We were driven to various shifts and subterfuges to keep clean. I volunteered to be batman to two padres. I was up at 6.30 in the mornings to take their cup of tea, clean their shoes, polish their buttons – and to seize a wash in soft water in an adjoining room. After breakfast, I was there again to tidy up the cabin – and to seize if possible another wash and clean my teeth. Meniality and guttersnipe cunning! But it was urgent to seize privacy wherever it could be seized, and to keep clean at all cost.
I ought to add that this was written at the end of the second day on the Highland Monarch – before we had set sail.
A dream
During my first night on board ship, I had a most wonderful dream. I dreamt that I was much older, a middle-aged man, driving a horse and trap home. It was peacetime, and the evening was lovely with the spring. There were three children with me, all mine – wilful, with exuberant spirits, and running disobediently into the bushes and through the orchards. I did not mind their wilfulness, but was content to drive slowly and let them take their pleasure in the woods. It was wonderful, quietly glorying in the good spirits of my three children. Gwen I did not see, but her presence was in my dream. I knew she was somewhere near, and pleased. It was so happy a dream that I woke with a feeling of quiet delight and contentment that has lasted all day.
Last night, all the night long, I was anguished with homesickness. That’s what you get for reading Cymbeline – the story of parted lovers. All night long I was maddened by the thought of Gwen, far away and with others. I have never felt jealousy so profoundly.
Getting a newspaper on board ship
While we were in port, we sat on the open decks, like prisoners calling from our prison to the dockers who walked backwards and forwards along the quay. We let down long ropes from the deck and the kind-hearted dockers tied their newspapers to the end of the lines. We pulled them up and greedily read the news. It was amusing to see sailors and airmen alike dangling their long cables and appealing for anything to read.
I write this in the forward lounge, a beautifully furnished and panelled room, where scores of us come to get away from the cold windy decks, to read, write, play cards and listen to the piano-playing.
When many years after this,
I sit at home, looking fondly through my books,
Watching my wife, prettily busy, as I know she will be,
And telling my children how I came by this volume,
How I chanced to write that and that passage,
And pausing to read them a line here and there,
Or tell them when first I thrilled to some splendid stanza,
Then I will recall this time,
How I lay in my hammock in the hot between decks,
Listening to the hearty bawdiness of my mess mates,
How I knelt in a cabin cleaning a padre’s boots,
Sat lonely on a cold deck among the bored card-playing sergeants
Or struggled to souse my dirty face in cold sea water
All this I will recall, but only as a saint
Who, having reached his paradise at last,
Remembers his purgatory.
This war has made me nothing but a dreamer!
There are at least 3 Wellfield4 people on the boat –
1 Dennis Wood – a Wingate Co-op boy and a relation of Bob Poole’s
2 Forster or Foster – a tallish slim boy, whom I used to teach in the sixth form – now a sergeant observer
3 Me
The whirligig of time brings in its revenge. I’m thankful I was kind to Foster (or Forster).
Underway
Quite without warning, today we left the dock.5 The men were lying sunning themselves on the decks, or card playing, or dozing, when three tugs came alongside and tied up to us. Immediately there was a great stir; sleepers woke, players packed in their cards and made for the side. But leaving port is always a slow and unspectacular affair. Very slowly we moved, and frequently we stopped. Out of tedium at watching the snail-slow operations most of the men went back to their snoozing or playing. And so – most unceremoniously, we left dock.
Five women on a steamer at a quayside waved us goodbye, and some of the men answered them with silent gestures. But there was no cheering, no rousing demonstration at our departure. Two or three final letters were flung overboard at the last moment; one man leaned over and slapped his hand on the last piece of English ground he could reach. But as only the sparrows gave us goodbye at our last land station, so now the only sounds that bid us farewell from England were the hoarse, sharp clamourings of the gulls, and the cheerless clanking of a bell buoy out in the open channel. Clank – clank – clank – the funeral knell of many great friendships, companionships and affections. Clank. Clank. Clank them dead, for many a promise made in this country will be broken in the next land; many a woman that prays to be remembered will fade from remembrance from this day on; many a good man and boy will not come back from this voyage – or if he does, never the same fellow.
I can barely describe how I feel. I dare not think too deeply of Gwen, left at home alone and with a baby. I dare not contemplate squarely the long, long loneliness before me. For I shall have no friend or companion like Gwen – so in some way I seem to have anaesthetized myself. Grief would be too serious to entertain. I dismiss it – I leave it to invade me when I am asleep, and haunt my dreaming. What else can I do?
Listening at night to foul and ulcerous talk in the mess, I shudder at the wretchedness I have been brought to. At times, looking at my dirty nails and hearing myself talk, I wonder what Gwen would think if she were to come upon me. But I am inconstant. Clean, looking over the calm water, talking to a pleasant-mannered friend, I thrill to the adventures that are in front of me, and look with anticipatory pride at the successful conclusion of them all.
I am reading about Innogen hurrying to Milford Haven to see a husband she did not expect so soon home – I find myself sailing past it – an attractive rocky islanded coastline (Fig. 1).
Little white seagull with the black back,
Dipping in the glass green valleys of the water,
Wheeling where the boat’s prow throws
Its gorgeous ravelled lacery to right and to left.
Fly, little seagull, fly as quick as my thoughts,
Fly to the little house where my darling is.
And tell her by night and day,
Asleep or awake, in blue weather or grey,
Beats my heart always to the pulse of hers
And my thoughts always return to her,
Tender little pigeons of thoughts that home always
To where she is.
Class distinctions
Class is far too clearly distinguished from class on board a troopship. The officers live in great comfort and want for nothing. Flight sergeants, sergeants, too, are extremely well fed and cabined. Their meals are luxurious and daintily served, and they have many privileges such as use of the library and special lounges. Even corporals are kept separate from the ACs. The smallness of the distinction between a sergeant and an AC does not warrant so drastic a difference in treatment. I wonder how much better dealt with by their senior NCOs of the Red Army are their privates. Surely the differences there are not so wide.
Two strong impressions of today remain in my memory. Rising early this morning, and running up on to the cool deck, I was momentarily charmed by the sight of a new coastline.6 Along the grey of the water lay a line of darker grey, the tumbled and uneven line of the Welsh coast: and above it, like a golden bird in a bush, the sun. My second is of the wind pure and pouring like water on to the upper decks, where I strode backwards and forwards for an hour or more. We had to lean into the wind and turn our faces away from it. But it was masterful and invigorating. That springing up on the toes, striding up and down in the wind was tonic.
Spirits are now improving on the boat. I suppose we are adjusting ourselves to the conditions. I must admit I like the boat better, and get up each morning fresh and eage
r to see where the new day has brought us. For the last five nights I have dreamt of Gwen.
Courtship
Before I met Gwen I had often gone walking with another girl, Emily.* She was the daughter of a high-living, junketing publican, and a quiet, industrious, stern mother. She was unhappy at home, and had left to become a nurse. In disposition she was all kindness, but her kindness was not the spontaneous giving of a heart that could give and take with equal grace. Emily was a hurt personality. The vulgarity of her home and an unfortunate love affair had brought her to hate herself. She looked upon herself as a sinner, and expiated her sins by giving her life to nursing other hurt people, and by a martyred self-sacrificing charity.
Poor Emily! I understood her very well, and helped her to overcome her self-contempt. Having a thread of that colour in the cloth of my own temperament, I sympathized with her. I took her home on occasions, and she became a great favourite with mother; and such was my loneliness that, in spite of the disasters which I could foresee from the mating of neurosis and neurosis, I, at times, contemplated asking Emily to marry me.
But meeting Gwen put an end to my faltering. Gwen was afraid of me, and found it difficult to behave spontaneously. She was stiff, shy and unconfident. I, on my part, was rude to her and deliberately hurt her. Yet within a few weeks of our first evening, I knew that I should have to tell Emily that I could not now marry her. What anxiety I went through before I brought myself to perform that unpleasant act! How important I considered myself – the tragic man on the horns of this dreadful dilemma! With what care and seriousness I penned that letter to Emily, and another to John and Gertrude,7 and with what pompousness did I announce my decision to Mr and Mrs Danby! Oh dear – I was certainly consumed with my own self-importance and imagined that all this epistle-writing – which John, Gertrude and Emily will laugh at, now that I remind them of it – was indispensible. So earnestly bent was I on doing nothing underhand – on being heroic, above board and candid. What a prig!
Those letters, declaring so uneloquently that I had fallen in love with Gwen and meant to marry her, and that there would be no swerving – were gross misrepresentations of my mood. My feelings towards Gwen in those early weeks and months of our courtship were far more complex. I found her beautiful. And she was always sweet to kiss and to caress. The spring was in her cheeks, the flowers in her complexion, the May morning in her breath, and she looked so neat and charming-o! She was independent and adventurous. But across her lay the shadow of a sadness that made her hesitant and quiet. Accustomed as I had grown to the vivacity of the Danbys and the Currys,8 I found her stillness disconcerting. A coldness, a lack of enthusiasm, a want of positive mental energy – this estranged me. Charming, lovely, attractive as she was, the gay spark did not fly from her to me. Many things remained unspoken between us. The invisible barrier was there. I said ‘I love you’ – and looked across a distance at her. She said ‘And I love you’ – the sound came, as if it had been spoken far away – thin and weak.
Annoyed at this wretched lack of understanding, this cross-purpose wooing, I often grew moody and surly. Once when Gwen and I were alone in the kitchen at Ardenlee, a friend called Beryl*, paid a visit. Beryl was not an entertaining girl. I found her most undistinguished, and as the conversation went from triviality to triviality I grew more and more restless. At last, under pretence of wanting a drink, I went out and drove to Merrington where I spent a comfortless but at least solitary half-hour in the pub.
That was a rude act, and both Beryl and Gwen were sensitive enough to realize how offensive my conduct was. But I could be no more than apologetic and explain to a distressed Gwen the motive for my rudeness.
On other occasions I was unreasonably surly and taciturn. In a fit of self-reproach for having behaved boorishly, I bought one day a driving licence for Gwen and offered to teach her to drive. But though in those days I was probably the best of teachers in the classroom, for Gwen I was the worst driving instructor in the world. I tried to be patient, but my vexation at her lack of confidence made me testy, and our driving lessons ended in a glum and tearful silence.
Scenes like those, in which I was forced by a wretched and tearful Gwen to confess my disappointment in her, and my poor opinion of this or that action of hers, occurred with distressing frequency. Over and over again she desired to break our agreement and see no more of me. I would remain silent, and I think there was a part of me that even liked these scenes – so contrary was my nature at that time. They were tragic, dramatic: to blame Gwen and to hear her blaming herself for this or that inanity was to move the blame for this unsuccessful union from my own shoulders – yet, sullen and unhappy though I was, I could not bear to let Gwen go. In the depth of the quarrel, some small voice made me remember that only an act of positive love would do. Recriminations, partings – these would not do. Sympathise. Forgive. Be loving. Your silly, silly pride – your brains and intelligence! These gaudy silly defences around yourself – break them down and be kind. Then a great wave of tenderness would come over both of us. I would kiss her passionately, wet cheek to wet cheek, passionate lip to passionate lip. And we were reconciled.
Notes
1 Jimmy Maxton (1885-1946) Scottish socialist politician and leader of the Independent Labour Party. A proponent of Home Rule for Scotland.
2 Getting going, at last!
3 Avonmouth, outport for Bristol.
4 Wellfield, in Wingate, Co. Durham, where Fred’s school was located.
5 The Highland Monarch (code number 62A) was joining Convoy WS (Winston Special) 19 which assembled off Oversay, Islay in the Inner Hebrides. The convoy, made up of two sections sailing mainly from Liverpool and Glasgow, often split into fast and slow groups, before making for Freetown, Sierra Leone and then going on to the Cape. At the Cape, Fred’s section stopped in Cape Town, before sailing for the Suez Canal. Although shorter by far, it was not safe in 1942 to send British troops through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean and from there join the North African theatre of war.
6 The Highland Monarch must have entered St George’s Channel at this point in the narrative, with the Welsh coast visible to the east.
7 John and Gertrude Danby. John Danby had been at the Durham Johnston School with Fred as a schoolboy, and they were close friends. John eventually became Professor of English at University College, Bangor, in North Wales.
8 Luke Curry was a master at the A. J. Dawson School in Wingate, and a colleague of Fred’s.
* A pseudonym.
* A pseudonym.
CHAPTER 2
Crossing the Line
Today has been bitterly, bitterly cold. A grey thin mist hangs over the dim coastlines, and a grey white combed sea goes slapping and slipping past the ship. The wind beats down blow after blow upon us like a fighter. Standing at our boat stations with the water swirling round our plimsolls, we feel wretchedly cold. Every face is whitened gooseflesh, and screwed up to resist the wind. Tonight I’ll describe the scene down here on the mess deck.
I couldn’t describe the mess deck. We were all at the concert – B Flight concert in the forward lounge. And very good it was, too. The lounge was crowded, and volunteers stepped up thick and fast. Some were painfully awkward. The sight of an ineffectual personality failing, in spite of all his efforts, to hold the attention of a crowd makes me feel nothing but commiseration. That poor little bald-headed toothless man who began to sing ‘All the nice girls love a sailor’ and got nothing but cold contempt for his pains! But most of our volunteers were talented. A sailor did an excellent piece of miming – a lady sewing on a button. We had a brazen-faced, brazen-minded comedian of the George Formby school. One of the nurses sang. There was general fun and games, and the evening went merrily.
The mess deck at 2 in the afternoon
I am sitting on my lifebelt with my back against a rack of kit-bags. On my right and laid out one by the other are eight mess tables, each with room enough for 16 men, although the floor area is about
half that of the average cricket square.
Dinner is over, the washers-up have left their pots, pans and cloths on the end of each table, like a tributary offering to the God of Food, and have vanished. The more energetic of the feeders are on deck, sitting in the weak sunshine, walking up and down in the breeze, or playing housey-housey. The less energetic are still here below. Some are playing cards on the mess tables, some writing letters which they hope to post at the first port, and many asleep. On mattresses on the floor, on the floors they sleep – out of pure boredom – inert as the corky lifebelts that lie beside them.
X
I have grown to detest X – as I have never detested any man in my life. In appearance he is not objectionable – except for little eyes, muddy and protruding. No, it isn’t his appearance I dislike. But every day affords more evidence of the meanness of his nature – a meanness disgusting in its greed and essential littleness. At first you would find him a pliable companion. Quite unassertive, he is in the habit of agreeing with whoever he happens to be conversing with. He will draw out your opinions and views, and lead you on to enlarge on them, seeming to agree all the while – in a simple-minded kind of way. But behind that facile acquiescence, he is looking out on you and on the world with his own peculiar eyes, the eyes of a malicious seagull, looking always for its own advantage. Rouse him, you will be appalled at the virulence of opinion that lies below his seeming acquiescence. It is when his comfort – for comfort is all his god – when his ease, wants, filling of his belly, pocket, leisure are threatened – that the hatred and odious anger in him shows. Once I was travelling in a train with him, when an old lady from our compartment left without closing the door – and through the open door came a little draught. I shall not forget the hatred in his face and the vulgar, abusive note in his voice when he spoke about that absent-minded old lady. Nor the malignity of every sentence in the quarrel which took place at the end of that journey.
War's Nomads: A Mobile Radar Unit in Pursuit of Rommel during the Western Desert Campaign, 1942-3 Page 6