Under Pressure

***

HMS Raleigh, Torpoint, Cornwall, nine months earlier.

I’d had a plan – a clear plan – since joining the Royal Navy that I wanted to serve with the elite. I wanted to be challenged, and if I was going to do it I needed to throw my heart and soul into it. I also needed the adrenaline fix. As a restless but determined soul who wanted to do something a tad different with my life I decided on the Submarine Service, the ‘Silent Service’. I wanted some of that, and although I had no idea what it would entail or what was required both mentally and physically, it appealed as a test. I’d been intrigued by submarines since childhood and had regularly seen them at the Plymouth naval base on our family’s annual summer break to the beautiful South Hams region of Devon. We’d spend at least one day visiting Plymouth Hoe for a game of crazy golf followed by fish and chips, gazing out to sea where, among others, Drake had sailed in 1588 to engage the Spanish Armada. Plymouth had been a vital centre during the Age of Empire, and all the sailor-scientists had set sail from here – Cook, Bligh and Darwin. Its naval history carried on and on through the two world wars, right up to the fleet of vessels I’d see on my boyhood holidays.

After lunch the family would take a guided trip round the warships on one of the boats that departed from the Mayflower Steps on the seafront, and we’d work our way past the might of the modern Navy. The moored-up, rusting warships seemed large, robust, even a tad soulless.

Meanwhile, the submarines tied up alongside looked anything but; sleek and powerful, with a large helping of intimidation to boot, they radiated a sense of mystery and glamour. I’d sit there looking at them, marvelling at what lethal pieces of machinery and wondrous feats of modern engineering they were. Enigmas to me in many ways: one minute powering forward on the surface like a ship, then in a flash simply vanishing under the water, wholly hidden from the world, completely self-sufficient, relying on no one, asking for nothing.

Unbeknown to me at the time, on these holiday boat trips I was witness to the changing nature of the Navy. It was no longer the surface boats that dominated the dockyards but the submarine. For where once it had been the battleship, aircraft carrier and frigate, now it was the age of underwater supremacy.

But even at that age I did sense that perhaps the ultimate mental examination was – as it still is – coping with life under the sea. A world without natural light, cooped up alongside more than 140 other men, eating the same food, breathing the same air, surviving together in some of the most forbidding conditions imaginable. Before I was to attempt this, however, at the age of 17 I tried to join the French Foreign Legion in Aubagne, near Marseilles. I’d ventured out there alone by ferry and train – having told my mum and dad I was off inter-railing with a couple of mates – and passed all the initial tests, both fitness and written, only to be told by a corporal of the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment that I needed parental permission as I was not yet 18. This was never going to happen. Immaculately dressed in fatigues and green beret, the chiselled Englishman cheerfully advised me to reapply in a few months, seemingly implying it would be a mere formality and that a career in the Legion lay ahead. To this day my mother knows nothing about this episode in my life, nor does my father.

I’d been fortunate enough to win a scholarship to public school in the Midlands for some of my secondary education. I didn’t come from a wealthy family – my family had grafted all their lives – so boarding school had certainly been an eye-opener as to how the other half lived, but it was useful in developing coping measures and survival instincts, and enabled me to get along with pretty much everyone. It was here that I first read Simon Murray’s Legionnaire, his classic account of serving in the Foreign Legion and the very book that had inspired my ill-judged trip to Marseilles. But the book also taught me something else – that the traditional trip through further education and then college or university wasn’t for me. I’d had enough of textbooks, teachers and essays; it was time to do something against the grain for a few years and see where I ended up.

There didn’t seem much point hanging around in the real world, as Mrs Thatcher and her Conservative government were wantonly destroying the West Midlands and most of northern Britain. The very recent miners’ strike was evidence of that, with the hitherto unseen spectacle of the British police having pitched battles with miners in desolate fields across South Yorkshire. It seemed that tradition and heritage no longer stood for anything. The miners, who could trace their family lineage back to the start of the Industrial Revolution, when the mining industry supplied power to steam engines, generated electricity and heated buildings, now found themselves on the sharp end of the politics of hate and the systematic destruction of the industrial heartlands. Glasgow, Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield and Birmingham were the major cities on the brink of economic collapse, and this had a knock-on effect on their satellite communities, my hometown of Wolverhampton being one.

Wolverhampton had gained its fortune on the back of the wool industry in the Middle Ages, when it flourished as a small market town. Its prosperity continued through Tudor Britain, and its first canal opened in the early 1770s, stimulating economic and industrial growth through the transportation of raw materials and goods. During the 19th century, at the advent of the Industrial Revolution, Wolverhampton boomed as a centre for steelmaking, coal mining and lock-making, and most of the country’s cables and anchors were made there at the height of the British Empire. It was also in the 19th century that the town and the surrounding area picked up its nickname of the ‘Black Country’, when the soil was turned black with soot deposited by all this burgeoning industry.

The railways reached Wolverhampton in 1837 and, coupled with the canal system, further increased the accessibility of the town; indeed, the Great Western Railway soon became a major employer in the area when it opened a locomotive repair factory in 1859, a large bicycle manufacturing industry further enhanced economic prosperity, and by the time a public park was opened, quickly followed by an art gallery, library and hospital, the town was thriving as it headed into the new age.

The early and middle part of the 20th century had been kind to the town, and its football team – along with Manchester United’s ‘Busby Babes’ – were the best in the land. Captained by legendary centre-half Billy Wright, Wolverhampton Wanderers won three league championships in the 1950s and an FA Cup at the end of the decade, making them the unofficial world club champions.

But the mid- to late-1960s saw a painful decline in both Wolverhampton’s – and the industrial western heartland’s – economic fortunes, and by the mid-1970s a third of the population lived in council housing, with unemployment rising and immigration causing deep divisions in the West Midlands.

Enoch Powell, author of the infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, was the local MP for Wolverhampton South West. I’ll never forget as a very young boy answering the door to him while he was on the stump in the first general election campaign of 1974. I remember opening the door to the palest-looking man I’d ever seen, his skin like alabaster, head slightly tilted forward. He stared at me intensely with fixed, unblinking eyes.

‘Mum and Dad are up the road at the neighbours,’ I told him bashfully.

I may have been very young but I knew immediately who he was – I’d seen him on the TV – but of course I didn’t know about the general furore he’d caused in the country as a whole. At this point my elder brother Chris joined me for moral support, so Powell doffed his trilby hat, wished us good luck and walked off at a gallop to Number 6.

Wolverhampton in the 1970s staggered along with rising unemployment and seemed to me to possess an underlying threat of violence. The place was suffering – economic death by a thousand cuts – and by the time the Tories came to power in 1979, hell-bent on changing the social and economic outlook of the once-great industrial heartlands of the Black Country, most of northern Britain was finished; the collapse of the industrial working class and the north–south divide of Thatcherism had well and truly begun.

As a six- and seven-year-old, I’d watch the news of factories shutting, car plants closing, the oil crisis and the first miners’ strikes. Even at that age I was aware that this wasn’t business as usual, but it didn’t give me sleepless nights. I was too busy with my newfound love of sport. Whether it was football, rugby or cricket, it all came fairly easy to me, and I guess that sport was also an enjoyable release from overly zealous, annoying teachers. Football was my obsession; morning, noon and evening I’d be out in our road, in the park, or driving my parents mad, hammering the ball against the garage door. Slightly introverted and on the shy side, I was wary of people until I got to know them, and was not much of a conversationalist. Instead, I lost myself in sport and my other passion – music.

Later on I captained the school football team and played for the area and district teams. Football was my life. Aged 14, I was lucky enough to have trials with my hometown club, Wolverhampton Wanderers. I’d been training in their youth set-up and had been on a couple of tours with them, including a memorable trip down to London where we played the borough of Hackney, coincidentally my home for the past 16 years. We had stones and bricks thrown at us from the touchline, and the match was suddenly called off after 30 minutes.

I didn’t make the grade for Wolves. I remember the coach coming round to my house, sitting me down in front of my mum to break the upsetting news. It hit me hard, the first time I’d failed at something.

But my childhood was happy for the most part, except for losing both my maternal grandparents at the end of the decade, my grandfather dying six months to the day after his wife; married at 18, they’d been together for over half a century before both bowing out at three score years and ten. I was particularly close to my cousin Stephen. Four years older than me, he was cool, played the guitar and was into New Romantic bands, particularly David Sylvian and his group Japan. I didn’t see him as much as I’d have liked, and by the time he reached 18 I’m sure he didn’t want to be seen hanging round with this spotty 14-year-old with braces.

It was the hot summer of 1982 and the World Cup on the telly when the phone rang. Dad answered. It was a friend of my Uncle Brian, telling him that Stephen had been found dead in his car. In shock, we assumed he’d been in a car crash, but in fact he’d had a massive heart attack and a friend had discovered him slumped over the steering wheel with the horn blaring. Dead, and not yet out of his teens. The post-mortem revealed he had an enlarged heart muscle. I was devastated by his death, but of course I had to be as strong as I could for my aunt and uncle. I didn’t know how to process my feelings or communicate my grief, so I just bottled it up and allowed it to fester. It wasn’t really an era for discussing feelings – that wasn’t how things worked – and my whole family suffered in silence.

My parents would let me out of the house for hours at a time. I’d disappear up the local park, playing football, climbing trees, annoying the neighbours, staying out till dark; fish and chips every Saturday lunchtime, going to Woolworths to buy The Jam’s Sound Affects, my first LP – not ‘vinyl’, it was never called that, a modern term used by people who were never there in the first place; playing ‘knock and run’ … slowly I was tapping into a new sense of adventure as my body and confidence grew.

As I became older, this love of adventure – plus Simon Murray’s book, which had provoked my failed attempt to join the Legion – pushed me towards a life away from formal education. When I returned from Marseilles, the Navy looked like the next best option for an unconventional life – and I’d also heard that the Submarine Service paid well. Serving Queen and country never entered into it for me, as I was neither nationalistic nor a particular fan of the monarchy. The only people who ever talked about fighting for Queen and country were – and still are – feckless politicians who’d never done, nor ever would do, any of the fighting. Queen and country? One was outdated as an institution, the other past it as an idea. No, I wanted to do it for me.

1

Beasting

HMS Raleigh is a naval establishment on the banks of the River Tamar in Cornwall, where all new recruits commence their Part 1* training. At the height of a warm and bristling English summer in early July 1985, while the country was looking forward to Live Aid from Wembley and Philadelphia, all I had in front of me was 11 weeks of utter hell and lunacy. I arrived on the Torpoint ferry from Plymouth, trying to give off an air of nonchalant irreverence. I decided I’d try to get on with everyone and make the best of it, and attempt not to get too downhearted if things didn’t go according to plan. I was nervous, yes, but I had to exude some positivity if I was to make the grade.

My grand intentions were destroyed within 24 hours. We were put together in a class of around 25 recruits and given a lecture of induction by the master-at-arms. He told us he was to be addressed as ‘Master’, pointed out who the senior NCO (non-commissioned officer) on the staff was, and then, much to my amusement, had us pledge allegiance to the monarch and sign various forms with next-of-kin details. I was then given a service number and whisked to the barbers for a brutal No.1 haircut – the only option – for which I had to pay £1.20. Piss-take. Next, once I’d climbed into a smelly sweater used by every training recruit, I had my photo taken for my naval ID card with said new haircut. I was then measured by the stores staff, hats were shoved on and off my head, shoes and boots tried on, more sweaters hurled at me, with tape measures poked into my every nook and crevice. Finally, once I was handed a kit bag, I walked over to my dormitory – a ‘mess deck’ in naval terminology – ready for the long slog to begin.

I soon got chatting to my fellow squad members, who seemed like a good bunch, a nice mix of cocky, hard-working and methodical types. I reckoned I’d be OK. I was assigned a bunk, and told that lights-out was at 22.00 hours and we’d be woken up at 5.30 every morning. Shitsville.

Just before I drifted off for my first night’s sleep I distinctly remember wondering what the hell I was doing there and thinking that there had to be easier first rungs on the job ladder. The next thing I knew it was 5.30 sharp, the lights flicked on, to the accompanying shout of ‘Hands off cocks, hands on socks!’ That morning – like every other that followed – started with half an hour spent scraping away at my mostly whiskerless face with an old cut-throat razor, then a shower and a further 30 minutes making my bed, which had to be done to perfection: sheets, counterpane and blankets all folded in a variety of ways, snug and neatly presented or my bedding would be launched straight out the window.

Our instructor was Chief Petty Officer Jenkins, a Cornishman who had served most of his career on carriers as a radar operator. He was a softly spoken man of the sea whose bark was worse than his bite, and he used the word ‘boning’ a lot. At first I thought he must have been a butcher in a previous life, but it soon became clear he was talking about the opposite sex – he could have given Roy Chubby Brown a run for his money. And then one day Jenkins vanished from our course and wasn’t seen again. I never discovered what happened – maybe the Navy found out he was a sexual deviant and had him put in rehab or a straitjacket. He was replaced by another officer, CPO Williams, on what was to be his last posting before he retired. Supportive and occasionally encouraging, he was confident enough to let other training departments do the shouting.

Basic military training is pretty consistent across the armed forces: 11 weeks of ‘militarisation’ to instil a sense of discipline, teamwork and organisation, with a focus on weapons training, firefighting, swimming and damage control. You’ve got to be fit, as there are obstacle courses, long runs and gym sessions, including gymnastics and rope-climbing. Although I absolutely hated gymnastics, the one sport I’d been hopeless at while at school, being quite unable to reverse-somersault over the pommel-horse, I was brilliant at rope-climbing; I could get up a rope in around six to seven seconds, which took some doing.

Part of our training involved a trip to Dartmoor, a long weekend in the middle of nowhere with a compass, food and tent, trying to get to various rendezvous points within a certain amount of time. As ever when I ventured outdoors, the heavens opened with monsoonal fury, and we spent most of the weekend soaking wet, cold and hungry. One guy got pneumonia and ended up in hospital for a month. Most of the weekend, John – probably my closest mate in the squad – and I kept seeing what we believed were shadowy figures, which flicked in and out of our peripheral vision. Everyone thought we were going loopy through lack of sleep and hunger, hallucinating even. We were later told that members of the SAS had been shadowing our movements all weekend for training purposes.

I soon picked up the fundamentals of life in the Navy, including ceremonial duties and basic drill – yes, lots of drill, far too much. I still don’t know why there was so much of it. Its purpose was to instil pride and discipline in the group, but I never saw the point. It seemed a relic of a bygone age, resonant of empire and the need to keep the plebs in place. Getting screamed at by a gunnery warrant officer was a particular favourite, especially when there was close eye-to-eye contact; no matter what I or the rest of the squad did, it was important to keep a straight face as the guy’s blood vessels reached bursting point with the rounds of expletives he hurled in our direction. Partly detached from the whole experience, I was usually overcome by the smell of Kouros emanating from his every pore.

Other than advanced seamanship, firefighting, navigation and basic weapons training – comprising pistol shooting, self-loading rifle (SLR) and general-purpose machine gun (GPMG), which consisted of hitting a stationary target from 25 yards with a machine gun firing God knows how many rounds a minute – the one element of basic training I remember was this pointless shouting and hollering by the instructing staff, which often bordered on bullying and abuse. I could deal with the insults and swearing (‘You fucking spunk bubble!’ being my personal favourite), along with the questioning of my manhood and parentage, but I wondered how this would improve me as a person and sailor? To me, the idea that abuse is good for the individual and team ethic, and that subordinates – even in a military environment – should be taught through fear and humiliation, is just wrong. All it served to accomplish with me was strengthening my sense of self, while making the training staff appear like wild-eyed testosterone monsters. Why an experienced NCO would squander all the knowledge he’d toiled for over a long and successful career by hurling inane obscenities at a group of young men, and in some cases boys, I never understood.

I’m not sure what the Navy is like nowadays, but in my day it verged on the nonsensical. I’d spent time at boarding school, where the bullying was at least as bad as you got in the armed forces, so I’d dealt with this kind of treatment before. I knew you had to let it wash over you and not engage with the teaching staff. If you did, they’d exploit each and every one of your weaknesses, and devote themselves to making your life a misery.

I used to be up for hours every evening, washing and ironing; it felt more like a dry cleaner’s than military training. And the ironing was ridiculous – creases here, creases there, creases fucking everywhere, creases sharp enough to cut a loaf of bread. I’d spend an eternity perfecting the use of the steam cycle, and if I was required to wear ceremonial dress the next day I might as well forget about getting any sleep. Polishing shoes was another major ball-ache – up all hours, using a naked flame to heat the polish, then applying it with cotton wool, then, Bob’s your father’s brother, shoes so gleaming you could use their reflection to shave in. Again, I’m not sure how all this was preparing me for a career under the waves, but hey-ho, that’s basic military training; you are scum, the lowest of the low, a number. Nothing more, nothing less.

Summer 1985 and I’m passing out. Proud as punch in my full Royal Navy guard uniform, armed with a self-loading rifle, shoulders back, chest out, begging my father to get the camera working.

The extreme demands made on us were a shock to many. Some of my group had suffered enough by the end of Week 5, as their bedding and locker were launched out of the window onto the parade square for the umpteenth time, their kit and shoes deemed insufficiently clean. Their punishment? Cleaning the toilets with a toothbrush. Utter sadism. After 11 gruelling weeks I passed the course, and Mum and Dad came to see me pass out. There was an official video made of the day, and as the camera panned around the parade square before the arrival of the First Sea Lord, the VIP for the day, it caught my parents arguing intensely about the workings of the new camera they’d bought for the occasion. I presume they got it working in the end as I still have a couple of photos that I’ve shown my children, who never believed I actually went to sea or indeed was ever in the Royal Navy at all.

What did I learn from basic military training? Not much, to be honest. Everyone talked about it being good for developing team skills, but I wasn’t so sure. It seemed more like 11 weeks of self-preservation by any means. I learnt how to iron and I became an expert shoe-shiner. If all else failed I could keep my kit nice and neat; ‘Humphreys kept a good locker’ would be a fitting summary of my time there.

The most rewarding aspect of basic training was that I was taught how to sail at sea. I spent a long weekend on Plymouth Sound on a boat learning the basic skills of seamanship and how not to endanger myself or other crew-members. I loved it so much that in the time between my leaving submarine school and joining the Polaris fleet – some three to four weeks – I used to sail two retired admirals from Portsmouth round to Southampton, a distance of about 12 miles, where they’d lunch at the yacht club while I’d get a fry-up at the local café. They’d talk about the scourge of communism, Labour leader Neil Kinnock being a Russian spy, and bringing back the death penalty and the birch as I sailed them home to Gosport. They’d head off to their houses and I’d pootle around the boat, have a gin and a smoke, then return to base. Heady days.

The aim of Part 2 of the Navy training course at HMS Dolphin, in Gosport, was to instil the highest standards of professionalism demanded by the Submarine Service. I travelled from Plymouth across to the Navy’s other major historical port city, Portsmouth. From here it was a hop on a ferry over to Gosport, the home of HMS Dolphin and indeed the Submarine Service since 1904. Dominating the skyline was the submarine escape tank. It sent shivers down my spine just thinking about how I’d cope with that infamous aspect of the training. I was also required to demonstrate an intimate understanding of the different engineering, weapon and safety systems that run the submarine and keep the crew safe.

This seemed a long way away from cleaning toilet bowls with a toothbrush, ironing shirts and buffing shoes. Fortunately, the days of kit musters, long runs and drill were long gone. It was classroom-based, head down in books-type learning, absorbing the basic principles of nuclear and diesel propulsion. There were various exams after each stage: hydraulic systems, auxiliary vent and blow, electrical systems, the workings of a nuclear reactor, torpedoes and ballistic missiles, CO2 absorption units, the different ventilation states on board, the workings of the periscopes, navigational systems, electronic warfare, and radio and sonar systems – quite enough to fry your brain. This was followed by radar training, which I struggled with; it was all blips and blobs to me, a predetermined mess on a screen. I’m still very much in awe of air-traffic controllers and how they manage flights in and out of the major airports and monitor the sky.