Sheepishly after dinner that first night, and dressed in my half blues, I was welcomed to the mess, the Andrew (The Royal Navy) and the family. I wasn’t alone, there were eight other new lads. We were well looked after initially as things needed to get warmed up. We each faced a pyramid of beer in front of us to drink. A can of beer from each mess deck member, given as a welcoming present and stacked in front of you like a pyramid. Of course, we were all pissed as fuck after a few hours and struggling to make a dent in the pyramid which seemed to regrow after you’d made an attempt to drink it. Eventually the drinking games began, from shooting tins to the game of spoons that led to an ironing board being bashed over one lad’s head! In a game of spoons you’re supposed to hold a spoon in your mouth and bash your opponent over the head as hard as you can until he gives up, all done blindfolded so as to make you believe you have a chance you may miss getting hit. However, as it turned out only the new guy keeps the blindfold on and the instrument which is used to hit him over the head grows in size each time until it become ridiculously obvious what’s happening.
The endgame for myself and each of the new boys in turn was to be humiliated and punished in some barbaric way. I was to be tarred and feathered and then crucified over the A/C hatch. There was a brief courtroom hearing before sentence was passed. This, translated, meant I was stripped of all clothing and then lashed and masking-taped naked to the mess deck table. I was shaved with a Bic razor from head to toe, so ending up absolutely hair free, with anyone and everyone joining in, and occasionally being pissed on before being covered in what was called at the time ‘niggers’ grease’ (Clydspin grease, a very black grease) and my pillows torn and then emptied out all over me. I guess it was fucking hilarious to see a guy running around half covered in grease and feathers. After what felt like hours of struggling, I was then put into overalls and a pole of wood was pushed through the arms and hung over the aft hatch, crucified for the rest of the evening. Fucking unreal, but brilliant in many ways. It was quite hard to explain the next day why I was bald to passing officers and senior ranks in the ship’s passageways. They all knew what had happened, ignored it and had a laugh at my expense. Now, some of the lads did go too far, there were a few tears and a few fists that night, but we all ended up with new nicknames and were soon at home with the worst of them. Everyone became part of the family, no exceptions. It didn’t matter if you were a weirdo or quiet or loud or had big ears, none of that shit mattered, you became a mess member and proud of it.
We patrolled off the coast of Norway for two weeks solid and the weather soon deteriorated. Seasickness took a hold of me. There’s no place you can go, nothing you can do to relieve it, no stopping the symptoms and no break from it, not even for a moment. Doesn’t matter how long you look at the horizon, or how long you lie on your bunk, if you’re seasick you’re just no good to anyone. I guess I got it bad that trip, spewing all day, five-finger spread, feeling hot, cold, sweaty, tired, exhausted. You feel dizzy yet very alert to all the movement, especially your brain sloshing around in your head. Smells make it worse; engine room odours, galley smells and any normally offensive smell is magnified in intensity by about a million per cent to present you with a whole new toolbox of reasons that will take you to the shithouse or the guardrail to release in a projectile fashion anything that may be left in your stomach. Pre-death is the bursting of every last blood vessel in your eyes as the retching near kills you trying to expel every last drop of bile. The only place to go was your bunk to try and die quietly, which is less annoying for the others around you.
It’s not just the nausea, the simplest of things became mammoth tasks, like getting dressed was a major issue and there was no way to avoid it, putting socks on was problematic, let alone taking a shower. Standing in a shower cubical whilst holding on for your life as all the water races from one side of the washroom to the other like a miniature tsunami laden with washbags, soap, shampoo bottles and any other non-secured item was incredibly unpleasant, and this, added to the vomiting, made the whole idea of getting cleaned up seem like a pointless waste of time and energy.
One lasting memory of this whole nasty episode of my first attempt to gaining some sea legs was about four weeks into the deployment when we had to go into one of the Norwegian fjords to conduct a boat transfer for mail and some urgent parts. It was planned to take place at around 1pm, which would allow me to grab some lunch for the first time in days and maybe, just maybe, survive the whole experience. The ship was behind schedule and special sea duty men weren’t called until 1.15pm, just as the ship approached the entrance to the calm waters of the fjord. I remember feeling so excited as I went to the galley counter to get something to eat, dreaming of succulent steak, chips, anything to fill my painfully empty stomach. I was met with an almost empty counter with the last piece of chicken going to an equally sick shipmate in front of me. Asking the chef for more was totally the wrong thing to do, and I received a raw chicken, thrown at me from behind the serving counter. A lot of abuse followed, together with a stern reminding of mealtimes before the counter shutters were pulled down abruptly, ending any hope of a proper meal. I think I settled for bread and butter with some crisps from the Colonel Gaddafi. I did eventually get some sea legs but I have never been much other than a fair-weather sailor.
Work really started for me as the ship passed up through the Norwegian Sea towards the Arctic Circle and into the Lofoten Basin. The Lofoten Basin was where new ships and subs coming out of the Soviet Northern Fleet base in Severomorsk on the Kola Peninsula usually started trials or began a deployment. It can be a busy seaway, with the Arctic Bridge and Northern Sea Route starting or ending in this area depending on the voyage direction, which is the ideal starting point for a sub to submerge and get lost in the noise of surface traffic before trying to disappear.
It’s daylight all day and all fucking night that far north in summer, and I remember spending almost three whole weeks in a dark cupboard in the operations room. I basically lived in an anteroom which was probably only 6ft by 3ft, one bulkhead completely lined with communications equipment that I didn’t touch, all painted in that blue-grey pussers’ paint that did its best to hide all the nicotine staining. The floor space was about four tiles long covered in ash from the overflowing ashtrays that balanced precariously next to the two badly worn-out chairs that were firmly secured to the deck not allowing any adjustment for comfort. I spent my time writing down and recording transmissions between Soviet surface ships, shore establishments and Soviet ballistic missile boats conducting trials and manoeuvres alongside and under the merchant shipping. I occasionally got to go out on deck, usually at some obscure time like 3am, and was always greeted by daylight.
I don’t remember enjoying much of it except to say that good food and iced Fanta orange (my favourite at the time) was brought to me constantly, as though what I was doing was indeed important in some way. Everything I wrote was typed up and sealed in HM Service envelopes then stamped ‘Secret’ in big red bold letters across the seal and never seen again. The content of the messages and forms I completed, I’m disappointed to write, were quite boring except for the occasional target simulation drill sequences, names of naval officers and civilian contractors and a whole new language I actually struggled with regarding nuclear reactor parts and system bugs and problems they were encountering. My intelligence gathering extended to working with other NATO units and British submarines in the taping of submarine communication cables and surface communication intercepts, which were encrypted but decoded by my contact, only known as Uniform Oscar, who would also provide live communications from within the Soviet submarines which included everything from what was for supper to detailed briefs for upcoming deployment passage routes. This was of course all continually interrupted by our friendly shadowing spy ship pretending to be a fishing boat. I remember even waving to her one night whilst I was having a cigarette outside the chippy’s shop with a cup of tea. A friendly war, you could say. We were watching th
em watching us.
The Cold War game of cat and mouse went on for another five or so years, and I remember reading about the Americans fucking it all up with the incident of the USS Baton Rouge colliding with the Kostroma in 1992. There were many operations around this time, some I don’t even know if I was involved in or not, but they were all just intel gathering missions; I have to say that even when I was involved as a young interpreter in the mid-’80s things got a little close, with the ship being brought to action stations a few times with an unknowing crew as to the real reasons why, and no idea how close we came to an incident ourselves. It was on one such occasion I was involved in when we had a Soviet sub under our hull, but what was exciting for me was that I was one of only a few aboard aware of the British S boat under the Russians talking directly to me. Us watching them watching us watching them!
I guess that was the one thing I had to play along with back then; the crew would be complaining about the endless exercises and drills, then going to defence watches, moaning and complaining tirelessly but they never really knew why. It kind of made me feel at least more involved and connected to the whole purpose of sitting out at sea for weeks at a time. No wonder the lads got so smashed when the ship finally got alongside and leave was granted.
Eight weeks had passed quickly and I had packed up my kit ready to leave the Gainsborough in Portsmouth and return to Plymouth as ordered. What a relief to be getting off the ship; my trip had been nothing short of exhausting and I was actually hoping to slip away quietly. I had a leaving routine to conduct which included an interview with my divisional officer. I was really looking forward to a weekend at home maybe. Lt Dent was excited to see me at my leaving interview and passed me a new draft order. On arrival at Portsmouth I was to report to HMS Raleigh by 0800 Thurs and meet Cdr Brown and attend GCHQ over the weekend to brief the JTLS team (Joint Technical Language Service) on the content of my interceptions. No fucking weekend off. Shit train ride over to Guz, meet Cdr Brown and then drive up to Cheltenham, in his car. I wasn’t keen on spending that amount of time with a naval officer after the eight weeks I’d just had.
The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and sensitive information to the government and armed forces of the United Kingdom. I had never heard of it nor that it was based in Cheltenham. I remember arriving there after over two hours of light conversation with Commander Brown in his amazing Ford Sierra. It truly was amazing as I’m sure he had explained how amazing it was at least 20 times on the journey. It hadn’t been too painful, we had a laugh about seasickness and cramped living conditions at sea, but he was more focused on seeing how I had enjoyed it and my opinions of the work I had undertaken. But he let slip how interested everyone had been at my penfriend family in Moscow and how there was a growing interest in them. I didn’t think too much of it other than that the system was keeping an eye on me. We set a game plan for the briefings, planned a delivery, which went over my head I think, but I remember him being very relaxed about the whole affair and quite reassuring. My work at sea had been very well received apparently by the Admiralty, which had passed the whole thing along the food chain, including all my private correspondence with Moscow.
Arrival in Cheltenham was met with a level of security and sensitivity I hadn’t yet seen in my short time in the service. Sure, I had a military ID, but to get into the base required a signal of invitation, or SOI, military ID, car pass and area passes for the sections we would be visiting. GCHQ is a circular building surrounded by orange segment-like car parks and outer buildings almost like an airport terminal, giving suitable distance from the fence line security to the actual building, which was and still is referred to as the ‘doughnut’. There were a number of out-of-perimeter security stations and a QRF, or quick reaction force teams, for any security breach or attempt; there are probably more cameras in GCHQ than in the whole of Hollywood! For me as a young recruit it was simply overwhelmingly exciting.
This place is a fortress. It is the security agencies’ safe house and the ultimate conduit into the hidden world of global operations, counter-espionage, secret services, NSA, CIA, special operations, all the MI. Of course, there are other groups of people walking these corridors – men and women who work there in silence and behind limited-access doors, whose real purpose is hidden and who should not be interrupted in any way. The heightened security states and the interests in Russian elements were possibly due to the recent capture in America of a former Naval Intelligence analyst, Jonathan Pollard, which is very well documented. His work involved passing over 800 documents, including intel from the US Navy’s 6th Fleet on Soviet shipping and submarines to Israel. This made for a biblical breach of security which the UK had become very aware of.
Of note: Pollard was a former US Naval Intelligence official and was used as an example many times later in my training for positive and negative effect.
I was totally out of my depth in the briefings and had to rely on Cdr Brown to coax me through, all in front of a plethora of intelligence agencies. The briefing room was like a mini amphitheatre with two small podiums at the front with a drop-down white screen behind them which was fed from a projector outside the room. The room was soundproofed, black soft cloth seating, each with foldout desk arrangements, and microphones for the occupants to speak into. It wasn’t a big room but it was a very formal arrangement, with cameras in every corner of what felt like a hollow room. There was just one window into the central courtyard that had been blacked out. No phones allowed, no cameras, no bags, just the 20 or so guys who had had their weekend fucked up to listen to me and all the shit I had translated on my first trip away with the Royal Navy. That’s what I was thinking at the time anyway.
I’m guessing many agencies were present to listen to my interpretations of the intercepts, which had been coupled up with a slide show of the units and people I had been listening to. It was actually great to see what I had been doing. So, there I was, looking like a scared rabbit in the intelligence community headlights, ready to be shot. I gripped the microphone stem like it was a lifeline as I described all the conversations in turn, their tone, the excitement of those communicating, the technical issues that the submarines or the shoreside personnel had been facing at the time, as well as all the destinations, routes and speeds that had been discussed. I think I managed to get it all across and with only minimum swear words which seemed to pass unnoticed.
There were some interruptions as various participants added confirmations or supporting information as they saw fit throughout the presentation, but there was not a great deal of discussion or argument, just lots of paper shuffling and deep sighs. There were some interesting questions, like what accents or locations did I think certain speakers had, did I think any of the conversations implied a state of emergency or shock or anything out of the ordinary? Did any of the conversations appear to me to make little sense, be false or be in code of any description? Did I know or recognise the names of any of those persons speaking or mentioned in the conversations? Yes, I did actually. Some of the names I had heard in the communications I had also read about in letters from Anatoly (which they obviously knew as all my mail was intercepted). It was like there had been a death in the room, utter silence, then lots of whispering, and then a louder conversation grew until the questions changed away from the presentation and more towards my knowledge of any of the persons in the presentations, my abilities and future commitments and ambitions. What I really remember was how polite and courteous they all were with me, how genuinely interested they were, and how fucking great I was feeling. To be in a position of knowledge that the security services seemed to be devoid of was somewhat of a cool feeling. I felt needed.
I was politely dismissed from the meeting and escorted down through some brightly lit corridors by some civilians to break for a coffee and asked to simply wait in the rest room, which allowed for some fresh air outside in th
e huge atrium-like courtyard, the eye of the doughnut so to speak. Nothing happened for about three hours, and there’s only so much Nescafé Gold Blend one can drink before going insane with boredom. I had read or scanned all the out-of-date papers and magazines when a young guy by the name of Simon said I would be needed again tomorrow and he asked if I had an overnight bag in order to stay. It was like staying at one of those boring Holiday Inns or Novotels without any of the services. Fucking boring as hell. I had been allocated a room with nothing to do apart from sleep or stare at the one painting on the wall that was a reproduction of a five-year-old’s attempt at a landscape. I wasn’t allowed off the base and had to be ready to go again in the morning for a second round of talks.
The Steering Group Page 11