大象传媒

ON DRAFT TO SYDNEY
At Glenholt I immediately requested to join the six weeks' course for VS3 (Leading Signalman), which rate would raise my daily pay by 1/7d. One course had been under way for a week, and another was due to start in about three weeks. I presumed I might soon be off to Trincomalee en route to Tokyo, and determined to scrounge all the leave I could.
I also requested to be transferred from the Devonport to the Chatham Division, feeling that from Chatham I might reach home on short leaves, which I could not do from Devonport. This request was granted, but never implemented.
I found Glenholt worse than before in every detail except one - that there were now film-shows on alternate evenings. I wrote home, The great joy of my existence here is that I have two extra blankets, lovely white new fluffy ones, and as I turn in by the little stove in the hut I am nice and warm, though it's jolly cold turning out in the morning. The food is meagre in quantity, doubtful in quality, and spoiled in the cooking. The Camp is mud and cinders all around, on a cheerless chilly hill, and a sixpenny 'bus-ride from the Town or a seven-mile walk uphill if you miss the 'bus. After tramping through the undergrowth to find the washplace you shave in iced water without mirrors. If the water should be hot, which isn't often, it comes from the tap a dark-brown colour.
I was allocated to a Class of 25 other T.O.s, and was looking forward to starting the course on December 11th. A pleasant advantage accruing from this was that on duty-nights, instead of falling in for dirty jobs or night-sentries I could attend voluntary instruction from 1700 to about 1830. I was pleased to find that I had lost none of my previous signalling competence and skill, and on the Sunday I served at the 1100 service and also attended corrugated evensong at 1645. On Wednesday November 15th I was sitting munching my tea when the nearby loudspeaker crackled into life with the announcement: The following (twelve) ratings report at once to the Office, on draft to R.N.B. (Royal Naval Barracks) Sydney - and Lo! - although it was not the case that Ben Adhem's name led all the rest, mine was certainly amongst them.
This somewhat momentous news meant that I should lose my VS3 Course, and that I should be at home neither for Christmas nor for my 21st birthday, but that I might hope to see my Australian cousins and even my Uncle Jack. I was granted 14 days' Foreign-Service Draft-Leave, and arrived home on the 17th, and began a round of visits and farewells destined to last rather longer than usual. I began to make a list of addresses of cousins in Australia, my father gave me some of his colleagues working there, and the Vicar procured me an interview with an S.P.G. man in London who gave me more.
On Sunday 19th we heard the explosion of a V2 rocket at 0715 and I attended Communion at 0800. We heard another V2 explode next day, several on the 23rd, and on the 24th a V1 during the night and the usual V2 explosion about 2045. It seems odd to me that in the 1990's folk make a great fuss about counselling people who have encountered some traumatic experience - such as the Police who witnessed the football-stand fire, or children at secondary-school whose school-fellows may have lost their lives in an accident, whereas in the 1940's we all lived with the intimate knowledge of much worse events, and lived constantly amid the noise of falling bombs and V1 and V2 weapons, knowing that the next day might well be our last, and nobody dreamed of rushing to hold our hands. We just got on with it. Part of the explanation might be that family-life was more secure, and many drew strength from their religious beliefs, but I suspect that this counselling has become an industry.
On Saturday 25th my parents and I, with Peggy Francis and her mother, saw Peter Ustinov's play The Banbury Nose, starring Roger Livesey and Ursula Jeans, at the Wyndhams Theatre, our tickets costing 4/6d each. I noted that the V2 rockets continued to fall every few hours.
During this leave my parents wanted to buy me a signet ring. I was not keen, but they persisted, had it engraved, and sent it to me by post.
At 2330 on the 30th I caught the train to Plymouth. I began drawing tropical kit- khaki shorts, white shoes, a water-bottle and a small white kitbag called a steaming-bag+. I spent the next eleven days loafing about the Camp and in cinema visits ashore, and on Tuesday 12 12 1944 I began my first circumnavigation of the globe, in a Westerly direction.
My account now derives partly from my diaries and partly from a second file of letters, December 1944 to June 1946. Some of the first letters are micro-photographed V-Mail. The idea was to reduce the bulk of the mail to be carried in ships or aircraft. The example I print here is actual size. One needed a magnifying glass to read it.
Most of the rest are Air Letters written on special forms similar to the modern type, and most of the rest, written after I left China, are on ordinary notepaper. It contains 181 of my letters (about 150 of them from Australia), 60 from my parents (34 from my father and 26 from my mother), and two from Grandma Jessie Davies; a total of 243 letters
My journey began with a small tragedy. We were paid at 1000 and told to take our kit to the cinema shelter, where there was a sign Outgoing Drafts, and a two-man guard. We were given our dinner at 1030, and were to leave at 1100. When I returned to the shelter I could not find my steaming-bag anywhere. After all the kit had been loaded onto the lorry I told C.P.O.Tel.Hodges, in charge of the party, that my bag was not on board. He told me to hop in, as the lorry was going, and he wouldn't stop the driver for me. (There must have been plenty of time, since our train did not leave until 1300). When we arrived at North Road Station my bag was not on either of the two lorries. I told the Chief again, and the Sub-Lieutenant R.T.O. (Railway Transport Officer) a Leading Seaman, Chief, and Wren R.T.O.s as well, but nobody was interested. After a long time the Wren made telephone contact with the Barracks, and they said they were too busy to make enquiries. I persuaded the R.T.O. to make a note of my name, which he eventually did, rather half-heartedly, on a small scrap of paper which I imagined would never see the light of day again.
The bag, which had obviously been stolen, contained 44lbs (the aircraft-weight limit) of my essential gear, including some things of irreplaceable value. There were two towels, four pairs of pants, two pairs of khaki shorts, two khaki shirts, three white shirts, three white fronts (fore-and-aft square-necked tabards), two pairs of white shorts, one pair of white shoes, swimming-trunks, my enamel mug, toothbrush and paste, razor, blades, two jars of shaving-cream, a housewife, hair-oil, two bars of soap, a bottle of O-Syl (mild disinfectant) a face-flannel, black silk, jean collar, six handkerchiefs, all my photographs, my address-book, letters, envelopes, postcards, diaries, autograph-album, notebooks, pencils, dictionary, T.S.Eliot鈥檚 Four Quartets, my Bible, Prayerbook, small steel mirror, writing-pad, playing-cards, Beveridge's Full Employment in a Free Society, two packs of patience-cards, the backs shewing Nelson's Victory and Drake's Revenge, which I particularly treasured. I often wonder whether the thief is still alive, and whether he felt proud of his work when he saw my photographs and other personal things.
We reached Crewe at 2315, had supper there in the N.A.A.F.I., having picked up a bag meal and cup of tea at a previous station, and boarded the train for Glasgow, arriving there about 0800 on the Wednesday. There we had breakfast at Aggie Weston's (The Royal Sailors' Rest), where I managed to scribble an emergency letter home telling of my loss and asking for the addresses. (As a result, my father wrote to the Barracks on my behalf, but nothing was ever discovered.) After breakfast we travelled by train the Greenock and were ferried out to the troopship Ile de France, the third-largest ship in the world. (After the War it was re-named Lafayette, and when due to be scrapped it was used in a 'disaster-movie', and filmed in a half-sinking condition, the hero rescuing the heroine, trapped below, just as the water reached her face. After that it was pumped-out and taken to the breakers' yards in Japan.) My story The San Francisco Tea-Party describes some facets of life aboard, and some details of my journey across the United States.
We went aboard at 1500, had lunch about 1530, boat drill at 1615, and dinner about 1900. The ship had an American crew. Every meal in the Troop Mess-Hall was in two sittings, U.S. first, then British & Canadian Forces. We were quartered in No.1 Boat Deck, which had space for 390 troops in our section, to sleep like sardines on five-tier steel bunks, but we numbered about 200, including sailors, marines, and Fleet Air Arm men going to train in Canada. Also aboard were many U.S.Army & Navy and Canadian Air Force officers and men, civilians and War Correspondents going home for Christmas. We had to wear life-jackets at all times, and muster at our allotted Emergency Stations daily at 1030. Reveill茅 each day was at 0630. The Yanks broadcast it over the intercomm. as revely, to which we British shouted back in chorus, You mean revally!
The food was good, but, served at every meal, the only drink was coffee. I bought a whole list of articles at the canteen to replace my lost gear, the staff there selling in Sterling, and American and Canadian Dollars, and giving change in any currency desired. I saw a Yank buy Canadian biscuits with six U.S.Dollars and get 4/6d change. On the main staircase I passed the film-star Claude Rains (famous in Casablanca and Phantom of the Opera); he was returning to the U.S.A. after making the film of Shaw's Cleopatra. I took advantage of the fact that he had been allocated to the same Boat-Station as myself by asking him for his autograph. (A2,2) In conversation with shipmates I learned about cents, nickels, dimes, and quarters, and the slang two bits (25c) four bits (50c) and six bits (75c), there being no one, three, or five bits.
The clocks were steadily put back an hour at a time. I attended film-shows. I attended Communion and other services and was given a U.S.Serviceman's Testament and Prayer-Book. I read several books from the Library, including Jacobean Plays in a Harvard edition. After dinner on Thursday 21st we arrived in Boston Harbor, in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and all the U.S. and Canadian Servicemen, and civilians, disembarked. The Yanks seemed to discard kit they were disinclined to carry, and I presumed this was an example of the throw-away spirit of their culture, of which I shall relate more later. I acquired from their leavings a steel helmet (of which I still have the inner hard-fibre lining), a plastic water-bottle and padded cover, a respirator-haversack, and a sailor's white hat+, all items which would have had to be strictly accounted for in the R.N.

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