Moon Boots and Dinner Suits

by Jon Pertwee

  At the first sound of the siren, we were ordered to take refuge in our ground-level air-raid shelters, but as soon as I heard the distinctive scream of a diving Stuka, I was up through the escape-hatch like a rabbit out of his bolt hole, to sit on the top of the shelter with a few other ingenuous idiots to watch, for the first time in my life, death being delivered in reality and not on the silver screen. As each balloon exploded and flopped to the ground like a wet rag on a string, we cheered like excited schoolboys at a football match, and it was only when the Stukas started to strafe and bomb the airfield that the reality of the situation began to strike home, and the cold sweat of fear began slowly to ooze from my pores.

  After the first wave, a bunch of us were hurriedly trucked over to Lee to assist in extricating the dead and wounded from the bomb-damaged buildings and generally making ourselves available for whatever task was most urgent at the time.

  It was while we were helping to push a damaged aircraft off the landing field that the Stukas attacked again, but this time it was me they were after, or so it seemed, for one plane, flattening out after his perpendicular bombing dive, saw us and started to fire his twin wing-mounted machine guns – I was by this time running for my life, in an impossible endeavour to reach the safety of a ditch before he could get me. But for some reason, maybe that he was too near for the line of his fire to centralise, as I fell over exhausted and run out, the bullets kicked up the ground to the right and left of me like mice scuttling through dust.

  From that moment on, war was a serious business, never to be taken lightly again. I was determined to do what was expected of me, but never in such a foolhardy fashion that my chances of living were likely to be diminished, a decision that stood me in good stead throughout the rest of the war.

  One night in 1940, the sirens wailed and to my horror the church bells rang. That meant only one thing – invasion. Hurriedly lined up outside our Nissen-huts we nervously awaited instructions. Then started a rumble of coastal gunfire which continued unabated throughout the night, and was of no help at all in my efforts to control my inner fears.

  At last a Chief Petty Officer arrived before us with a lorry, and proceeded to issue every alternate man with an ancient Ross training rifle. These were rifles with a difference, in that they were innocent of either bullet or firing-pin, and possessed a splendidly solid barrel. When I politely drew the Chief’s attention to this deficiency, he said, ‘Not to worry lad, they’re all like that!’

  ‘But what am I supposed to do with it?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, son, you could wait until the parachutists get within reach, then nip out of yer hidey-hole and break the buggers’ legs with the butt before they can hit the deck.’

  To every other man, he gave a pick-axe handle with an iron tip, saying, when asked the same question as I had previously asked, ‘Well now lad, in case the leg-breaking caper don’t work, you could try shoving the handle up to the bastard’s armpits when he isn’t looking!’

  So the tough, ruthless, cold-blooded war machine of the King’s Navy sat round the perimeter of a field throughout the night, filled with foreboding at the inevitable outcome. There was a road running up from the coast due north, and across this had been constructed a considerable deterrent to the impending invasion. From two perpendicular gate-posts, a telegraph pole wrapped in a single strand of barbed wire was swung across the road by the use of a cart-wheel attached to its end. Normally, the pole could be moved freely back and forth, but out of regard to imminent attack from the German hordes it had been chained and padlocked to the post. The fact that there were several acres of flat, unbroken fields to the right and left of it, seemed not to have deterred its brilliant innovators one iota. Happily for us all, word of this barbed barrier must’ve reached Hitler, who was evidently so frightened by the combination of this unsurmountable deterrent and the prospect of having countless armies of men with bruised ankles and sore behinds, that he called the invasion off.

  I have read anything I could lay my hands on and avidly questioned every war historian I have ever met about what really happened that night. What was all that gunfire, and was there really any truth in the rumours that were rife at the time of hundreds of German dead being found washed up and hideously burned, all along the south coast? Rumour had it that this was the result of our releasing oil fuel from secret storage tanks hidden under the sea, and igniting it as the invasion barges passed overhead? I have never been given a satisfactory explanation and presumably it will remain one of the Second World War’s great mysteries.

  What we got away with at that time is now legend, but I still shudder at the thought of what would really have happened if we had attempted to repel the invader with solid-barrelled rifles, pick-axe handles, and the Home Guard’s infamous pike.

  *

  In the company of several friends and shipmates, I went up to London on a week-end leave and walked right into the worst air-raid of the war. Arriving at Victoria Station, we found the city ablaze. Flames and showering sparks soared skywards, as the exploding bombs burst in the heart of the holocaust. The sky was criss-cross alight with the beams of searching searchlights and the continuous cacophonous banging of the ack-ack batteries assaulted the ear-drums. Air-raid Wardens exhorted us to take shelter in the underground station below, which turned out to be packed with people, who looked as if they had moved in for the duration.

  All along the platform were hundreds of triple-tiered bunk-beds, with whole families encamped around them. They sat on rugs, air-mattresses and folding beds, on boxes and stools, reading, talking, singing, eating, drinking and sleeping. Nightly they came, and by mutual agreement occupied the same territory. They brewed-up continuous pots of tea and shared what food they had with such casual safety-seekers as ourselves. Never in our history have people been so compassionate to each other. It was as if the whole heterogeneous population of Britain had suddenly become one big family.

  After an hour or so of refuge, my companions decided that they would risk going out in the continuing raid, as they were anxious to get home to the welcoming arms of their loved ones. I demurred, as I had a strange premonition of disaster and after saying goodbye, went back down the underground to sing the night and the cataclysmic air-raid away. Denis Breeze, the writer brother of Alan Breeze, Billy Cotton’s vocalist for many years, wrote in an article published just after the war that his first sight of me on that awful night was ‘A tall lanky sailor sitting on top of a bunk-bed with a borrowed guitar in his hands singing songs to an admiring throng, as if he had been wound up.’ The next morning, bleary-eyed and voiceless, I walked into the chaos of that devastating attack, and on seeing the smoking ruins thought how lucky I was to be alive, a feeling made all the more poignant when I found on returning to barracks that two of my companions that night had been killed. Not by the enemies bombs, but by the falling shrapnel of our own ack-ack guns. My premonition had served me in good stead!

  Some weeks later, returning from another few days leave, I was crossing the ‘Hog’s-Back’ near Guildford in a coach, when a German Bomber returning from a raid on London found that he still had a ‘gash’ bomb on board, so opening his bomb-bay doors he dropped it on the nearest moving object he could see in the moonlight, our coach. Luckily he missed, but he punched a nice big hole in the road ahead of us that we promptly ran into. At the time, I was sleeping, with my head up against the window and when the coach lurched on to its side in the ditch, my head pierced a neat hole through the glass. The extraordinary thing was that although my head went through without any trouble, willing helpers found it next to impossible to get it back. At the same time they implored me to keep still, as sharp slivers of glass were surrounding my neck, and any unnecessary movement might sever my jugular, or my throat at best. My eventual extraction was carried out with great good humour and jocularity, those inside gently knocking the glass away with a jack handle, and those outside stuffing handkerchiefs over the slivers to minimise my chances of being decapitated. Throughou
t all this, pretty ladies gave me deep puffs of their Woodbines, a three-badge AB gave me innumerable ‘gulpers’ from a medicine bottle of illicit rum, and a good time was had by all.

  But it was when I was lying in a hospital bed in Guildford, recuperating from mild concussion and a stitched head, that for the first time I gave serious thought as to what war really meant. This was not surprising, for I was completely surrounded by examples of its futility. Alongside me there was a young seaman who had been burned so badly when his ship was torpedoed and set on fire, that practically every inch of skin had been flayed from his body. He was hairless and black from head to foot from the burns and the purple ‘gentian violet’ that had been painted all over him, with what was left of his skin turning up in dry flakes everywhere. Mercifully his face had avoided the brunt of the flames, but the rest of his body was horribly scarred. Quite unable to wear clothes (the weight of them would’ve increased his agony) he lay naked and silent, on a mattress filled with water. Every hour on the hour throughout the day and night, four nurses would come to his bedside and gently turn him round, to make sure that he didn’t stick to the mattress. First on to his back, then on his right side, then his left and finally face down with his head twisted round to enable him to breathe. Throughout this agonising routine, he never uttered a word of complaint or any cry of pain. He was the most stoic man I had ever met, and my affection and admiration for him grew day by day. He talked only of the future, never of the past; of what he was going to do with his life after the war; of his wife and two sons and where he was going to take them on holiday, to do what, because of the war, they had never been able to do. To take them to the seaside to swim and play cricket on the sand, to fish, to play football and climb every mountain. All those magic things that have been dreamed of by fathers since the beginning of procreation.

  But in spite of his desperate will to live, he died, lying on his side with his eyes staring into an unknown destination. He looked so dreadfully sad that his fight for survival had failed and all his best laid plans for the future had come to naught.

  Had I not been so young and blessed with that particular combination of idealism and recklessness that only youth seems to possess, I doubt that I would have emerged from the war as a relatively well-adjusted young man. But at the time I felt that fighting for my country was not only my duty but also a very personal challenge. I saw the cruel realities of war as bold adventures; the destructions, the sufferings and the unnecessary deaths as heroic examples of patriotism.

  Only towards the end of the war did I develop a determined sense of survival. Dying for one’s country may be the ultimate sacrifice but it also is a waste of a life, and I didn’t want to be just another casualty in a war that was nearly over.

  And now, when I reflect upon the years I spent in the service, I feel that the war was an essential component of my existence. It taught me many things, but above all, it gave me a deep respect for human life.

  *

  My stay at HMS Collingwood as a trainee telegraphist came to an end for much the same reason as my many short stays at school, i.e. an inability to keep up with the rest. I had a good ear for morse but found the involved ‘procedure’ very difficult indeed. I could read and send with great rapidity, and could talk to other ‘Sparkers’ when travelling on public transport by blowing and tonguing the morse on two fingers held over the lips, the passengers being much impressed by our skill. But as for the rest, it was all utterly beyond me, so with kit-bag packed and hammock lashed, I returned to Portsmouth Barracks where I was promptly relegated to Very Ordinary Seaman Pertwee once again.

  That same night Pompey greeted me with one of its worst raids ever, and for the first time since the advent of war, I was able to fire at the enemy. Detailed off as a Lewis-gun drum-loader I squatted on an ammunition box on the roof of the barracks, and loaded bullets into the drums for the Leading Seaman gunner. After an hour or so’s lull, the ‘Killick’ excused himself and went off in search of tea, or relief, or somesuch, and left me alone with the gun. Within minutes the bombers were overhead, with searchlights sweeping back and forth over the cloud banks in an endeavour to catch an enemy plane in their glare.

  ‘Where in God’s name is that bloody Killick?’ I thought, and then, ‘What the hell! I’ll take over and personally save the barracks from destruction.’ So I got behind that ancient Lewis-gun on its equally ancient tripod and sprayed the unseen enemy with a hail of perpendicular fire that must’ve been, at a minimum, 8000 feet short of its target. But I was really into the John Wayne role now, and would’ve fired off every drum, if it hadn’t been for a shout from an irate Chief Petty Officer below, ‘You up there! Stop firing that fuckin’ gun, before you kill somebody.’

  It seems that the spent bullets from my Lewis had been falling in a hail on the heads of other gunners and fire-watchers on the parade ground below. So being the loyal Englishman I was, I ceased fire, preferring to let the enemy fly on unscathed than risk helping them by wiping out members of my own side.

  *

  The nightly bombing was so bad around this time, that Guy and his family went off to the country for a long leave and shut up the house. In order to get a modicum of sleep when off duty, rather than being ignominiously blown out of bed in Aggie Weston’s or any other Sailors’ Rest, I decided, with a bunch of the lads, to clamber up Portslade Hill overlooking the city, there, under the lee of the old forts, to camp down for the night with ground sheets, blankets, some scran, a box of ticklers (Naval issue cigarettes) and my trusty old ‘uka’, which, when accompanied by song was a splendid adjunct to keeping ‘Old Marmy’s’ popularity to the fore.

  It was a horrible yet breathtaking sight to see the city below us being systematically destroyed. From the flames of the burning buildings, we could see quite clearly the changing silhouettes of the poor city’s death throes. But not without a tremendous fight did Pompey go down. The ack-ack fire put up was staggering in its intensity and the searchlight crews were no slouch at their job either. From our high, safe, vantage point, sipping beer and munching wads, we watched with fascination as the enemy bombers appeared over the city and nightly set it afire, accurately dropping their bombs smack in the centre of the maelstrom. Many was the plane we saw, caught in those unremitting beams of light, shot from the sky, one German pilot landing, unfortunately for him, right in the middle of a bunch of rather boozed-up matelots below us.

  But somehow the old girl hauled up her skirts, dusted herself off, tied up her wounds and got ready for the next assault upon her ancient and esteemed person.

  When the final bell rang to mark the end of the contest ‘Old Pompey’ came out battered but unbowed, and a clear winner on points.

  *

  Robert Newton, the celebrated actor (my association with whom almost made my life untenable again) appeared shortly afterwards. He was outrageous, impossible, disrespectful, aweless, mocking, derisive, contumelious, usually plastered and I loved him.

  The first thing he did was to obtain by fair means or foul, four watch cards which enabled him to go ashore at night whenever he wanted. Next he found an ‘oppo’ (friend) who would bury him during the day in the middle of the hammock nettings (the area where all the lashed hammocks were kept). The ‘oppo’ would construct a tomb of hammocks and Bobby would crawl in through an igloo-like entrance with two torches (for the reading of several paperbacks), some cold sausages, of which he was particularly fond and a goodly supply of booze. He would go in sober, come out drunk, and seemed to have the bladder control of a camel. The object of this secret hiding operation was, of course, the avoidance of anything resembling work or duty. If he was rumbled, he talked his way out, with offers of orgiastic nights in his suite at the Queen’s Hotel Southsea, and promises of endless supplies of succulent starlets for the discoverer’s delight. All balls of course, and although he did have a permanent suite at the Queen’s it was never used for anything other than straight-forward piss-ups.

  With the blitz now reachi
ng intensity, Portsmouth was strafed almost nightly. Bombed house clearance parties were formed, with a dozen or so sailors taking a Naval truck to the scene of a bombed building to assist the shocked occupants in rescuing their few pitiful belongings. Bobby excelled in this operation and the expression on the faces of the assisted, once they saw who their principal assister was, was a sight never to be forgotten. Bobby would promptly strike out the booze and have the wretchedly unhappy people laughing and rolling about in less time than it takes a cat to catch a mouse.

  Once our mission was completed we were under orders to return to the barracks immediately. Our team worked with far greater zest, speed and humour than the others, for two very good reasons. One, we were all well under the influence of the demon, and two, that as soon as we had finished our assignment, Bobby would imperiously demand that the driver should take us to his ‘personal’ barracks with all speed, which meant that within minutes we were all happily ensconced in Bobby’s suite, enjoying the fruits of his unending hospitality.

  There was one night in barracks, however, that Bobby and I were determined not to miss. A celebrated Shakespearean actor was coming to Portsmouth and would give one performance of the Bard for the edification of the incumbent bomb-happy sailors.

  The actor was not long into the piece when a very inebriated Glaswegian, seated directly behind us, called out, ‘Hey John, sing us a song!’ During the ensuing laughter, Bobby and I shrank into our seats hoping that if we were seen by any of the cast, there would be no assumed association with the drunken Scottish toss-pot.