One Common Enemy Read online

  I was gone for all money. If the Royal Navy had tapped me on the shoulder I would have stayed aboard and set off that very day. It suddenly occurred to me, right there on the deck of Royal Oak with her flags fluttering in the breeze, that the best way to go to sea would be with the Royal Navy. My course was set.

  To help contribute to the family finances, I had left school at 14 and found work. I delivered groceries on a bi­cycle for a time, and later worked on a horse-drawn laundry van, picking up and delivering washing. I loathed every second of those jobs because all I wanted was to go to sea. The idea of joining the navy grew bigger in my mind, right through to the end of 1938 and into 1939. By then I’d turned 17, and from time to time I would run into a lad I knew called Johnny McCormack. He had already joined the navy and whenever he came home on leave I was fascinated by his uniform and his jaunty, devil-may-care attitude. I wanted to be just like Johnny, so in March 1939 I went to the Royal Navy recruiting office near the Liverpool Docks and got the enlistment papers. I took them home for my parents to sign because I was too young to sign them myself.

  ‘What’s all this?’ my mother asked.

  ‘Papers for joining the Royal Navy.’

  ‘That’s no life, you know, being in the navy.’ I made Mum very unhappy when I brought those papers home, but I think she knew it was inevitable. Going to sea was all I’d talked about.

  ‘I’ll see the world,’ I said. ‘It’ll be fun.’

  ‘You make your bed, you lie in it,’ she said.

  Dad, on the other hand, understood. He didn’t try to talk me out of it. ‘Is this what you really want?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’ I was very firm about it.

  ‘All right then.’ And without saying anything more he signed the papers. So I joined the Royal Navy, signing on for seven years of service. Simple as that.

  2 – New mates and marmalade

  A few weeks later, in April, I found myself at Lime Street Station waiting to catch a train south to Plymouth, clutching my Royal Navy travel warrant and wondering what I’d let myself in for. I’d never been beyond Liverpool before, not even to Manchester, a mere 30 miles away. Fortunately I found some unexpected moral support in three other worried lads waiting near me on the platform. I sidled over, they looked me up and down, saw my warrant, showed me theirs, and said hello.

  ‘I’m Johnny Hennessey,’ said one. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Jim McLoughlin.’

  ‘Hello, Mac,’ Johnny said, then introduced me to the other lads, Charlie Hughes and Freddie Powell.

  ‘Hello, Mac,’ they said.

  We all shook hands and from that moment I was known to my shipmates as Mac. We settled ourselves in the train and talked about nothing else but going to sea on war­ships. I was in good company.

  We got off the train at Devonport, the largest naval dockyard in Britain, on the River Tamar near Plymouth, and walked up to the Royal Naval Barracks, called HMS Drake. This place was known as a ‘stone frigate’ because it was a shore establishment. It was our first hint that the Royal Navy was really a world within a world, complete with its own mysterious customs and traditions.

  From the moment we reported for duty it was made abundantly clear that, as new recruits with the service’s lowest rank of ordinary seaman, the navy owned us completely. We were immediately put in the hands of a leading seaman instructor who showed us to our barracks and then saw to it that we were kitted out with our uniforms. He introduced us to each item of our kit.

  ‘This is your cap, McLoughlin,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Here are your sea boots, and that there is your duffle bag.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Do you want a ditty box?’

  ‘Do I want a what, sir?’ I looked blankly at the leading seaman.

  ‘A ditty box.’ He produced a little wooden box with a hinged lid. ‘It’s to put your personal things in,’ he explained.

  ‘What sort of personal things, sir?’

  ‘Do you have a mother?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m surprised. But if your mother sends you a letter, you keep it in your ditty box, understand?’ I nodded and he went on: ‘If you have a photograph of your girlfriend, you keep that in your ditty box as well.’

  ‘I’ll have a ditty box, then,’ I said, even though I didn’t have a girlfriend, let alone a photograph of her.

  We were each issued our own blanket, too. It was cream with a black stripe running across the top of it.

  ‘See that black stripe?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Right. If I ever see a blanket that’s gone the same colour as the black stripe, the owner will be in trouble. Cleanliness is next to godliness in the Royal Navy.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  We quickly discovered another tradition. Our uniform wasn’t merely a uniform. It was a symbol. The big serge collar on our tunic had three narrow white stripes around it. Those three stripes, we were told, symbolised the three battles of Nelson. And the reason the collar draped over the shoulders and down between the shoulder blades dated from centuries ago when sailors wore their hair long and tied it back into a single tarred pigtail. The long collar prevented tar from soiling the tunic at the back.

  We each received the standard navy hammock. It was like a big sausage that we had to learn to undo and hang in our allocated space in the barracks. That was the easy bit. The hard part was tying it all up again so it looked like a big sausage once more. It had to be done right or there was trouble. There wasn’t an ordinary bed to be seen in our barracks. After a time we got used to the hammocks and found them quite comfortable.

  Every morning at 5.30 sharp, our instructor would barge his way into the barracks and go along the line of hammocks, thumping them from underneath as he passed. ‘Wakey wakey, rise and shine! Show a leg!’ he yelled.

  His name was John Tennant. I’ve never forgotten this tough, uncompromising Liverpool man. He had us living in fear much of the time. To a bunch of raw 17-year-olds he seemed like an old salt, but he was probably only about 30.

  Ten minutes after jolting us awake, Tennant would be back in the barracks to check if we had our hammocks stowed properly. Anyone who didn’t was made to run out to the flagstaff on the parade ground with their hammock slung over a shoulder. The flagstaff was like a ship’s mast, and just as high, with a yardarm near the top. Tennant would force hammock offenders to climb up one side of the flagstaff, clamber over the yardarm and make their way down the other side. The flagstaff was often wet and slippery first thing in the morning and there was a steel wire net round the bottom, a few feet off the ground.

  ‘Don’t slip!’ Tennant would yell gleefully.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘If you fall onto that net you’ll come through the other side looking like potato chips!’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  I didn’t fancy that at all, so my hammock was always among the first to be properly stowed away each morning. Later on we all had to climb that flagstaff and it wasn’t for the faint-hearted.

  Another unique custom of the navy was its language. We started off saying ‘Yes, sir’ but were soon indoctrinated into using the navy version: ‘Aye aye, sir’. We learnt that we didn’t call the Royal Navy the Royal Navy, even though that’s what it was. We referred to it as the Andrew after Lieutenant Andrew Miller, a member of Portsmouth’s notorious ‘Press Gang’ who once claimed he owned the Royal Navy because of the huge number of men he ‘pressed’ into its service during the late 18th century. We didn’t call the sea the sea, either, even though that’s what it was. We called it the drink. And we didn’t go to the toilet anymore. We went to the heads. Even our leading seaman’s early morning wake-up call was a tra­dition dating back to the 17th century, when sailors’ wives or girlfriends were permitted to sleep on board when their ship was in harbour. When the shout ‘Show a leg!’ was heard, the ladies would display a stocking-clad leg to indicate their ­presence in a sailor
’s hammock, where they could stay for a further 30 minutes while the men got up to start work. Soon navy-speak became second nature to us.

  The first part of our five-month training course involved long sessions of parade-ground drill. They really hammered it into us, that drill business, and there was always plenty of shouting going on. We had to do it perfectly, so we did it over and over again. It taught us discipline and how to work in harmony as a group. Discipline and loyalty, that’s what it was all about, and those values have helped me through my life ever since. We spent hours in the classroom each day, too, learning the theory of seamanship, knots and splicing and all that. We studied history, geography and mathematics as well because the navy demanded that we acquire a broad education. For a time it felt like I’d gone back to school, except that I was in uniform.

  I especially enjoyed the company of my classmates. We became close because we all wanted the same thing, to go to sea. But I did have one bitter disagreement, and that was over something petty: a tin of marmalade jam.

  ‘Pass the marmalade, Hicks,’ I said to a classmate, a lad from the north of England. We were sitting at our mess table having a meal.

  ‘When I’ve finished with it.’

  ‘When will that be, then?’

  ‘When I’ve finished with it, that’d be when.’

  I waited a while. Hicks wasn’t digging any more jam out of the tin.

  ‘Finished with the marmalade, Hicks?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes you have.’

  ‘No I haven’t.’

  We went on like that for a bit, then I lost my temper. I lunged at him across the table and before I knew it we were brawling, gripping each other by the tunic. Eventually our classmates intervened and we cooled down. I loved marmalade, still do as it happens, and from that day on, Hicks and I barely spoke.

  Eventually our instructors began to introduce us to the sea and ships. We went out on the River Tamar in rowing boats to learn the basics of seamanship. They taught us to row, which I enjoyed. It was hard work, but I liked the feel of it as we pulled on the oars as a crew, with an instructor up in the bow calling out the rhythm.

  ‘In, pull, out, feather, in, pull, out, feather, in …’

  We went on board the Royal Navy vessels that were tied up in the Devonport Dockyards. I loved that. Our instructors explained the functions of the various parts of a ship, the mess decks, the bridge, the gun stations, as well as all the traditional ways of behaving on board, what to do, what not to do. It was orientation, I suppose. One day, though, they took us aboard a submarine. I didn’t like that at all. I couldn’t think why anyone would want to be cooped up hundreds of feet beneath the surface. I couldn’t get off quick enough. Being introduced to those ships made us all feel that we were becoming sailors at last, but we seemed no closer to going to sea.

  Then we began to learn about gunnery and signalling and electrics and torpedoes and wireless telegraphy, a little bit of everything to give us a broad picture of all the Royal Navy trades so that, when we finished our basic training, we could weigh up our options.

  ‘Maybe I’ll be a wireless telegrapher,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, that’d be okay I suppose,’ Johnny replied.

  ‘What about signals?’ Charlie asked. ‘You’d get to know everything that was going on if you were in signals.’

  ‘One thing’s for sure,’ I said, ‘there’s no way I’m going to be a stoker.’

  ‘No one wants to be a bloody stoker,’ Freddie said. ‘I’m going to stay an ordinary seaman. That way you get to work the guns.’

  ‘Now that’d be something, that would.’

  ‘Imagine firing one of those big 15-inch buggers!’

  ‘I’ll be in that. It’s ordinary seaman for me, then.’

  The four of us had become inseperable by that stage, so there and then I decided to remain an ordinary seaman, too. I suppose I didn’t have much ambition. I just wanted to get to sea on a ship with my mates.

  We finished our basic training course toward the end of August 1939 and for a few days we hung around HMS Drake waiting impatiently to be drafted to a ship. Then, on the afternoon of 3 September, we were sitting in the mess listening to the radio when Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced that Britain had declared war on Germany. We were pretty excited when we heard that. We could finally put to sea and get stuck into a real war.

  This is more like it.

  I didn’t have a clue what war meant, so it just seemed like the start of a fantastic adventure when my mates and I were drafted to the aircraft carrier HMS Courageous. We couldn’t stop smiling. But Courageous was already at sea and, because the war had started, she couldn’t turn around just so we could join her, so our draft was ­cancelled almost straight away. We were shattered. We continued to hang around Drake until one afternoon we heard on the mess radio that Courageous had been torpedoed. The loss of life was huge, but it didn’t affect me at all. Not one iota.

  Well, that was a bit lucky.

  In mid-October we heard that Royal Oak, the battleship that had so influenced me to join the Royal Navy, had been torpedoed by a German U-boat while moored in the apparent safety of her anchorage at Scapa Flow in Scotland. They said she’d blown up, rolled over and gone down in just 13 minutes. She came to rest on her side in 90 feet of water with 800 sailors trapped inside. I’d been on board her just the year before, so I found that news a bit sobering.

  But it won’t happen to me.

  After leave in November, my draft finally came through. With my three close mates, and indeed most of my classmates, I was going to HMS Valiant. She was a Queen Elizabeth Class battleship of more than 30,000 tons, a marvellous and powerful ship armed with eight 15-inch guns and twenty 4.5-inch guns. She had a top speed of 24 knots. I was thrilled about being drafted to Valiant because she was newly recommissioned after a major reconstruction, so was like a brand new ship.

  It was a cold, wet evening when I joined the ship in Devonport. It was 26 November 1939 and I had a hammock slung over my shoulder and a duffle bag in the other hand as I walked up the gangway. There was confusion everywhere. Nobody seemed to know what was going on, which is the way it often appears when a big warship is being made ready for sea. It’s organised chaos.

  I was 18 years old and couldn’t believe my luck.

  3 – Valiant days

  I went below and was immediately lost. HMS Valiant was vast, with multiple decks and a dizzying network of com­panion­ways and stairs that all looked the same to me. I couldn’t tell whether I was facing the bow or stern, port or starboard. I only started to get my bearings when we were allocated quarters according to our trades. Seamen here, stokers over there, wireless operators/telegraphers, shipwrights, cooks and clerks each to their separate mess decks in various parts of the ship. Those for the ordinary seamen were two decks down, deep in the bow of the ship.

  Johnny, Charlie and Freddie went starboard, while I was sent to the port mess. It certainly wasn’t designed for comfort: four or five big tables, storage racks for hammocks, some stools, a few crockery shelves, and not much else. After the routine of life ashore at HMS Drake, I felt confused and alone in my new mess as I watched a parade of strange faces and heard the bedlam of unfamiliar voices. What was what? Who was who? It felt unreal starting a new job in what was also my new home. And I wasn’t exactly thrilled when I learnt that John Tennant, our hard-nosed leading seaman from HMS Drake was in charge of my mess. I’d have to keep my wits about me if I was going to stay out of trouble. That first night I went to sleep in my hammock with mixed feelings. I was excited to be on my first ship, yet fearful that I’d make an idiot of myself in front of the sea-hardened members of the crew.

  Next day we were each shown to the part of the ship we would be working in. My station was on the quarterdeck, where all the officers were.

  ‘You’ll be a lookout up on the bridge,’ I was told.

  God, just my luck, surrounded by officers and nowhere to hide.


  Later, the ranks of the Royal Navy would swell with officers who signed on only for the duration of hostilities. Until then, though, Valiant was commanded by long-serving career officers. From the captain down to the petty officers, they were seasoned hard-liners, intent on doing everything by the book. The captain was H B Rawlings, a very tall, gaunt man with a sunburnt face who had that stern, superior look of command about him.

  We were taken to our action stations. Mine was in the third 4.5-inch gun turret on the port side.

  Now, this is more like it.

  I couldn’t have been happier. There was one small problem, though. Hicks, the bloke I’d fought with over the tin of marmalade, was assigned to the same gun crew. Still, there were more important things to think about than the chilly tension that lingered between us.

  With our stations sorted out, we were given our first shipboard duty: painting Valiant’s entire top deck grey. Under war conditions there was no longer a place for the traditional white decks and polished brass fittings so loved by the navy in peacetime. The duller we could make it, the safer the ship would be, apparently. So I spent my first couple of days aboard Valiant on my knees, paintbrush in hand, applying lashings of grey paint to the deck. It wasn’t quite the glamorous start I’d imagined.

  Three days later the ship slipped away from Devonport without fanfare and crept into Plymouth Sound, where she anchored and made final preparations. No one told us where we were going. All we knew was that we would soon be commencing Valiant’s working-up trials, when everything on the ship, including the crew, would be repeatedly tested with ever-increasing intensity to ensure her readiness for war. But there was someone who seemed to know a great deal more than us. His name was William Joyce, the notorious British fascist who, when war broke out in September, had fled to Germany and started broadcasting propaganda programs back to Britain. Spouting information provided by German spies in Britain, he was loathed by his listeners, who nicknamed him Lord Haw Haw for his high-pitched, upper-class English accent.