address of the Admiral at St. Vincent's, the Royal Naval Air Training establishment, Gosport (Near Portsmouth).

Much to my surprise, I received an invitation to attend an Officers Selection Board at Gosport.

I entered the room to be seated in front of seven Naval officers, with the Admiral in the centre - very intimidating for a very young lad! It was no easy joy ride. All took it in turns to ask me a wide variety of questions, such as, "You say you know how an internal combustion engine works, there is some chalk behind you and a blackboard - explain how it works!", "In front of you are several model ships. If you were in command of this ship and you were attacked by this one, what would you do?"

After a time I was told by the Admiral to go outside and come back in when the bell rang. The bell rang and I was invited to resume my seat in front of the board. The Admiral said, "We have decided to accept you for the pilots training course". Whereupon a Captain with pilots wings on his arm said, "I am sorry, but I disagree with this". I was asked to go outside and wait for the bell. In I went for the second time, and once again they said I had been accepted for the pilots course - and once again the Captain said he disagreed. On the third entrance, the Admiral said, "Well, you know the pilot is only a taxi driver and the brains of the aircraft is the observer - you are going on the observers course". Despite my protests he firmly told me, "You will be on the observers course".

The first day we were (all one hundred and twenty of us) given naval rating uniform - bell-bottom trousers and jerkin but a white hatband. We were housed in the vast Victorian barracks, with iron bedsteads and cold linoleum floors, and meals were a scramble for appalling food - if you didn't push in the front, you went without. Large notices everywhere announcing you had to learn to be a seaman before you could be an airman. Every morning mass square bashing and doubling (running) around a vast parade ground with a boisterous band! In contrast, I soon found in the classroom I was largely surrounded by some good brains, with a good sprinkling of Oxbridge types.

After three months, we had to sit a range of exams. My results were bad. I was told I was no longer in the Fleet Air Arm but an ordinary seaman. I exchanged my brainy companions for some much less fortunate! To mark this I exchanged my white hatband for an ordinary black band with gold lettering.

I moved to Portsmouth barracks, which had been built for three thousand men and crammed with some thirty thousand. The worst thing of all was that each night we had to collect our hammock - all rolled up and bound with rope - then go for a long walk with the ungainly 'sausage' under your arm to look for a small space on the floor to spread out your bedding for the night.

There was nothing for us to do, so we were sent down to work in the dockyards, to work with the civilian dockyard workers. They only appeared to work when the foreman was looking, but as soon as his back was turned they all retreated into the air-raid shelter to play cards and smoke. I remember thinking I could easily load the truck with 'pig iron' (to weigh down the ship when it was empty, without cargo) on my own much quicker than the eight 'workers'. Needless to say, it was more than life was worth to do anything other than follow their way of doing things.

At night we were being bombed by the Germans - it started promptly at 9.00 p.m. each evening. We, the ordinary seamen, were expected to go into the attics of the old buildings with stirrup pumps and buckets of water to put out the incendiary bombs, which came through the roof, causing the rafters to burn.

After many interviews with my Divisional Officer (the officer responsible for your welfare) during which I said, "If I am going to be seaman, then I want to go to sea", in sheer exasperation he said to the Petty Officer, "Send this bl鈥︹��.. man to see at once".

The next morning I found myself in a three-ton truck with many other sailors, then driven off in convoy to the railway station. After one hundred and fifty names had been called, I went up to the Petty Officer to say, "You haven't called mine". "Oh well 鈥� you`d better go back in the truck to the barracks." I told him, in no uncertain terms, I did not want to go back. "Oh well, I will write your name on the bottom of the list. Join the others, I have put you down for H.M.S. Birmingham".

On the long train journey to Scapa Flow (the furthest point in the North of Scotland) I somehow found myself with some very friendly lads of my own 'ilk' - 'hopeful would-be officers'. They were all being posted to a destroyer, H.M.S. Arrow. They all said, "Come with us and we will put you name on the bottom of our list". I decided to stick with my arbitrary listing for Birmingham.

When I got into the motorboat to take me from the shore to the huge grey bulk, shrouded in mist on a miserable, cloudy, cold day. I began to wonder what I had let myself in for.

I hadn't been aboard for long before the Commander sent for me and said they had not had any signal about me, so I had better go back to Portsmouth! I protested strongly and appealed to him to let me stay. He agreed. I went down below, where I was shown to 'my mess' (a long narrow table with a bench on each side and rails for hanging hammocks above). This is where you ate, drank, slept, wrote your letters - everything. This was to be my home for fifteen months. The noise from the fans and the general babbling of voices seemed to me to be intolerable, but I got used to it - I had no option.

I soon found that I had been put into the quarter deck division. My Divisional Officer was a Lt. La Niece, who had been at my school in the top of the five bands in each year. He sent for me and made it perfectly plain there would be no special favours!

With over one thousand men on board it was like a floating town with its own bakeries, carpentry, blacksmiths, photographic shops and many more. Not to mention the bridge, engine room, the gunnery, galleys, officers mess and cabins, control room, chart house, hangars and then the gun turrets, other guns and torpedoes - very easy to get lost!

The ship had just got back from China and was therefore mainly crew who had been on the ship for four years. They were a rough tough lot and discipline was very fierce.

Soon after joining, we weighed anchor and slid off into the mist going north. There began the tedium of watch keeping either on guns or lookout. Lookout duty was bad enough, but terrible as it got colder and colder until if you touched anything metal with bare hands, you lost the skin off your fingers!

Having peeped at the Faro Islands, the Norwegian Fjords and the mountains of Iceland, we went even further north searching, I later discovered, for the famous German 'Pocket Battle Ship' Bismark. Fortunately we didn't find her, but sometime later we had a signal to say the battleship H.M.S. Hood had been sunk by the German Pocket Battle Ship.

The Birmingham was no match for the German ship but we headed for the position where the Hood has sunk at top speed, about thirty-three knots, in heavy weather. The whole ship vibrated violently and shook every time we hit a wave head on. All the china smashed and the light bulbs jumped out of their sockets!

Some three hours later we passed over the position where the Hood had sunk but all we could see was some minor wreckage.

We collected a huge convoy near Liverpool, which we were to escort. We set sail for West Africa - slight contrast in weather! We then set off for South Africa.

All the time I was having a rough time because I was given all the dirty jobs to do - scrubbing mess deck, cleaning the heads (loo's to you). One burly Liverpool thug made himself particularly objectionable. One mealtime he made some bitter sarcastic remark to me, which was the final straw. I exploded with rage, although only small and skinny I picked him up by the scruff of the neck and the seat of his pants then threw him down the centre of the table, causing all the meals to fly in all directions!

The leading seamen in charge of the mess ordered us - and their word was law - onto the fo'castle to fight! In minutes the whole ship was alight. Members of the crew were clambering on guns and any special vantage point to see this special spectacle. We stood a yard apart then started punching each other. It didn't seem too long before I was struggling to get up off the deck and get back into the fight, when I found myself restrained by two burly sailors on each arm.

They marched me down to the bathroom where they held my head under the cold tap then yanked my head back by holding me by my hair and thrusting me in front the mirror said, "Look at your face Sonny." It was like a bit of raw meat - very bruised with blood oozing from many cuts. The trouble was he had several rings on each hand.

I felt devastated because I thought, "There goes any chance I might have of being an Officer". Although obviously some of the officers must have seen the affair from the bridge, it was never mentioned. However, my Divisional Officer moved me to another mess. Although they seemed an even rougher bunch - five of them couldn't read or write - they treated me with respect and I had no more troubles.

Ordinary seamen like me had to take their shoes off and sling them round their neck, whilst washing down the decks everyday. The leading seamen on the other hand wore high leather boots, they stood with their hands behind their backs ready to pounce on some poor ordinary seamen to tell him to scrub harder, then if necessary give him a good kick up the backside!

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.