We Joined The Navy Page 4

  The Gunroom was a large room provided for the Beattys’ recreation. It was not, however, a room which inspired gaiety. It was whitewashed and cheerless like the chest flats and contained half a dozen tables and a dozen long wooden forms. The forms had been arranged to face the door and on them the eighty Beattys sat down in silence to await the coming of the man who, for the next three months, would be more powerful than Jehovah.

  Jehovah was preceded by his runner. He was a small, fair-haired man with the face of an ancient angel and the voice of a brazen bull-frog. He was Mr Froud, the Cadet Gunner. Mr Froud had served in the Navy for over twenty years and the experience had given him the Navy’s unique mixture of uncompromising official dogmatism and wise tolerance of human eccentricities. There was no provision or regulation concerning the welfare of men which Mr Froud did not know, no offence which he had not seen committed before, and no excuse which he had not heard before. Nothing surprised Mr Froud. He loved the Navy and he loved his cadets, but he was careful to conceal his affection. He was more closely concerned with the welfare and discipline of the Beattys than Lieutenant-Commander Badger himself; if Lieutenant-Commander Badger was Jove, then Mr Froud was his thunderbolt.

  Mr Froud stood at the head of the room. The Beattys did not know it, but Mr Froud was thinking the same thoughts as the President of the Interview Board.

  Here, thought Mr Froud, is another shower. God knows what’ll happen to them or to the service before they’re finished.

  ‘Pay attention this way!’ said Mr Froud. ‘My name is Mr Froud. I’m the Cadet Gunner. I hate cadets. This evening I’ll be kind to you. But from tomorrow onwards I’ll be watching you, so look out! Just before Lieutenant-Commander Badger comes in, I’ll call you to attention. Don’t stand up, sit to attention with your arms folded, head and eyes to the front.’

  Steps sounded outside the Gunroom.

  ‘Attention in the Gunroom!’

  ‘Carry on please,’ said Lieutenant-Commander Badger pleasantly. The three lieutenants who had entered with him sat down in chairs placed for them in front.

  Lieutenant-Commander Badger surveyed the faces for whom he was responsible, morally and physically, for the next three months.

  Lieutenant-Commander Robert Bollinger Badger, D.S.C., R.N., known throughout the Navy as The Artful Bodger, was a stoutish, burly man with a shock of black hair and an air of pleasant detachment from the realities of an unpleasant life; he moved through life unconcernedly but hopefully, as though he expected at any minute to be offered a drink. He had emerged at the end of the war with a splendid record and the rank of lieutenant-commander at an early age, but because of his failure to observe what his contemporaries considered to be the cardinal primary rule of a successful naval officer, namely, the ability to say the right thing at the right time to the right person, The Bodger was likely, unless he looked sharp, to remain a lieutenant-commander with a splendid war record until a late age. The Bodger’s contemporaries said that he had been given the appointment of Officer in Charge of Special Entry Cadets because Their Lordships wanted the poor beggars to know the worst first.

  ‘I’ve called you all together here on your first night,’ said The Bodger, ‘to give you an idea of what we intend to do with you while you are at Dartmouth. I want to give you the set-up here. My name is Lieutenant-Commander Badger and I am responsible for your training. To help me I have Lieutenants Brakeherst, Chipperd and Mathewson who will be your divisional officers, and Mr Froud, whom you have met already. Also on the staff we have the Chief G.I., the Chief Yeoman and the Chief Bosun’s Mate whom you met this afternoon.’

  The Bodger felt in his pocket and took out a piece of paper. He unfolded it and laid it on the desk in front of him.

  ‘Now a bit about the organisation of this place. For drill purposes and for sports you will be divided into three divisions named, in the best traditions of the service, after parts of a ship, Foc’sle, Top and Quarterdeck. You will be able to see which division you are in from a notice in the Cadet Office, if you have not already seen it. For parades and for leave, not that you will be concerned much with leave while you’re here, you will be divided into watches, also named in the best traditions of the service, Port and Starboard. You will also find a class list on your notice board. Do not read any significance into the composition of the classes. We have not put all the geniuses into one class and all the bombheads in another. Mr Froud worked out the class lists according to an unfathomable system of his own. What that system is nobody knows. What is your system by the way, Mr Froud?’

  Mr Froud grinned. ‘I permed any twenty out of eighty, sir.’

  ‘Precisely,’ continued The Bodger. ‘You can see from the start, gentlemen, the place mathematics holds in the complex modern Navy.’

  The Beattys found themselves warming to The Bodger. He had a dry, poker-faced humour which they had not expected.

  ‘So much for the mechanics of this place. You will pick up the rest as you go along. Now for the reasons why you’re here and what you are going to do while you’re here.’

  The Bodger felt again in his pocket and took out another piece of paper. He smoothed it with his fingers and the suspicion of a grin crossed his face.

  ‘Yes. What you will learn here is only the very beginning of all you will eventually learn before you start paying back the Admiralty for all the time and trouble they’ve spent on you. This is the first rung of a long and slippery ladder. You have just set your foot, or rather your parents have just set your foot, on the bottom rung. You are now at the very beginning. I cannot find the words to express, gentlemen, your complete basicness at this point. From now on you are on your own. How far you get up the ladder depends on you. You are here to start to learn how to be leaders. There are some people who are born with the art. But they are very few and I don’t expect there are any here tonight. There’s normally one every other century. Napoleon was the last. Most of us have to learn and go on learning until we die. Some of us will never learn, but we’ll find out who they are in due course. You are here to learn how to be leaders. That is your vocation. That is what you will eventually be paid to do. You will find that the art of leadership in a young officer lies largely in making other men, some of them considerably older than yourself, do the things you want them to do against their better judgment. Don’t be coy about it. You will have plenty of examples set before you. The chances are that you will go through your service career being made to do things against your better judgment by other officers senior to yourself. But remember this. If you are always sincere, if you always do your best according to your lights, if you always say what you mean and do what you say and stick to it whatever the consequences, then there will always be someone to put in a good word for you at the court-martial.’

  The Bodger knew his subject. He had been himself twice court-martialled, once as a sub-lieutenant in Hong Kong when he attended a dance dressed as a girl and was chased twice round the Hongkong-Shanghai Bank building by a Royal Marine, and again as a lieutenant after a collision in Penzance harbour when The Bodger, in command of an M.L., broke up a Rogation-tide service on the mole with the words: ‘Won’t one of you bastards throw a poor sinner a line?’

  ‘You are all starting equally here. There may be some of you who come from naval families or were pillars of the local Sea Cadet Force, who think you know it all already.’

  Colin Stacforth, whose father was C.-in-C. Rockall and Malin Approaches, blushed.

  ‘Get that idea out of your heads right now. The things you will do here and the pace you will do them at will be no more like the Sea Cadets or what your old man told you than rummy with the family is like contract bridge with Culbertson. You will have to cultivate a professional outlook on life and the sooner you start the better. Your future job will be to so lead your men that in time of war you and they will be able to kill the maximum number of the enemy in the most efficient way. And that applies to officers in any branch. All the officers and the ship’s com
pany in a ship have one object, no matter what their particular personal duty may be, and that is to destroy the enemy. Forget what your old aunt told you or what you read in the newspapers. I am telling you now what your job will be. You’re going to learn it starting right now.

  ‘You will find that there is a cult in the Navy, you will meet it more when you get out into the Fleet, which regards the Navy as a place to mark time in before getting a job with more pay outside. Forget it! You have no other job and you have no other life. This is your life!’

  With a stout Cortesian gesture, The Bodger indicated the walls of the Gunroom, the picture of H.M.S. Victory beating close-hauled out of a cocoa stain and, in passing, the faces of the Chief G.I., the Chief Yeoman and the Chief Bosun’s mate standing along the wall.

  ‘You must reconcile yourself to the fact that you will be underpaid for your responsibilities for most of your service career and particularly as you get more senior. Your motto must therefore be to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to labour and not to seek for rest, to toil and not to seek for any reward save that of knowing that if you don’t, someone will come along and see that you bloody well do. Any questions? No. Good. That’s all I’m going to ... Yes?’

  The Bodger had noticed a cadet who appeared to have a question.

  ‘Please, sir,’ said Maconochie.

  Yes?’

  ‘I read in the papers the other day that the Navy was out of date already. Is that true, sir?’

  Lieutenants Chipperd, Brakeherst and Mathewson craned round to look at Maconochie, like men in church turning round to see who it was who shouted ‘Liar!’ during the sermon. The Chief G.I., the Chief Yeoman and the Chief Bosun’s Mate looked hard at Maconochie, as though they were memorising his face. The Bodger himself was temporarily taken aback.

  ‘You must not believe all the articles you read in the papers,’ he said, ‘particularly when they’re founded on logic. Right. That’s all I want to say tonight. Carry on please, Mr Froud.’

  ‘Attention in the Gunroom!’

  The Beattys stood up while The Bodger and his three satellites left the Gunroom.

  ‘Carry on to your chest flats and turn in! No skylarking or we’ll meet sooner than we expected!’

  The Beattys filed out quietly under Mr Froud’s eye.

  On his way out Paul picked up a piece of paper lying by the door. It was part of The Bodger’s lecture notes. The notes were not exhaustive. They consisted simply of the words: ‘Shake them rigid!’ in capitals and underlined.

  Paul turned the paper over and saw that it was part of a letter.

  ‘Dear Lieutenant-Commander Badger,’ Paul read, ‘With reference to your letter of the 18th inst., we are pleased to inform you that we have room for men of ability and integrity in our sales and personnel welfare departments. In view of your considerable service in the Royal Navy, particularly in the command of men, we should be pleased to arrange an interview for you. . . .’

  There the letter was torn off.

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ said Paul.

  Meanwhile, The Bodger and his three lieutenants were reviving themselves in the College wardroom.

  ‘Thank God that’s over for another term,’ The Bodger was saying. ‘Soda, please. Do you think any of them believed a word of it?’

  ‘If they did, then they’ll be the first term who have,’ said Lieutenant Brakeherst.

  ‘Don’t be so cynical, John,’ said Lieutenant Chipperd. ‘They lapped it up, particularly the bit about killing the enemy. That was right up their street. Just what they’ve run away to sea to do. You’ve got to remember that at the moment they’re like ninety per cent of the population of this country. All they know about the Navy they’ve learned from Ealing Studios. One thing I must say for Noel Coward, he’s probably the best recruiter the Navy’s ever had.’

  ‘Now who’s being cynical. Though they’re a rough looking lot of hoods, I must say. The old codgers at the Interview must be losing their grip.

  ‘I wonder what this mob will be like,’ pondered The Bodger. ‘I hope to God they don’t go in for mass hypnotism like the last lot.’

  ‘Anyway, said The Bodger, ‘they’ll be too busy keeping out of Froud’s way to worry about anything else for a while!

  3

  Carry on, Chief Cadet!’ shouted Mr Froud.

  ‘Aye aye sir!’ yelled Peter Cleghorn, Chief Cadet for the day. ‘Port Watch to the river, Starboard Watch to P.T., Beattys, right and left . . . turn! By the right . . . double . . . march!’

  It was six o’clock in the morning. A grey Devon dawn had just established itself and its wan and cheerless light illuminated the Port Watch, in shorts and singlets, percolating down the steps towards the river and the Starboard Watch, also in shorts and singlets, panting up the hill towards the gymnasium. It was the start of a new day at Dartmouth and the Beattys, who experienced each on alternate days, could never decide which start, the river or the gymnasium, was the worse.

  The river normally took the shorter time. A skilful crew could occupy so much time manning their boat, getting out their oars, and starting to pull, that it was breakfast time before they had pulled more than a hundred yards from the buoy. After some practice Tom Bowles and Paul could arrange it so that they never left the buoy at all but appeared to Lieutenant Chipperd, the Beattys’ Boat Officer, on the jetty, to be waiting for Maconochie to untangle himself and get out his oar.

  The gymnasium, however, was warmer and it was easier there to go through the motions of intensive physical effort without in fact extending a muscle. But the gymnasium had one disadvantage. The P.T. Instructor was no fonder of P.T. at 6 a.m. than the Beattys. Term after term of cadets had suffered under his early morning sarcasm. He conducted his classes with a ferocity which appalled such dilettante gymnasts as the Beattys who had hitherto regarded P.T. as a means to an end, as football training in wet weather or as a stop-gap while the rest of the school paraded with the cadet corps. The idea of P.T. for its own sake, as a fetish, almost as a religion, was foreign to them and many times as they hung from the wall-bars the Beattys cursed the P.T.I, and prayed that the gods would look down in pity and strike this barbaric man in his pride.

  One morning their prayers were answered. The exercises that morning had been particularly fatiguing and after one of them the Starboard Watch were standing about in attitudes of resigned exhaustion.

  The P.T.I, was scornful.

  ‘Tired?’ he asked. ‘Look at you. Lolling about like a lot of pregnant prawns. Anyone would think you’d been taking some exercise. You’ve only had kid’s stuff. Watch the next exercise.’

  The P.T.I, ran lightly up to a vaulting-horse and somersaulted over, without touching it. The Starboard Watch looked at him silently. There.’

  The P.T.I, smirked.

  Suddenly there was a stir in the ranks and out stepped a challenger, a White Hope. It was the chosen instrument of the gods, Cartwright, an Australian cadet who until this moment of destiny had been less energetic than most.

  ‘Fair crack,’ said the White Hope. ‘Any joker can do that.’ Cartwright ran up to the horse, sprang into the air like his native kangaroo and somersaulted twice before landing neatly and quietly on the other side.

  The P.T.I.’s jaw drooped. He looked at Cartwright, quietly resuming his place in the class. Not since the day he told a New Zealand cadet to do a dozen press-ups and the lad did them one-handed had the P.T.I, been so dumbfounded.

  ‘Watch the next exercise,’ said the P.T.I. . . . ‘Knees bending with arms stretching.’

  Afterwards, the Beattys discovered that Cartwright had been Junior Gymnastics Champion of South Australia and Tasmania before he matured and turned his energies in other directions.

  The violent early morning exercise was symbolical of the whole of the Beattys’ Dartmouth training. From their first day the Beattys were plunged headlong into a rush of new experiences. They were weighed as carefully as though they were title-
fight contenders. They were carefully measured, as for a sarcophagus. They were medically examined from head to foot as though the Navy wished to satisfy itself that their physical condition had not deteriorated since their acceptance and it was not therefore accepting soiled goods. Their eyesight was tested for day and night vision. Their hair was cut and their teeth were inspected and pulled out or filled in as necessary. They were issued with text-books and note-books, pay books and identity cards, arctic clothing and tropical clothing, and respirators. Dartmouth took nothing on trust. They signed for the books and they signed for the clothing; they were enclosed in a gas-chamber to test the respirators; they swam two lengths of the swimming-bath, clothed and unclothed, to prove that they could swim; they ran two lengths of a football pitch, clothed, to prove that they could run; and they were photographed, presumably to prove that they were still unscarred.

  The Beattys were marched, doubled, halted, turned about, marched, doubled, halted and turned about once more. They were left no time for reflection, no time to wonder to what mysterious professional goal they were being hastened, no time to consider what changes in body and mind were being placed upon them. They could barely find time to write letters home. From early in the morning until late at night they were chased, hustled, hurried and hurtled, pell-mell. It was as though the Navy were vigorously shaking off the dust and lethargy of civilian life so that they could begin afresh. The mental condition peculiar to a regular naval officer was not cultivated easily nor quickly; the necessary reflexes took time to train and Dartmouth was only the beginning of the Beattys’ indoctrination. No young head-hunter, no prospective pupil of a political creed, ever submitted to so long or so intensive an initiation as a junior naval officer before he is considered to be trained.

  The instructional course at Dartmouth took the form of lectures supported by practical work. The best lecturers, as pure lecturers, were the Chief Petty Officers. Their subjects were limited, but they taught them with the despotic assurance of men who knew their briefs absolutely and whose dicta in the lecture-room were seldom or never questioned. They were experts in their own fields and they crushed easily any who doubted it.