by Jon Pertwee
Our Master-at-Arms, Jimmy Green, was of the ‘old demon’ school. An immense man with a huge stomach, he could move, when he wanted to, at the speed of light. When we were closed-up for action with the main hatches shut, it was necessary to climb through a small circular one situated in the middle of the main hatch. This presented no problem at all to CPO Green – he would ram his body up the hole as far as it would go, then placing both hands over his gargantuan gut, press sharply and firmly inwards. Like a child squeezing a balloon, his stomach would suddenly overflow over the top of the hatch-cover and he was up and away. To go down below, all he had to do was reverse the procedure. It was a wonderful sight if you were ever standing beneath, to see that massive mound of flesh appear like magic ‘Before Your Very Eyes!’ Jimmy was involved in a running battle with a bunch of seamen called Macdonald from the Island of Stornaway. They all had the same name, were all closely related, all talked at once in an incomprehensible dialect and only found rapport with some Scottish seamen from the Gorbals in Glasgow, who were equally incomprehensible.
One forenoon, this heterogeneous collection were working up in the bow on a damaged ‘blake stopper’ (an enormous clip that held the anchor chair from running free). The seas were gigantic and it was necessary for all hands of the working party to wear safety lines, to prevent their being washed overboard. Not so Jimmy. In oilskins and seaboots he was up there with them, moving about free of any incumbrance and shouting out salty, unwelcome instructions over the howling wind. Suddenly as the bow dipped, a huge wave caught him and swept him straight overboard. In seconds the frantically waving man was gone from sight.
‘Thank Christ fer that,’ said one Macdonald.
‘Serves the loud mouthed bastard right,’ said another.
‘I hope to Christ nothin’s happened to him,’ chimed in a Glaswegian, his eyes twinkling with glee at the fat Master-at-Arms’ demise. It was unanimously decided that out of respect for the dear departed, all work on the ‘stopper’ should cease forthwith and they would repair to the mess-deck for a cup of hot ‘kai’ (chocolate). Unbeknown to them, Jimmy had been swept along the port side of the ship and as he drew level with the quarterdeck, the deck had dipped low, miraculously allowing him to be swept back on board. Grabbing a rail to prevent his onward rush, he was quickly assisted to safety. Without pausing for even momentary ministration, he swept through the ship dripping water from every cranny, and burst out on to the bow just as the mourners were on their way to the wake.
‘All right you bastards, get back to work, or I’ll spifflicate the lot of you,’ he bellowed. It was a good thing that most of the lads were still on safety lines, otherwise the shock and subsequent paralysis they received, would’ve been party to their own disappearance over the side.
Jimmy cheated death twice in a very short space of time, as due to a sudden transfer, he narrowly missed going down in Hood with all the others.
When I was appearing in a Sunday concert for Billy Butlin in the late 50s Jimmy made it known that he would like to see me. Expecting his massive frame to appear around my dressing room door, you could imagine my surprise when a gaunt, thin figure with haunted eyes, weighing no more than ten stone, appeared there instead. His old Scottish adversaries had finally got their wish. Something had indeed happened to him. Perhaps the shock of that terrible experience and the loss of his beloved ship had eventually caught up with him and taken a terrible toll on that memorable macrocosm of a man.
*
The Naval Chaplain in Hood was the Very Reverend Tiarks, uncle of the beautiful Henrietta, Marchioness of Tavistock. ‘Lofty’, as he was known throughout the Navy, was a very popular man but his greatest companion, apart from God, was a pink-eyed, white bull terrier, who was very unpopular. This dog he brought aboard from time to time and naturally the poor hound had to relieve itself. The fifteen-inch gun turrets were its surrogate lamp-posts, but for the more generous offerings, Lofty carried around his own ‘pooper scooper’. In spite of Lofty’s good intentions in cleaning up after Fido, the consensus was ‘that it was a bleedin’ liberty to ’ave a bleedin’ mutt aboard a bleedin’ ship in the first bleedin’ place’.
So seconding a sympathetic Sparks to the ‘anti-woofer’ section of the crew responsible for the cleanliness of that part of the deck, a metal electrified plate was installed in the dog’s favourite area for personal calls. So the next time the poor beast lifted his leg and had a squirt, he received up his stream such a severe whack in the winky, that it deterred him from ever repeating such indignities on that part of the ship again. He just went off to the stern and peed on someone else’s gun-turret instead!
*
At just about the right time, for we all badly needed a rest, the ship was ordered into Rosyth near Edinburgh for a refit. This meant a long leave. I could go home, see some shows and try to forget the war for a week or two. A somewhat vain hope as the air-raids were still very heavy.
As a leave, it was a bitter disappointment: Carlotta had returned to Ceylon, my brothers were severally in the Army in Ireland and Burma, and my father was living in a small flat with his new wife, Kitty. After a fond greeting he seemed to find the prospect of my presence for more than 48 hours a source of irritation, so after going to the ‘Olde Lanterne’ and finding not one familiar face, apart from ‘Ma’, Nellie and the Misses Ione and Ella, I decided I would return to the relative peace and quiet of Edinburgh and continue the rest of my leave there. I arrived after dark and was mounting the Waverley Station steps leading from the railway station up to Princes Street, when a tremendous gust of wind blew me up the stairs. Gathering speed, I hit the guard-rail that had been put there for the express purpose of preventing people similarly out of control from being blown under the wheels of a passing bus. Coming to an abrupt and painful halt, my cap was whisked from my head and disappeared into the total darkness, God knows where.
This was a tragedy beyond all proportions, for seamen carry everything of import tucked into two pockets of their cap’s lining. Leave-pass, watch card, identity card, money and pay-book.
I lay over the rail and nearly wept. What now? With my hard-saved money gone there would be no leave. All I could do was go back to the ship, where I would get into serious trouble for losing my cards and paybook, so I turned down Princes Street and in the pitch blackness started to shuffle my way down the gutter. This position off the pavement prevented you from banging into others in the dark and the feel of the edge of the curb against your foot greatly facilitated navigation. I had not walked more than a hundred yards or so when I felt my foot kick something soft and, bending down to ascertain what it was, I let out a wild cry of ‘Eureka’, for the article in my hands was my lost cap, complete with cards, pay-book and money. It had evidently been bowled down the gutter by the wind and had come to rest, quite unmolested, at the foot of the Robbie Burns memorial.
This called for a celebration. Retracing my steps, with cap back on and chin strap down, I made my way to the welcoming comfort of the Waverley Hotel. There, seated at the bar and deep into a gin and tonic, I made the acquaintance of a very desirable young American lady dressed in service uniform. It transpired that she was lonely and fed-up and would I like to join her for a drink? I would and I did. Then she joined me in one, then I her, until mellowed, she suggested that in her considered opinion, it would be far more comfortable if we repaired to her room with a bottle and continued to build the foundations of our fast growing relationship in private. I heartily concurred and within minutes I was ‘up and over’, as the saying is.
Whilst I was enjoying a relaxing cigarette sometime later, the telephone rang by the bedside and out of habit I reached out to answer it. With an anguished cry of ‘No!’, my companion snatched the phone from my grasp.
‘Hello, darling, you’re back early. I didn’t expect you till tomorrow morning. Where are you? Downstairs in the hall? Well give me a moment to make myself look pretty for you –’
That was enough, I was out of bed and grabbi
ng for my clothes like an undercranked scene in a silent movie. Here I must explain that a sailor’s ‘tiddley’ suit (his best) is cut so tight that it needs the assistance of one or more friends to pull you in or out of it. My present friend was not inclined to give me any assistance at all, other than screaming, ‘Get out, get out’ and flapping round the room like a headless chicken. So grabbing tunic, trousers, cap, collar, shirt, socks and vest, I made for the fire escape. I’d managed to get my underpants on, to afford me a modicum of dignity in the event of confrontation. Scrambling out of the window on to the iron grating of the fire escape, I felt the thwack of my boots hitting me between the shoulder blades, and as I turned to thank my ex-lover for a wonderful evening, the window slammed down, almost de-nosing me. It was a cold, wet night, so getting back into my clothes was of the utmost essence. To those males who haven’t experienced trying to get into full sailor’s rig in complete silence, standing on a grating a hundred feet in the air in freezing rain, and in abject fear of imminent discovery, let me assure you, you haven’t missed much. I managed to get into everything but my tunic and boots, and with them slung over my arm was making ready to start down the fire escape, when I thought I’d peek in through the window to see how my erstwhile bedfellow was faring. She was faring splendidly, wrapped in the passionate embrace of her man, stretched out on the bed that I had so thoughtfully warmed for him. Looking at that serenely beautiful woman, I came to the conclusion that here before me was unfolding a classic example of quintessential savoir vivre.
The weather being too inclement for further voyeurism, I scrambled down the fire escape, the last section of which was counter-weighted, so that as soon as you put your weight on it, it sank slowly to the ground. Thus, descending backwards with boots in hand and tunic over shoulder, I stepped off the ladder straight into the arms of the Naval Patrol.
‘’Ullo ’ullo, and what exactly have we been up to, Jack? Doin’ a bit of nickin’ ’ave we?’ asked a Regulating Chief Petty Officer.
‘Of course not, Chief,’ I replied indignantly.
‘Then what exactly ’ave we been doin’, lad?’
‘It’s not so much what, as who,’ I said cryptically.
‘Ah!’ said the CPO, light beginning to dawn. ‘Been doin’ a bit o’visitin’, ’ave we?’
‘Well, yet you could put it like that,’ I said, slowly regaining confidence.
‘Then why, may one ask, are we leaving by the back door?’
This was going to be tricky, but working on the assumption that there is nothing a bored man likes better than a tale of salacious sex and passion, I started to regale him with the most exaggerated story of physical prowess and orgiastic delights that my imagination could summon up. By the time I came to the denouement, i.e. the entrance of the lady’s true love, the poor cuckold had grown to six foot six inches, wore a black beard and tipped the scales at at least fifteen stone.
‘My, my, we wouldn’t want to get tangled up with a monster like that, now would we, son? So you’d better put on that tunic and them boots smartish and bugger off out of it, before I goes and rings the doorbell of the lady and gentleman concerned and ask ’em their version of the biggest pack of fuckin’ lies I’ve heard in all me puff.’
Feet jammed hastily into boots and struggling frantically to get my tunic on I headed off down Princes Street from where this nightmare of a night had first started.
*
It was not long after that refit that Hood sailed on her last voyage. We were told that the Bismarck had come out of her hidey-hole at last and was on her way round the far north making for the Atlantic, where she would wreak havoc on the convoys from America. To circumvent this we were out of Scapa to hunt her down within a few hours of first getting the ‘buzz’. From then on the Captain kept us informed of her every move. She would appear and disappear like a wraith and we knew that the time we had all either dreaded, or longed for, was upon us: the predestined sea battle to the death, of one or the other of us!
During one watch I was sent for, to go at once to Captain Irving Glennie’s cabin. Now what? It was like being back at school again. That awful feeling of apprehension I used to get when awaiting execution in the studies of those past Headmasters.
‘Sit down, Pertwee,’ said the Captain. ‘I understand that you are an actor, and that you work on Radio Luxembourg?
‘That’s right, sir.’ Why on earth should he want to know that? I was perplexed.
‘Tell me all about it. I’ve always wanted to know about commercial radio.’
It seemed an extraordinary time to be asking such a banal question, but he was the Captain, and who was I to deny him? So for half an hour he listened attentively as I told him everything I knew on the subject, plus a bit more. He thanked me profusely for my lucidity and I took my leave still puzzled as to the reasoning behind his strange request. It was not long in coming – the Master at Arms, Jimmy Green, informed me that I had just passed my ‘Captain’s Test’ and was now a full-fledged CW candidate (Officer Cadet). I was to pack my kit and be over the side in twenty minutes, when a trawler would take me to the ship Dunluce Castle to await eventual transfer back to Pompey Barracks. What an extraordinary way to test a youngster’s officer-like qualities. Still, I suppose when time is of the essence, you can learn a lot about a man by letting him talk about himself for half an hour. There were sixteen of us altogether who had been similarly tested, for the Captain, knowing he was sailing into action, decided rather than risk wasting potential Officer material, he would send us off the ship before the inevitable battle took place; thank God he did, for she sailed on into her disastrous battle with the Bismarck, that is now a part of Naval history.
After scoring the first strike Hood was herself hit, first on the bridge, putting her immediately out of control, second between the stacks, and thirdly just forward of the after fifteen-inch gun-turret.
With the first hit, Signalman Briggs and Midshipman Dundas were blown into the water; after the second, amidships, my messmate Bob Tilburn was removing his seaboots prior to jumping into the water, when the final shell went through two wooden decks, hit the armoured deck and the resulting blast, tearing through the thin hatchways of the magazine covers, blasted the ship into eternity. Of the 1415 men on board only those three men survived, plus the sixteen of us that were taken off before that final action.
It was a terrible, shocking thing, and I have never really got over it. To have had so many good friends die in the time it takes to snap your fingers. By the time I could get to a telephone to inform my family that I was alive, their mail had been returned to them with a small sticker attached, which read ‘Missing – presumed killed.’ You can imagine their stunned disbelief, therefore, changing to great joy, when I walked in through the door.
Chapter Nine
After a short leave, I returned to Pompey Barracks and was about to start my CW (Officer Candidate’s) course, when I was made quickly hors de combat. I was living in G Block, the CW’s building, when the barracks was once again badly hit by enemy bombers. I had been detailed to go into the attic with three other candidates and firewatch. Around midnight, within a few minutes of the siren wailing out its warning, the enemy bombers were thumping their regular and instantly recognisable beat of ‘waa-waa-waa’ overhead. A shower of small incendiary bombs landed on the barracks, several punching holes in the roof and bursting into fiery blinding life around us. Remembering my fire drill, I grabbed a couple of sandbags and dropped them over the bomb, ostensibly to choke it into extinction. Unfortunately, although I had stopped the fire flame going upwards, I had, by jumping on the sandbags, encouraged the bloody thing to burn downwards. Within seconds the white-hot incendiary had burned through the floor, where, by falling into the hammock nettings below, it started a raging inferno. ‘Everybody out,’ I yelled, ‘before we’re all barbecued.’ Suddenly, from a nearby rooftop-lookout, there was an urgent shout of ‘Parachutists!’ Oh God! They’ve come, I thought, what we’d been expecting for month
s. Before I could decide what to do and whether to collect my solid-barrelled rifle, pick-axe handle or pike, the cry of ‘Belay parachutists, they’re landmines.’ These were enormous canisters, dropped by parachute into harbours and channels, that would explode magnetically when passed over by any steel or iron ship. Very sensibly, whilst I was busy doing my Indian war dance, my mates had already got down the iron escape ladder. But I was only half way down it when ‘bang’, the landmine made a direct hit on the block opposite, collapsing it like a pack of cards and taking off the end of G block at the same time. I don’t quite know how, but the blast of the explosion sucked me out of the building instead of blowing me further in, and deposited me on top of the mountain of rubble exactly where the mine had gone off.
