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That evening in the mess when the charioteers gathered, we discovered that each of us had been allotted to an X-craft, and had met the crew members. Geordie was to join X5, skippered by Henty-Creer, who had the reputation of being the most original of the skippers present. Bob Aitken's strength and solid calm had commended itself to Godfrey Place of X7. Chick Thomson, lithe and athletic, seemed to fit in well with fellow Scot Don Cameron. Spike O’Sullivan would have been assigned to Terry Martin’s X9, but developed persistent sinus problems and had to withdraw, and was replaced by Maxie Shean, the Australian who had been working out techniques for cutting X-craft through A/S netting. Dickie Kendall was assigned to another Aussie, Ken Hudspeth, the CO of X10; both men were trim and lean in build, and so seemed to harmonise.

As divers, the main difficulty we faced was getting enough training in. Things were made worse when we stated what we would need to have with us in the way of gear: two diving suits, three breathing sets, three sets of oxygen bottles, a canister of protosorb, various instruments, spare boots, weights, wrist rings, nose clips, paste for cleaning the visors. Some of these items were quite small, but others were very bulky. The officers were appalled at this extra volume to be carried inside the craft, not so much because of the weight, but because it cut down on the number of cubic feet of air to breathe inside: the less air, the shorter the time we could stay submerged without surfacing for air replenishment. In the end some kind of compromise was reached, but I remember feeling that what we would be allowed to take with us was dangerously insufficient.

Another serious setback to our training programme was that the pressure cutters had yet to be fitted to the X-craft when we arrived. This meant that each vessel had to be hoisted inboard and set up on chocks, but this operation was laborious and would have to wait until the next phase of preparation, when other adjustments had to be made the craft on the main well-deck of Bonaventure. Before that occurred the most we could hope for was to practise getting in and out of the midget sub underwater, and simulating cutting it through the anti-submarine net by touching the wires in the right sequence. But even that seemed not to be forthcoming: we felt increasingly frustrated, and uneasy. Still unsure of being really wanted, even if needed, the days went by without real hands-on experience.

Trial run

It was thanks to pressure from Maxie Shean that we finally got the opportunity of having a dummy run at the nets. He had actually cut an X-craft through, and worked out a technique for doing this, with hand signals to the skipper, who would respond with wiggles at the periscope. I was in doubt about the feasibility of such signalling, but at least he knew about diving, and this we respected. He must have used some other means of cutting through, for the high-power cutters were yet to be installed on the operational X-craft.

So the day came when it was X8's turn to carry out a dummy run at the nets. I prepared the diving gear in the battery space forward, and sat in the wet-and-dry in normal working clothes while Buck took the craft away from Bonaventure on her engines. They struck me as very noisy; the explosions in the cylinders reverberated through the confined space, echoing off the metal hull. In a little while however we had proceeded to the north side of the loch, not far from where the anti-submarine nets hung. With great care Jack began to trim down, until X8 was just hanging to the underside of the water surface; another burst or two of the pumps, and we were below, and moving slowly ahead.
'How's the trim, Jack?' Buck asked.
'Pretty good, I'd say,' Jack replied, turning the hydroplane control wheel lightly to keep the craft just below the surface.
'Fifteen feet, slow ahead!'
'Fifteen feet, slow ahead.'
'Steer 270!'
'Steer 270, surr.'
Buck took the fixed periscope - the larger one with no hoist, mounted a foot or so above the casing -and looked ahead underwater.
'Depth fifteen feet,' Jack called out.
'Ship's head on 270, surr.'
Buck was swivelling from side to side. 'Should be nearing the net soon now.'
I could sense the tension mounting. The crew of X8 had never approached a net before, and had the submariner's fear of getting entangled in it. For me the A/S nets held no fears; I had clambered about on them in Loch Corrie, and on a chariot gone under them too.
'Can't see any bloody net,' Buck complained. Suddenly he whirled the periscope round to point it abeam, then slightly aft. 'Bugger!' Then he swung round one hundred and eighty degrees. 'We've gone right through the bloody thing.'
The crew exchanged looks of astonishment, and then turned enquiringly to me. 'That make any sense, Lefty?'
'You didn't go round one side?'
'Not sure.'
'What did you see of the net?'
Buck explained.
'Then that means,’ I told them, ‘that this net has already been used for cutting practice, sufficient to leave large holes in it. Maybe charioteers have been at it. Our net in Loch Corrie was more holes than anything else.'
'How do we find a part without holes? I can't cruise alongside it looking.'
'Go deeper. Chariots cut through at about fifteen feet. Try twenty-five. or even thirty.'

'What about forty?'
I gave Buck an alarmed glance. 'That could give me O2 poisoning — and make me flake out.'
'Not below thirty then. Port twenty! Periscope depth!'
The craft heeled slightly to starboard as the rudder bit. The bows inclined up. I thought I could see more light coming through the thick glass ports by the periscope dome.
'Steady on 090!'
'Steady on 090, Surr.'
'Ten feet,' Jack announced.
The periscope hoist hissed as Buck pushed the button.
'We'll go around again, Jack, and try at thirty feet.'
'Right.'
The second time we nosed our way quite gently into the nets at twenty-eight feet.
'She's riding quite steady, it seems,' Buck said, at the fixed periscope. 'Hold her there, Jack?'
Buck nodded to me. I drew the diving gear from the battery space, and he helped me draw the legs of the suit on to my legs. But the confined space made it hard to get it over my loins. I think I had to go down on all fours to give him space to get enough purchase. I sat on the deck beside the helmsman to give headroom for the upper piece to be drawn over my head. I folded the apron myself, and put on the clamp to close up the opening through which I had crawled. The rest of the dressing was easier: the boots, the weights around my waist, the wristbands to stop water entering there - until we came to the bag and bottles. In the end these had to be passed to me inside the wet-and-dry and slid on in there, as far as I remember, as I would have been too bulky to get in through the hatchway with them on. By now I was sweating with the exertion of pulling on the rig. It was hard to put myself on O2 with so little room to lean forward to expel the air from my lungs. I did what I could, and hoped that there was no nitrogen left to give me bends. At last I was ready, my visor shut. I gave Buck the thumbs up.

The glass door closed, then the real hatch. I was in darkness. Two thumps from inside meant it was up to me now. I heard the pump working, transferring water from the ballast tanks to the compartment I was sitting in. The water began swirling around my ankles, and as the level travelled slowly up my body I welcomed the cold. I vented as much as I could, aware of pockets of air trapped around my thighs and knees, and knowing that I must vent that out too before quitting the wet-and-dry, or that air could upend me, and my bag could rapidly empty - its vent hole was underneath. The water was up to my chest, my neck, my visor ...The gurgling stopped. I placed my thumb on the equaliser and pressed. And pressed. Every few seconds I tried the main hatch, and checked that the lever was fully open.

All of a sudden, and with deceptive ease, the hatch yielded, and dark greenish light flowed in. I hooked my feet under the combing as I rose, and gave the suit time to vent. Then I pulled myself down again, slid the fingers of one hand into the apertures in the casing, and shut the hatch. It was a rule to keep the hatch shut underwater as well as on the surface when under way. Underwater it was needed so that if I fell off or was lost in some other way, say by enemy action, the crew inside could pump the water in the wet-and-dry and continue with the operation or the journey. Nevertheless it felt to me as though I was saying a kind of potential goodbye to them.

Outside the X-craft I was once again on my own. I guffed up the bag a bit to give me plenty of lung capacity to draw on. Then I crawled aft, or rather drew myself aft by a series of handholds in the casing to the spot where the cutter would be stowed when it was fitted. I simulated taking out the cutter, and hand-dragged myself forward again to the bows of the midget. This was much harder work, for now I was going against the incoming tide. Finally I reached the net, and still one-handed, drew myself through the diamond above the nose of the midget. I looked up as I did so, and was able to see, over to my left, a large gap in the net higher up. That might have been the one we slipped through the time before. I swung down to one of the lower diamonds, pretended to cut first one wire and then the other; then up to the final one, the one that would release the submarine, and let her through. After waiting a moment, to study how the craft rode against the net, I slipped aft again, gave the thumbs up to the fixed periscope, which wiggled in answer, and slid down into the wet-and-dry.

As soon as I had the hatch securely shut, I gave the two thumps and heard the reverse action begin from inside, A minute later the hatch to the control room opened. I was already off O2.
'All right, Lefty?' Buck was smiling.
'Fine. Everything OK.'
'Slow astern, Jack!'
'Slow astern.'
'Are the bows going to snag on the net, Lefty?'
'Shouldn't do, Buck. Nothing for them to catch on.'
Buck was at the fixed periscope. 'They seem to be following us, though.'
'That could be the effect of the tide. We've been pushing against them all the time. There's probably a dirty great bend in the buoys on the surface.'
Buck looked concerned. 'That'd show something was there, wouldn't it ... But now we're clearing them ... Yes, they're slipping away. Can't see them any more. Half astern!'
'Half astern.'
In a few seconds we had gone far enough to reverse the motor and take X8 back up to the surface. The exercise had gone very well … as far as it went.

The Kylesku Inn

But that was as far as we could get in the way of diving practice until the cutters were fitted to X8. So we had to wait, and hang around, and try and make ourselves useful to our respective commanders, each of whom reacted in his own way. Buck was friendly, but didn't see any need for help from me; he had his own working-up schedule to follow, and no time to spare. I was there as a diver; that was my job, and that was that.

But there was to be another problem regarding divers. While on the nets with X6, Chick Thomson impaled his hand on a strand of wire. He simply dragged it free, and carried on with the dummy run, but the wound quickly festered, and within hours he had developed a temperature, while the throbbing grew ever more painful. When he began to have hallucinations, the MO called up a seaplane from a base further south, and had him transported in all haste to hospital. He had to be given a new drug to keep the effects of the poison under some degree of control. It was clear that Chick too must be counted out of the running, and would have to be replaced. Another charioteer was flown up from Tites, one who had trained even later than us: Jo Harding. But Donald Cameron had asked for, and obtained, the transfer of Dickie Kendall from X10 to X6. So Harding, a midshipman, went to Ken Hudspeth on X10.

Whenever we were allowed ashore therefore, we took the opportunity to stretch our legs on dry land. It lay within fifty yards of us, for the coast next to us formed a grassy bluff, cutting steeply down from a couple of hundred feet to the water's edge, and then continuing to drop away sharply under us. At the shore line were rocks and boulders, and the skiff deposited us there when we wanted some exercise with plenty of freedom and space about us.

The contrast with the cluttered and often noisy deck of Bonaventure was startling. As we scrambled up the gully to get on the bluff, the heady scent of summer grasses invaded us, and at the top the wind scooped up pockets of air laden with the smells of earth and peat and heather. The only house I can remember seeing was far away on the other side of the loch, an area I never visited, though I believe some of the others went over to the north shore once to do a day's trekking.

Our commonest destination became the Kylesku Inn, four or five miles away. To reach it, we made our way across grassland and peat bog; to our right, the turves of peat already dug lay drying in the sun beside the trenches from which they had been taken. After a while we came upon a track, rather than a road, and this wound inland, sometimes losing sight of the loch, and then revealing it again in new vistas. It always felt a long road to me, until we finally came in sight of the inn - a farmstead in stone, with low scattered buildings, set at the foot of a long slope covered in rough pastureland, near the shore of the loch.

We were received into the main room of the farmhouse, and given high tea. The farm reared a few pigs and kept chickens, so eggs and bacon could be relied on, as well as girdle cakes, and butter from the cows, also plenty of fresh milk to drink, or tea by the jug. We knew better than to ask for alcohol: this was the country of the Wee Frees, a version of Christianity so severe that it was said to make a Kirk dominie from Stirling look like an Italian debauchee.

The room we ate in had a low ceiling. I had to bend down to enter the doorway. But once we were sat down at the worn starched linen, and the smell of bacon and eggs or of steaming kippers came through to us, and we were lining our stomachs with farmhouse bread and country butter, our good spirits generated a warm sense of relaxation such as was impossible to achieve on board Bonaventure. So after consuming often two helpings of kippers or bacon eggs, and a very large number of griddle cakes with honey, washed down with a pint or more of tea, we would contentedly rise, and pay our dues: her prices were incredibly low, yet she would ask for the sum owed with some embarrassment.

Outside we might pause for a moment to look up the two lochs that forked inland, and if the weather was clear my eyes would be drawn to the smooth dark cone of Suilven, exuding a sense of menace. Frequently however clouds would obscure its peak, and we would take a look about us to estimate whether we would have to step out to get back to our ship before the weather broke, or whether we might take it easy, and let our meal digest peacefully as we ambled along.

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