Toy Sailors

The Sea daddy was slightly overweight but in every other way he was always immaculately turned out, he was bombarded with questions about every subject, interests were varied but we all listened to his every word. He enjoyed being the centre of attention and many of his accounts of things “where a matter of fact” we listened intently to his account of naval life and how great things could be when all the training was over, he made us feel that we had to go through the boredom and endurance of basic training to really appreciate the tradition and pride that comes when wearing the Queens uniform.

The Queens uniform! It was never even a thought that had entered my head, why was I really doing this. I suppose the first doubts came into my head why I was really joining the Navy. This was on the second day and then it continued to rise up like a bad smell at various points in my career.

The training continued, I learned how to make my bed, wear my clothes and how to look after them. Wash them, dry them, iron them and sew them. I learned how to eat properly this was not optional we were told it was an offence not to have three meals a day.
We continued to march, we ran, we did assault courses, cross-country courses, we climbed hills, we canoed and at the end of the day we slept.

"Toy sailors", slowly we started to “act as one” this was we were assured, was when teamwork starts to pay off. It happened at the same time the pecking order was formed. Personalities and bullies were soon apparent and in a class full of Glaswegian's, face off’s happened regularly and sometimes there was more than a Glasgow kiss used to settle a quarrel. I was probably the smallest person in the class and I never ever felt I had anything to prove, I was however bullied once bye unusually the twins, they were not very big either but they worked as a tag team, I was left bleeding it was done for no reason that I knew except I was from Fife. The twins were from Partick, they had several run-ins with people, eventually they were kicked out the navy for beating up someone who mattered.