Tail-gate Charlie

TAIL-GATE CHARLIE

  

From HMS Sultan I was drafted to HMS Valiant, because she was in refit I was billeted in HMS Pembroke. Pembroke was Victorian and had served as a naval establishment since 1903, sighted on the shores of the Medway, Pembroke was attached to the Naval Base at Chatham and was one of few naval bases able to  refits of Nuclear submarines.

The accommodation was of good quality with six able ratings and one leading rate to each mess. All the junior ratings from the submarine where in one accommodation block.I joined on a Saturday but most of the ships company where either on duty or on weekend off.

Refitting boats only had skeleton crews, this was the term given to having just enough people to do the reduced workload, so It never actually surprised me that I never met anybody from the Valiant until the Monday morning.

I ensured I was down at the Nuclear complex in the dockyard in good time only to find that there was no one there expecting me.  I was eventually asked by a very scruffy unshaven bloke smelling of sweat and beer who I was and had I taken all my outstanding leave?, as quick as a flash, I replied no! If they had no record of me joining then I might as well get something out of it! This was an opportunity not to be missed, I later became aware that there is no such thing as a free lunch. I was given a travel warrant and three weeks off. 

I was still unattached and could have gone anywhere but I decided to go home to Burntisland, as it turned out it was probably the last time that I would spend anymore than a just weekend at home.

Apart from the usual faces and old men propping up the bars I soon realised it was a waste of good leave.

While at home my well badgered Dad took me out for some driving lessons, I hasten to add he was short of patience and if it wasn’t for the promise of a few beers and a full tank of petrol at the end of it, it just wouldn’t have happened.

Driving lessons were not really the name for it, I got fifteen to twenty minutes going back and forward on a derelict airfield.

I knew very little about cars but I soon found out what an engine sump was,  I managed to find the only second world war crater in the airfield! It was really just a hole but it gave credibility to the damage caused.

I had lit the blue touch paper and proceeded to be told what an arse I was. I never answered back because I would have ended up paying for the repair.

My dad and cars were not two words that fitted well together. I remember as a child we were travelling to Yorkshire from Fife, It was like the journey up the Congo to my parents. I sat behind my dad as he was driving, mum was navigator and I was acting tail-gate Charlie, my duties were to inform dad of any cars overtaking him in his blind spot. The scene was set for the journey, we set off very early as not to encounter any other traffic, by mile one, dad was already on fag two.

We stopped at the borders for breakfast dad insisted on having soup! Why? The spoon in his hand shook so much there was very little soup getting to his mouth. He said to my mum, he had never had butterflies as bad in his life, he continued eating with his hand shaking soup everywhere, he said he even felt the nerves in his bum jangling! I never did tell him, I was tapping the underside of his car seat with my feet, I would have been dead. 
Dad gave up driving not long after that journey, he said it was his nerves, I recon it interrupted with his drinking hobby.

I returned To HMS Pembroke  after my leave and to my new mess. I was the leading hand in charge of the mess.

As I have previously mentioned I was a very young leading hand, I never knew how I was going to cope in my position responsibility, I soon found out the only difference was the increase in pay and the ability to loose it If I fucked up.

I walked into my mess, there in front of me was a six foot black guy with a beard, I introduced myself tentatively, after all I had never talked to a black guy before, we never had any in Scotland, this was my first encounter and I am not being racisct I can't even spell it. I was nervous, I needn’t have been, he did speak English and didn't bite. his name was Willy. It was hard to keep a straight face, when he  smiled his whole face opened up, he looked about thirty, it was hard to tell, turned out he was only nineteen, Willy came from London, his surname was Williamson I never found out his first name. 
We became good friends. 

silhouettes

Dolphin was just another good experience on the road to sea, I was drafted after twelve weeks to HMS Sultan, and my training was to continue at Rutherford block the Royal Navy Nuclear training facility, training now started in earnest, I was obviously going to be going on nuclear submarines not surprising really as Diesel submarines were few and far between. 

Ernest Rutherford is one of the most illustrious scientists of all time. 

He is to the atom what Darwin is to evolution, Newton to mechanics, Faraday to electricity and Einstein to relativity. His pathway from rural child to immortality is a fascinating one.

Rutherford's works ensure his immortality. As the The New York Times stated, in a eulogy accompanying the announcement of his unexpected and unnecessary death in 1937.
" It is given to but few men to achieve immortality, still less to achieve Olympian rank, during their own lifetime. Lord Rutherford achieved both. In a generation that witnessed one of the greatest revolutions in the entire history of science he was universally acknowledged as the leading explorer of the vast infinitely complex universe within the atom, a universe that he was first to penetrate."

Not for him the fame based on one discovery. He radically altered our understanding of nature on three separate occasions. Through brilliantly conceived experiments, and with special insight, he explained the perplexing problem of radioactivity as the spontaneous disintegration of atoms (they were not necessarily stable entities as had been assumed since the time of the ancient Greeks), he determined the structure of the atom and he was the world's first successful alchemist (he converted nitrogen into oxygen). Or put another way, he was first to split the atom. 

Any of his secondary discoveries, such as dating the age of the Earth, would have given fame to a lesser scientist. For example, the first method invented to detect individual nuclear particles by electrical means, the Rutherford-Geiger detector, evolved into the Geiger-Muller tube. The modern smoke detector, responsible for saving so many lives in house fires, can be traced back to 1899 when, at McGill University in Canada, Rutherford blew tobacco smoke into his ionisation chamber and observed the change in ionisation.

The accommodation at Sultan was luxurious compared to the stables, only six to a room and carpets on the floor. I was in with some decent guys and really looked forward to the course.

HMS Sultan had a bop every Thursday, it was brilliant as it was always full of local girls looking for a lumbar, and it was the little things that made naval life bearable.

Well part two training started, it was all physics and maths, learning the intricacies of the reactor plant systems and even worse learning how to sketch them inclusive of every valve and major component, identifying every one was not easy. Exams were regular and studying in the evenings was recommended. Failure did not mean return to general service so there was no escape from becoming a submariner, it was an option that was talked about. I think everybody on my course was a pressed man. 

Nuclear physics didn’t come naturally and there were some aspects of the course that I just had to accept rather than understand, I never expected to climb any ladders and with just an average intelligence, I had no illusion that I would reach the dizzy heights. So I suppose I was happy with the situation.  I knew I had a career path and how fast and how much I achieved was entirely up to me.

One of my first recollections of Rutherford block was the nasty block petty officer who really enjoyed the sound of his own voice and the power that he felt he had to reign over  those junour to him. He was the worst kind of senior rate, the type who had favourites and treated them with a different stick. I made a conscious decision, I would never be like him If I ever made petty officer..

Back to the mess every night a bit of studying, a bit of scran and then a few beers somewhere in Gosport, Life was good. 

Our mess looked out over the WRENS quarters, most nights we used to put the lights out and for a short time watch the silhouettes of the wrens in various states of undress we used to keep a chalk board tally of who did what and when, we gave them names, even though they were anonamous, there routines were almost like clockwork. It was hilarious trying to put a name to a body shape. “simple things please tiny minds”.

The course continued, whilst there I received advancement to Leading Hand. The leading hands rate is the first significant rung of the ladder I had studied hard and passed for it in Rosyth, there had been some grumbles from older sailors in the workshop, it was so unusual for someone of my age to pass the exam to be honest it was just a matter of applying myself to study, I admit to being concerned about my experience but I new I could pull it out the bag,

Having spent what seemed like hours outside the camp Commanders office, I was just one in a long line of other requestmen. Also in the line were two others on my course they were also up for there promotion, One of them unfortunately had been in the local chippy a few days earlier and had intervened to stop a fight. The police were called when a window got broken.

He was a jock as well and under normal circumstances I would have been ashore with him but I was duty, he received his promotion and then joined the back of the queue only to have wait half an hour for off caps he was then marched in front of the same officer to have it taken off him. It must have been one of the quickest reversals of promotion in history, and one of the most expensive fish and chip suppers.

On about week eight of the course I found out I was joining HMS Valiant, she was a Nuclear powered hunter killer, for the second time in only my second sea drafts I was joining a vessel in a dry dock, this time Valiant was in refit in Chatham.