Life Without Armour

by Sillitoe, Alan;

  The wing-commander in charge of the camp ran the place fairly benignly, but would occasionally inveigh against us via the tannoy speakers in every hut, threatening to stop our ‘privilegees’, whatever they were, if we didn’t refrain from rowdy behaviour between classes. We imagined he just liked sitting in his office before a microphone and emphasizing his position as governor of the institution, but when someone defecated into one of the baths he assumed that a person in our hut was to blame. We were asked to reveal who it was, but only the culprit himself knew the answer to that, and none of us had much hope of him owning up, simply because we were totally unable to understand why he had done it, which made it certain that he could not have been in our group. Someone from County Durham wondered if a stray St Bernard called Dropper hadn’t been wandering around but, never able to say who had been responsible, we were confined to camp for a fortnight.

  Other things seemed equally petty. Walking by the parade ground, a sergeant shouted from fifty yards away: ‘Take that pipe out of your mouth, airman!’ which I hadn’t realized was against the rules. I came back to the billet one evening to see that the half-dozen books usually on a shelf behind my bed had been strewn across the floor by an inspecting officer on his rounds, signifying that only official kit was to be exposed, and all personal material stowed out of sight in your kitbag. I wasn’t a smart bullshit airman after all, though such incidents were only part of the game while being trained.

  Halfway through the course we were given fourteen days’ leave, and in our first bout of lovemaking I tried to introduce my girlfriend to something apart from the usual ‘missionary’ position. She told me angrily that such a trick could only have been picked up from another woman, an unwarrantable assumption, because hard work had been taking up all my time. Whether she was tired of waiting, or wanted to be free of the affair anyway and used this attempt at a bit of fancy fucking as an excuse, was hard to say, but it struck me as so remarkably easy to break up a long association that it didn’t much bother me when it happened. What else did you think about when taking Morse? The procedure was as automatic as working at a lathe.

  A favourite excursion from the radio school was to shin up 500 feet to Oldbury Castle, by the White Horse that had been carved out of the chalk downs. The westerly view from a spot nearby revealed the beautiful green declivity of Ranscombe Bottom and, not having lived for such an uninterrupted length of time in the countryside, I would sit on the turf thoughtlessly gazing, finding a kind of peace not known to be necessary until then.

  As if to console myself for the loss of my girlfriend, though not alas in the same way, I got to know charming, dark-haired Jean Simons. She took me home to meet her father, who clearly did not approve of such a friendship, but the platonic association made me happy for a while.

  Progress on the course was carefully measured, and at the halfway point a few who failed the tests were sent to learn another trade. A Nigerian in the class must have been a telegraphist in his native country, for he took the fastest Morse of all. One afternoon the instructor started the sending machine at the normal speed of eighteen, putting up the rate little by little. By twenty-eight words a minute most had stopped taking it, but the ex-Merchant Navy operators, the Nigerian and myself stayed in the race. Morse was easy enough to read at such speeds but difficult to write legibly, and at thirty-six words a minute the field was left to the Nigerian, who continued a few moments longer. Two days later he fell into a kind of fit and had to be taken off the course, but he must have been the greatest Morse-artist of all time.

  In the post-war austerity period a typewriter could be sold for today’s equivalent of two or three hundred pounds, if you could get one. Thirty vanished from our classroom one dark night, which meant that an airman on the camp must have organized the theft. No one knew who had done it, and the machines were quickly replaced. We spoke few words of condemnation against the thieves, though gave no praise either. One’s sense of justice was defined only in so far as knowing that sooner or later those responsible would be caught, since every bag of loot carried a built-in risk deep inside.

  On being asked whether or not we would be willing to serve overseas my name immediately went on the list. The only person to sign on with more alacrity than most was the airman in our class who had organized the Great Typewriter Robbery. Unluckily for him, he was plucked from the troopship just before it set off down the Solent, and hauled away to do a couple of years in gaol.

  At Christmas we went on leave, our journey delayed by a go-slow on the railways. The train was so crowded that some of us lay half frozen on mail sacks for the five hours it took to reach London. Hundreds got off at Paddington, cursing the engine crew who, it was thought, had made them late for their connections, some airmen hovering by the cab as if intending to lynch them, which sentiment seemed reasonable. I didn’t reach Nottingham till midnight, and walked home through the silent town with my kit.

  In the New Year ice and snow cut off the camp from all supplies. Fuel was scarce and we were cold. When the NAAFI ran out of stock we cut a way through the wire fence to reduce the distance to a small pub in the village, where we sat by the fire and drank pints of rough, intoxicating cider.

  Rations became more meagre, and at one time we went into the mess for little more than a dab of reconstituted potato and a slice of bread, which spartan victuals continued for some time. Nevertheless, instruction was carried on and, though grumbling occasionally, we stayed healthy, except for one man who coughed up a pint of blood one morning, and was removed to the sick quarters, never to be seen again. The wing-commander received a decoration for having kept the school going.

  My final assessment on passing the course, on 28 February 1946, was fifty-seven per cent, somewhat low but it did not surprise me, never having been fully at ease with the theory of wireless. The pristine cloth badge sewn on to the arm of my tunic, of a clenched fist emitting six vivid sparks, signified that the wearer was no longer an ordinary inconspicuous erk, but a man with a trade, my first and last certificate of competence. Another shilling a day brought twenty a week into my pocket alone, so that we were now rich, someone quipped, beyond the dreams of average.

  The usual embarkation leave often days passed without note, as did my nineteenth birthday. From then on it was a matter of waiting for a troopship to take us to no one knew where, first being shunted with kitbag and all accoutrements by train to the transit camp of Burtonwood in Lancashire. Nothing better to do but roam the lanes, and the streets of St Helens, we talked and walked with whatever girls would, for a little blameless amusement, talk and walk with us. Frank Pardy and I found a girl called Cynthia who, with a friend, kept us company for a few days – difficult to say why her name floated back after so long.

  We were without duties or purpose for six weeks, the longest period for me since being at school. Spiritual or inner life was non-existent, no thoughts in those days of God, or philosophizing as to the reason for being on earth, or where one would go to after death (if one went anywhere at all, and if Hell had been signified it would not have mattered), certainly not the anguish to ask: ‘Why am I where I am?’ Questions were a luxury, and even less likely to come if nothing could be foreseen, except perhaps mundane speculations as to where on the oblate spheroid we would be going, at which my map of the world was frequently unfolded to make guesses.

  We passed the time talking, joking, aimlessly rambling, drinking and sing-songing in the canteen, and sleeping. We got up at six-thirty so as to be in the mess hall with the first rush for breakfast, in case quantity diminished and quality deteriorated. My language was a mixture of economical English, air force slang, and fancy phrases from Nottingham dialect, to be used as verbal trade beads in exchange for whatever rarities my friends could dredge up from their regional speech.

  The Americans had been at Burtonwood for much of the war, and an easy-going air lingered after them. Soft spring-like breezes wafted over the camp and surrounding fields, an atmosphere in which to recuperate
from hard work on the course, and our privations of the winter. A ‘full house’ of inoculations was given against smallpox, typhoid, para-typhoid and many other strange diseases. A sort of convalescence was suggested by the constant ache and irritation in our arms, and the whiff of ether, which did little to check our ebullience at the prospect of leaving the country for the first time.

  Because we had been sent to Lancashire it was assumed that the ship would set out from nearby Liverpool, but orders came to go by train to Southampton. Issued with rifles, laden with full kit, and arms still tender from the latest jabs, there was the usual singing, card games and eating of rations during the night. One developed the facility of falling into cat naps, and being comfortable in all kinds of postures, so that time drifted easily by.

  In the morning, when the train drew parallel to the quayside, the huge portholed flank of the Ranchi was visible through the door of the customs’ shed, which Royal Mail ship was to be our home for thirty-one days.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Land and much else being left behind told me that opinion should be set aside in order that the unique situation could be assimilated and turned into memory. People on shore, if they bothered to look any more, saw a common troopship thick with men, one of whom – me – had barged through the crush to the port-side rail, not having been on anything bigger than a ferry boat or a stretch of water wider than the Mersey. Steamships and small yachts on blue rippling water, wooded hillsides and succulent fields on shore, made me wonder when England – for all I thought about such a crucial part of myself – would be seen again. My observations would become blurred with the passing of time, as the carborundum wheel of an impacted past rubbed too hard against it. Such reflections only made more piquant the suggestion from that other part of me, though it was not altogether trusted, that I could not have cared less.

  Beyond Lee-on-the-Solent lay the buildings of HMS Daedalus where I would have done naval training and learned to fly with the Fleet Air Arm, but regret was a feeling little known, and passed like a shadow as the ship altered course to go around the Isle of Wight. On 8 May 1945 the war in Europe had ended; on the same date in 1946 I had reported for duty with the RAF; and now on 8 May 1947 a ship of 12,000 tons was taking me away from England – and nothing significant has happened on that vital date since.

  The vessel carried 1,000 crew, and 2,000 troops accommodated in ten low-ceilinged mess decks, a space claustrophobic but soon accustomed to, with long fixed tables and forms for sitting on to eat, and large hooks above for slinging hammocks at night. In the morning they had to be taken down, tidily folded and placed in a rack, space being claimed anew each evening.

  Shipboard was as different a life as I had ever been pitched into, a barracks surrounded by water, and regulated by bells at six for us to stow gear, shower, shave, and be at breakfast by seven. After everything on the mess deck shone we could roam or josh about till bells sounded for muster stations and lifeboat drill, when the captain, OC troops, provost marshal, and a gaggle of other scrambled-egg personalities, after inspecting the cleanliness or otherwise of our quarters (though there could be no otherwise), walked by our ranks, an endless sea frothing greenly beyond the rail. For the rest of the day we were free, unless called on for routine duties which were few with such numbers to share them.

  Many sicked up crossing Biscay, latrines clogged with vomit. Portuguese fishermen, in rough water for small craft, waved on the third day, green cliffs of their country like a fairyland in the distant glow. Off Cape St Vincent some card spoke Browning – in May – while our vast boat steamed on towards the Pillars of Hercules, another place and time-group pencilled on my map.

  The distance run every day, posted up in the saloon, showed an advance of about 300 miles. A letter to Squadron-Leader Hales of the ATC in Nottingham gave an account of life on board, but told of no murmur or anything felt. Much of the time I lay on deck, thoughtless and inert, getting up only for the good and copious food at mealtimes. One cadaverous airman covered page after foolscap page of a journal, and I wondered how he found so much to write about.

  The Mediterranean was more stormy than Biscay, but there was little seasickness by now. My face became painfully swollen, and the dental officer pulled out an abscessed side-tooth. Dull days were interrupted by orders to stand in line and have more serum pumped in, and in the evening we hugged our arms in the cinema showing Two Years Before the Mast (or was it Mutiny on the Bounty?), the ship on the screen wallowing in as rough a sea as that around us, a double dose of weather at the top end of the Beaufort scale.

  I took up time to explore the complicated structure, or stood on a lower deck as close as possible to the hypnotic bow wave sheering through grey-green cream-topped water, staring hour after hour to diminish a primeval fear of the sea. Passing liners and merchantmen flashed Morse from bridge to bridge, which I could interpret for those who saw only a meaningless flicker of light. Every vessel, out of courtesy and safety, announced its name, port of registration, where it came from and the place it was bound for, and my ability to read visual messages, not taught at radio school but practised on airfield control, improved immensely during the voyage.

  One morning the nearest porthole showed a camel ridden by an Arab along the Asiatic side of the Suez Canal, much like a picture in an early geography book come to life. At the other end of the waterway the mountains of Sinai turned purple in the afternoon light, bathing the place where the Israelites had gone over to escape the wrathful Pharaoh and his pursuing chariots, and fulfilling another image of my infant days.

  The hammock provided an underlay for sleeping on deck, too hot now to spend the nights below. By day we wore khaki shorts and gym shoes, being obliged to dress smartly only at boat stations. After the morning intake of cool lime juice I settled on to a piece of vacant deck to play endless rounds of clock patience, much like Benkiron in John Buchan’s Greenmantle, which I had just read, or watch Red Sea dolphins come playfully out of the glassy water as if to keep the ship safe from all malevolence.

  At ashy-looking Aden fuel was taken on, and my close-grained twelve-page letter to Squadron Leader Hales went with the mailbag on the next westward boat. Socotra was the starting point for a seven-day passage across the Arabian Sea, the compass set at points familiar only on my map, in whose margins I kept a log so as not to lose the reckoning of time. None knew at what place we would disembark, and the power of the sea, waves smaller but the swell mightier, caused the old Ranchi to roll as if never to level out again, slowly coming up only to go down as steeply on the other side, yet cutting crisply for mile after nautical mile as if through an endless light green jelly cake.

  From the rubbish of the ship’s small library (all items relished none the less) I took out the Penguin edition of Mutiny on the Elsinore by Jack London, on whose prose my eyes focused sharply enough to realize that here was something different. The novel punched home the opinion that the Nordic races (whatever they were) possessed an innate and eternal superiority over all other people. Though I might not have seen anything too outlandish in this – such attitudes inculcated from the beginning of consciousness – Jack London reiterated the point so as not only to slow down the narrative, which was unforgivable, but to make me find something objectionable about an idea which I hadn’t previously cared to formulate.

  During a few hours’ shore leave in Colombo the Victorian engravings from books at my grandparents’ were now in colour, and less impressive to my mind of nineteen than they had been to a child in the age of wonders. One of a group, I felt like a somnambulist, my first experience of a foreign land little more than a meal at the YMCA and a meander along York Street and down Queen Street, nothing to impress beyond the sight of a few strange costumes.

  Perhaps memories are few because my sensations were so absorbing, yet there remained the corrugated Arabian Sea beyond the harbour, and the sudden appearance of a palm tree bending over a stagnant pool. In the heat of the day, with no town plan to show how far we were
going, it was nevertheless enjoyable to be walking with that aimlessness of young and indigent soldiers in an overseas town, though I was happy enough to get home to the ship.

  The one diversion came when a couple of turbaned men stopped us near a park and wanted to read the future in our hands, a proposition I may have rejected too brusquely – believing whatever was in store to be totally irrelevant, and not wanting a stranger to tell me what it was, even if he knew exactly, which in any case I didn’t see how he could – for the parting words of one that I had ‘snake eyes’ intrigued rather than offended me.

  The boat rocked around the coast of Ceylon, lights far off on a dark tree-crowded shore, and headed across the Bay of Bengal towards Malaya 1,300 miles away. Those contingents disembarked at Colombo had left the ship less crowded, and with the patience of the sea I hoped to be carried even beyond Hong Kong, almost wishing the boat would go on for ever, oceanic vastness inducing a resignation not previously known.

  I slept deeply at night, one of a long row on deck, waking at dawn to let barefooted Lascar seamen in their saris sluice all woodwork clean with jets of salt water. The gramophone record of a brisk march by Souza, which hurried us to boat stations, became more and more cracked, and I wondered when the captain would authorize a new copy from the top of the stack by his elbow. Either that, or find another tune after skimming the old one duck-and-drake across the briny.

  It was as pleasant a peacetime cruise as anybody could wish for, especially when we sighted an island off the tip of Sumatra entirely covered in jungle. Huge spherical grey jellyfish took the place of dolphins in the Straits of Malacca, the sea swollen, the sky dull, the air steamy. A day before Singapore we learned that the destination for wireless operators was close, and at two in the afternoon my larger scale map sheet of South-East Asia, taken from the briefing hut at Langar, and brought as an inspired guess as to what region at least the final landing would be in, revealed with precision that we were off Port Swettenham. By nine at night Malacca was passed, the Singapore Approaches closing around the ship at half past four next morning. An increased speed for the last twenty-four hours led us to speculate that the captain might have some sentimental reason for going all out.