Moon Boots and Dinner Suits

by Jon Pertwee

  ‘What is your name, lad?’ he asked softly of a seaman who had been four days adrift off leave.

  ‘Smith, sir.’

  ‘What Smith?’

  ‘Zachariah Smith, sir.’

  ‘Do you know who Zachariah was, lad?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Then I shall be happy to tell you, my boy,’ he said at his most avuncular.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Smith, rapidly regaining confidence from the soft tone of his Commander.

  ‘Well, Smith,’ he almost whispered, ‘Zachariah was a man who walked with God. And for the next fourteen days,’ here his voice rose to a roar, ‘for the next fourteen days you’ll walk with me! Fourteen days Number eleven. Next!’

  And he was off on yet another case.

  ‘Ordinary telegraphist Rugley, sir!’ said the Regulating Petty

  Officer, ‘was adrift from duty and found asleep in his bunk at 09:30, sir!’

  ‘What have you got to say in defence of the charge, Rugley?’ asked Ham.

  ‘Well, sir, between you and me, I never heard the trumpet.’

  ‘The what? said Ham, his voice lowering a point.

  ‘The trumpet, sir.’

  ‘Bugle, man, you never heard the bugle.’

  ‘Sorry, sir, the bugle, sir.’

  ‘Well Rugley, all I can say is’, his voice falling to its dangerous level, ‘if you fail to hear bugles or trumpets’ – there was a pause before the inevitable earsplitting payoff, – ‘what the Hell will you do on Resurrection Day?’

  Among Ham’s many accomplishments was an astonishing capacity for alcohol and he would step up to the bar for his ‘usuals’ with great regularity.

  ‘Scotch,’ he demanded from the steward, ‘J-J.’

  ‘Yes sir! Large or small, sir?’

  ‘Four fingers of it, boy,’ he said ‘with the fingers held wide apart!’

  ‘Certainly, sir, any water?’

  ‘Good God no! Neat, and give me a beer for a chaser.’

  The steward promptly poured and passed him a frothy half pint of ale.

  ‘What in the Lord’s good name is that?’ he said, looking scathingly down at the glass. ‘Take it away until it grows up!’

  Navy Day stands out in my memory, when Captain Ellwood invited a relative of our then Queen Elizabeth, Rear Admiral The Earl Granville RN Retd, the Governor of the Isle of Man, to make an official inspection of the ship. The old man was delighted to be asked, as, ever nostalgic for his Navy days, he would don his ancient uniform at the drop of a hat. So, giving his gold braid a bread polish – the best way to get it gleaming; brushing his suit and putting on his ridiculously minuscule cap (reminiscent of those worn by early Sea Captains sailing before the mast), he awaited the great day. Ham had everything possible painted, and a special dais constructed from which the Governor was to take the official salute. We four divisional officers were told to ‘spit and polish’ the ship up to a higher degree of brilliance than ever before, and to rehearse a march past of the ship’s company with the Royal Marine band in white helmets leading, until we could pass Ham’s eagle-eyed scrutiny. When the big day finally arrived, to make my division the smartest of the lot, I had executed a manoeuvre which resulted in my men being graded according to height, with the tallest on the right and left, sloping gradually down from either side to the shortest in the middle. A very pretty sight indeed.

  I also summoned a very trendy Wren Officer and persuaded her to so arrange her girls that the most attractive would be displayed around the edges and the ‘Plain Janes’ hidden in the middle. They should also be very attentive to their make-up, wear the thin, not the thick black stockings, and have the tilt of their white-topped caps just so. The final result was excellent and Busby Berkeley couldn’t have done better. Standing at ease in front of the quarterdeck I was intensely proud of my shining, well-turned-out crew. At twelve noon exactly the Governor’s vintage ‘Roller’ rolled up to the main gate. Captain Ellwood called the whole parade to attention and the Royal Marine band for some extraordinary reason struck up All the Nice Girls Love a Sailor.

  ‘Oh God!’ I thought, ‘don’t let me get an attack of the giggles, not today of all days.’ The Officer of the Guard, a Lieutenant Pearman, with ceremonial sword resting on his right shoulder advanced towards the Governor, came to a stamping halt, saluted with his sword, brought it back to his shoulder, and executed a copy-book about-turn, at the precise moment that the Admiral proceeded to advance. The result was that the tip of Lieutenant Pearman’s sword very nearly cut the Governor’s throat from ear to ear. Uttering a cry of alarm the petrified Admiral stumbled and fell backwards, mercifully to be fielded by a phalanx of following officers close behind. It is just as well that they were there, otherwise I feel sure Commander Darwin would have thrown him a lifebelt.

  After the Navy Day Parade was over, I was having a drink in the Mess when Captain Ellwood entered.

  ‘Pertwee, a word in your ear if you don’t mind.’

  Taking me into a corner, he said quietly, ‘I must congratulate you on the smartness and turnout of your Division, but there is one point upon which I would like to take you to task.’

  ‘Yes, sir, and what is that, sir?’ I asked.

  ‘I realise that at heart you are an actor, but when issuing your terms of command, must you always play the part of a Cockney Sergeant Major from the Mile End Road?’

  He must’ve been another Professor Higgins, for it was down the Mile End Road that I had learned to speak Cockney with other RADA students. I had been appearing in a play about Francois Villon at the new People’s Palace Theatre in the East End. The play was produced by a sarcastic firebrand called Ronnie Kerr, who delighted in bringing his artists to tears and the point of suicide.

  Backstage, the wings would be crowded with sobbing ingénues and white-faced juveniles, all bent on revenge for the indignities suffered at the hands of the venomous Mr Kerr.

  I was walking across the stage in my capacity of a junior peasant, when a bellow rent the already purple air.

  ‘Good God Almighty, Pertwee, you’re walking across the stage as if you have piles!’

  I stopped. Here was my chance for Lex Talionis, for retribution. A Roland for my Oliver. Walking slowly, with simulated painful gait, I addressed my cruel taunter.

  ‘Mr Kerr, I have, and God forbid that you should suffer so.’

  This parcel of old crams seemed to have had the necessary effect, for we heard not one more derogatory peep out of him until the next day.

  *

  I remember when his Majesty King George VI came on an official visit to the island he was taken down to the southern tip, where the Manx language is most widely spoken. The King, anxious to hear some Gadhelic, asked if someone could be brought forward to give him a personal demonstration of the ancient tongue. ‘Certainly, sir,’ said the Governor, and seeing an elderly farmworker standing amongst the crowd, called him forward and said, ‘My man, His Majesty is most anxious to hear the Gadhelic tongue, would you be so kind as to recite the Lord’s Prayer for him in Manx?

  ‘Recite the Lord’s Prayer in Manx?’ said the elderly farmworker. ‘I couldn’t recite it in bloody English!’

  Our Number One, Lieutenant-Commander Stewart, was a self-confessed worrier and a fuss-pot. Quite unlike me he held Commander Darwin in awe, whereas I looked upon him with esteem and not a little love. Ham would yell dreadful things at me that only succeeded in making me laugh, but when he yelled at Lieutenant-Commander Stewart the poor man fell apart at the seams.

  He was a great one for signing things, was our Number One. According to his way of things, everything should be signed for, so his pockets were stuffed with pens and pencils for the signing of numerous passes, permits and forms that were permanently secreted about his person. Knowing how Ham insisted on Valkyrie being kept ‘shipshape and Bristol fashion’, he became quite beside himself if any litter was to be seen blowing about the ship and gave the crew hell if there were any lapses in this
regard. One forenoon, a dustcart was chugging up the front when a gust of wind blew a screwed-up piece of paper into Ham’s holy of holies, the quarterdeck. The Quartermaster on duty spied it and at once bade his sidesman to ‘get that bit of paper PDQ’. But unfortunately another strong gust took it up the front steps and right into the Officers’ Mess. The QM, knowing full well the Commander’s paranoid hatred of litter, said sharply to the sidesman ‘Well, don’t just stand there, lad, go in and get it.’ At once the sidesman disappeared into the Mess to retrieve the offending piece of bumph. A moment later he reappeared with a resigned expression on his face. ‘Too late,’ he said. ‘The First Lieutenant’s signed it!’

  There was also, aboard HMS Valkyrie, a funny little gnome of a man, Petty Officer Lacy who kept a permanent wad of chewing tobacco in his cheek and was able to hit a sedentary fly at five paces with the ejected juice with as much accuracy as that toothless cowboy star Gabby Hayes.

  But there his talents ceased and he lived out his life in a welter of confusion. One morning, as I was going ashore, I found him on duty at the main gate and said, ‘Petty Officer Lacy, I am expecting a Surgeon-Captain Critchley aboard in a minute, will you show him up to the Officers’ Mess and say I’ll be back in a moment?

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ said PO Lacy, smiling confidently. Knowing that he was inclined to get things wrong I asked him to repeat the message. With great pride he said, ‘Certainly sir! You’re expecting a certain chap called Ritchley aboard in a mini, and I’m to show him to the Officers till you come back from the Solent.’

  As neither the skirt nor the car had as yet been invented, I never knew what the mini was to which he referred.

  *

  Rabbits were the scourge of the island and up on Douglas Head, the ground trembled with their passage. So my friend ‘Yogi’ Parkin and I obtained a ferret which we kept out at the back of the Mess and, armed with a big bag of nets and a crew of willing helpers, we worked the stone hedgerows and burrows where the rabbits were to be found in their thousands. I was quite an expert in the art of ferreting, having learned my trade at the hands of Mr Fred Pike, a master poacher down at Highleigh. After our first few Safaris, I had my ferret ‘Schickelgruber’ muzzled, so that he wouldn’t kill in the burrow and lie-up, necessitating the spending of many hours digging him out. Previous to being muzzled, he was wont to kill, have a big rabbit dinner, go fast asleep and be found hours later with a seraphic smile on his face. In addition I put a small bell around his neck to signal which route he was taking on the underground. He also trailed a six foot length of string to facilitate our finding him should he get stuck behind a traffic jam of rabbits queuing up in front of him.

  One day, we had lost touch with the ferret for ages and asked a local farmer who was watching from the other side of the hedgerow whether he had seen or heard him. ‘Oh ay,’ he said, ‘not five minutes afore, he run up the hedge like a geese’, a strange but memorable simile! After a long search we heard an almighty ‘gerfuffle’ going on inside the stone wall at least 300 feet from where ‘Schickelgruber’ had first gone in. Putting my ear to the wall I found the spot where all the noise was coming from and proceeded to remove two or three rocks. Suddenly as I broke through into the tunnel, I was overwhelmed by a stream of rabbits precipitating themselves out of the hole like bullets out of a Bren-gun. There must have been thirty or forty of them leaping, crashing and banging their way out of that tunnel of terror. I just lay there, head down, until the mass exodus taking place all over me eventually ceased. Assuring myself that the last tenant had left I looked up to see the cause of all that blind panic stroll casually into view, my nose not being more than a few inches from the furiously frustrated ferret proved too much of a temptation and with a leap at the speed of light he gave my rather prominent proboscis a deep scratch. The resulting blood flow, fear of septicaemia and the indignity of having a pink plaster stuck on the end of my nose, caused me to send Schickelgruber into permanent exile and turn to a .22 rifle instead. A gentleman from Derbyshire had informed me that his county was singularly short of rabbits and as this particular game was not listed as a ‘rationed commodity’ he would buy any rabbits I could send him for three shillings and sixpence (17½p) each. He would send the crates and pay the postage; all I had to do was shoot the rabbits, gut them, put them in the crates and send them COD to Derbyshire. This sounded to me like excellent business. So I formed a small company of good marksmen from my crew, drew six .22 rifles and a quantity of ammunition from the stores and took them with the complete approval of Commander Darwin, up to Douglas Head for ‘rifle practice’.

  ‘Thought it might be a good idea to have a number of crack-shots at hand just in case of invasion, you understand, sir.’

  ‘Quite so, my dear boy, very perspicacious of you,’ said Ham.

  But our rifle practice was somewhat out of the ordinary in that it was done at night when the rabbits were out in force. Having dug and constructed various slit trenches and hides, we chalked our rifle sights to see them better in the dark and made for our individual hidey-holes. The top of the cliff at Douglas Head was our favourite area, for as I said before, the ground there was honeycombed with the burrows of literally thousands of rabbits. As dusk fell they started to come out to feed and for the next two or three hours we would shoot them as they were silhouetted against the night sky, never moving from our hides, for if we did, the jig was up and every rabbit would be gone. The crack of the rifles strangely enough did not seem to disturb them; only the sight of humans made them go to ground. After some hot tea we would gather up the rabbits, gut them, put them in sacks and take them back to Valkyrie to be crated and sent off to Derbyshire the next morning. With an agreed share-out of the takings, we all did splendidly and quite a few little nest eggs were banked for the days of peace to come. In fact one Safari member is still in the trade to this day.

  *

  The Isle of Man at this time went about its business as if there was no war on at all. In fact they had been at war with Germany since 1914 as the Tynwald, their own parliament, had inadvertently neglected to sign a peace treaty in 1918, making their little country’s war with the enemy one of twenty-eight years’ standing. But as I said, no-one would have known it, for food rationing hardly existed, there was an abundance of sugar, butter, cheese, tea, coffee, milk, meat, eggs and bacon, and as there was no petrol rationing either, I bought for twenty pounds a beautiful 500cc water-cooled Scott motorbike and for forty pounds, an immaculate one and a half litre blue ‘Brescia’ Bugatti sports-racing car, which later became a collectors’ item and finished up in the ‘Schlump’ Museum worth over £30,000. But at the time the owner was most grateful for the forty quid and said, ‘I’m glad to be rid of it, it takes up far too much room in the garage.’ So these two perfect pieces of machinery were parked behind my office and kept in near mint condition by willing car and motorcycle buffs from my division. Sadly the Bugatti was temporarily immobile as it was in need of a new coil. I was hoping that one of the ship’s artisans would, when he had the time, rewind the original for me, so until then I took to using the ‘Scott’ which buzzed over the island like an electric blender. With all the booze, birds, steaks, eggs, bacon and mobility I wanted, I was enjoying my time on that beautiful island more than at any other period of my life, and because Ham liked to wear ‘civvies’ when ashore, he allowed his brother officers to do likewise. So, once off the ship, the relaxing comfort of corduroy trousers and sweaters became the norm.

  The Manx are a kind, hospitable and other-worldly race of people. The Tynwald in the House of Keys is the oldest parliament in the world and dates back to pre-history. There are many druidical sites of quite indeterminate age on this land, like the Tynwald Hill at St Johns where by tradition, every July 5th, all the laws are read out in Manx and English. Manx or Gadhelic is their own pure unadulterated language and they have strange indigenous names, rarely to be found off the island, such as Corteen, Cubbon, Kewley, Quaile, Clague, Qualtrough and Qwilliam, the Q be
fore a name having the same derivation as Mac and Mc meaning the son of hence Qwilliam – son of William, Qualtrough (MacWalter) – son of Walter.

  And their tail-less cats are probably better known around the world than they are!

  They run annually the best motorcycle race in the whole wide world, and in strange contrast firmly believe in the existence of fairies. There is a bridge situated in the middle of the island where it is traditionally advisable to bid ‘good day’ to the ‘little people’ as you cross. If you foolishly ignore this token of respect you are very likely to come across something nasty on the next bend, causing you to swerve headlong into a magic tree which has been awaiting with open branches such disbelievers as yourself. Wishing to continue my serene and happy life I quickly learned to show respect, and later allowed no expression of surprise to cloud my face when I observed the mother of a girlfriend putting out by the back door a saucer full of milk and honey for the little folks’ delectation. ‘It’ll be gone by the morning, just you wait and see,’ she said, instinctively aware of my disbelief. Maybe it showed a lack of fantasy in my nature, but I couldn’t help but think that in the unlikely event of the hungry fairies being seen by a human being such as myself they would’ve been more likely to appear in the disguise of dog, cat, fox or even hedgehog!

  Although there was a preponderance of servicemen and their war-machines on the island with sailors from HMS Valkyrie, the Port and HMS St George, RAF from the fighter station at Ronaldsway and the Army from literally everywhere, in the two years I was there, I never saw a single enemy aircraft or ship. I am ashamed to admit, however, that once, soon after my arrival, in the early hours of the morning, I reported seeing the silhouette of a German submarine lying right in Douglas Harbour. After alerting the coastguard and a flotilla of MTBs in port, it was brought home to me very forcibly that my submarine was in fact an island, and had been sitting out there in the bay for several thousand years. For many nights following the event foreign cries were to be heard in the dark, of ‘Achtung! Achtung! Leutnant Peevee zis is Deutsche U-boat RU12 speaking, surrender immediately or ve vill sink you!’ The timbre of the voice sounded strangely similar to that of my friend Yogi’s but l was never sufficiently certain to sink him.