Good Enough For Nelson

by John Winton

  ‘But it turned out that he knew! It so happened that this cutter had just been fitted with a new engine, with four cylinders instead of six. I’m a bit vague about the technicalities. But the important thing was that the new engine went round right-handed, while the old engine went round left-handed. It was a change in design and the boat’s engineer officer happened to have looked at the drawings and noticed this. During the maintenance period the boat’s artificer had changed the starter motor, which was designed for the old type of engine. He thought they were both identical. But now this starter motor was trying to turn the engine the wrong way round! Of course it wouldn’t bloody well start and was coughing out great clouds of blue smoke! Put the right kind of starter motor on, and the engine went away, first kick, like a bird. Smiles all round.

  ‘Now, there was a perfect example of a young officer knowing just that bit more than his sailors. You will find, especially the technical officers amongst you, that your ratings will be very highly trained, very intelligent men. But they will still expect you to know more than they do. It isn’t enough to shelter behind the principle that an officer isn’t supposed to know the details, all he’s supposed to do is to conduct the band. That may be all right in theory. But the most loyal rating in the world eventually gets dissatisfied if he finds his officer is ignorant. Soon he will get more than dissatisfied, he will get impertinent and possibly even insubordinate. Nothing destroys the proper relationship between officer and ratings more quickly than the ratings getting it into their heads that they are “carrying” the officer.’

  At last, The Bodger noted signs of warmth in his audience, but he was still a long way from capturing them. ‘It has become fashionable these days, to think of the Navy as a good, safe job for good, safe young men, with a bit of managerial talent. Life in the Navy, according to this view, is like life in a rather sociable bank, with the difference that the bank very occasionally gets up and floats away. But let me tell you, from some thirty years experience, that the Navy is not like that, never has been like that, and never will be like that and the sooner you rid yourselves of any such impressions the happier and the better fulfilled your service career will be. Your job will be to give and not to count the cost, to labour and not to seek for any reward, to toil and not seek for rest, because if you don’t, someone will come along and court martial you until you do. The Navy is a very hard life, a very unforgiving life. It has some rewards, but many heart-breaks. I’ve known men who’ve given their whole lives to the Service, leaving it at the end, saddened and bitter. There are many more disappointments than successes, many more kicks than halfpence, believe me. Just now we seem to be going through a period when the Navy seems to be investing more in buildings than in ships. The food’s good and the pay’s good. It is summer time, and the living’s easy. But this soft time will pass away, believe me. The Navy, the real Navy is not like that at all. Long before you leave the Service you may well find yourselves serving under conditions you never dreamed of when you first came here.’

  It was no good. The Bodger had not captured them, and he knew it. They were now restless, and unreceptive. He was more convinced of his failure when he was standing outside the Hall, in the sunshine, with a handful of staff officers. He fancied they were looking at him commiseratingly, as at someone who had unluckily lost a court case, or an actor after a pale performance. Unaccountably, The Bodger found himself yearning for reassurance and consolation.

  ‘I have the feeling they didn’t like being told they might have to kill people,’ he said. ‘That’s very strange, because they used to lap that sort of thing up. That was what they had all sold their little farms and run away to sea to do. In those days, it was not only exciting, of course, it was absolutely true.’

  ‘That’s not why they join the Navy these days, sir,’ Isaiah Nine Smith said. ‘That’s not what it says in the advertisements in the posh colour supplements.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve seen them. I must say it always seemed strange to me they ever needed to advertise for naval officers. Like advertising for beefeaters, or MPs. Surely anyone who wants to join just goes off and joins and those who don’t, don’t? All that was needed, if anything was needed, was a little notice in The Times telling them the right address to write to. Saved time. Even that seemed superfluous. Everybody knew how to join the Navy.’

  The Bodger watched the midshipmen’s faces as they doubled past him, coming out of the Hall, saluting and then ducking away, to the lecture rooms, or the parade ground, or the swimming pool, or the river. The College syllabus ground ever onwards, just as though he had never spoken. The Bodger could read nothing in the faces as they sped past him. These were secret people, shut off from him by barriers of age and time and experience. He and his generation had something of value to hand on, something they must pass on or the Service would die. When he was last at Dartmouth The Bodger could have talked over this problem with another divisional officer, but now he was the Captain, and there was nobody to talk to. That was another point he might have mentioned in his lecture: sooner or later, leadership always meant loneliness.

  ‘I think some of them rather like to be told that the way is going to be hard and long, sir,’ said Isaiah Nine Smith. ‘But most of them are a different lot now, sir. They’re not nearly as responsive to the old romantic appeal. Not so very long ago you could still have simply told them that what was good enough for Nelson was good enough for them and they could think themselves lucky they didn’t join in Nelson’s day. You can’t do that now, sir. They’re a lot more sceptical. More wary. More cynical, I suppose, is the word.’

  ‘I can’t believe the basic British boy has changed,’ said The Bodger. ‘You can’t change the stock so radically in one generation. It’s not genetically possible, apart from anything else. I just don’t believe their basic beliefs and reactions are any different. If anything is wrong, it’s us. It’s me. Not them.’

  The Bodger was unused to failure, certainly to such a failure of communication between himself and others so favourably disposed to hear him and upon a subject so favourably chosen to suit him. His reaction was characteristic. ‘There’ll be no more lectures on leadership here. Not as such. Not the same full frontal approach.’

  The others mentally reeled away from the impact of such blasphemy. They could all hear the sound of the veil of the ark of the tabernacle at Dartmouth being rent from top to bottom, revealing an awful, an empty, a leaderless abyss.

  ‘No lectures on leadership, sir?’

  ‘Not as such, no. Of course we’ll still teach it. It’s part of the syllabus. It is the syllabus. But not so blatantly. It’s still what being a naval officer is all about, but we must stop beating people over the head with it. We must be a hell of a sight more subtle, teach it by suggestion, by example, by inference. Methinks we do protest too much about it.’

  When the others had dispersed, one staff officer stayed behind. ‘I’m off this afternoon, sir, going round my far-flung flock again, sir.’

  ‘You’re off again, are you Simon?’

  Simon Lefroy, the University Motivations Officer, had a title and an appointment quite new to The Bodger. There were midshipmen and sub-lieutenants, scores of them, at universities all over the country, reading all manner of subjects at the Navy’s expense. They were still naval officers, were paid naval pay and came under the Naval Discipline Act, but while they were actually at university could dress, grow their hair, and act in every way like other students. They were only expected to cut their hair and not to behave too much like Greeks when they came back to Dartmouth, for their vacation training. For a young man, out of sight was likely to be out of mind, and it was Simon’s duty to keep in touch with what he called his far-flung flock, to tour the universities, to keep the Navy in their thoughts, to refresh their motivations, to sort out their personal problems and generally to act as a link between them and the Service which was sponsoring them.

  It suddenly struck The Bodger that Simon was fresh from the coal-fac
e; he spent his professional life grappling with exactly the same problems of communication as The Bodger had now encountered.

  ‘Tell me, Simon, do they howl you down at universities? How do you get on with them all?’

  ‘No, they don’t howl me down, sir, any of them, or rather, just a tiny minority of far left yobboes. Funnily enough, I would say there were more of them at university than there are here who would respond to what Ikey calls the romantic appeal. They do actually like to feel that they are all part of a Service that goes back in history. But I agree it’s sometimes difficult to go on thinking that in the atmosphere at some universities, where the most difficult thing is actually getting in to see blokes and talk to them. Some places won’t allow the services in the Student Union buildings. Our notices are torn down from notice-boards. They let down the tyres of our motor-cars, if they are obviously service vehicles, sometimes they spray graffiti on the windscreen or the door panels with aerosols.’

  ‘Good God!’

  ‘They misquote wildly or out of context some of our recruiting material in the student newspapers, so that they no longer mean what we meant, or mean anything at all. Occasionally, you get a RNR or TAVR stand at a freshmen’s fair knocked over and all the bumph pinched. Sometimes when the recruiting teams arrive to give their presentations, they find the doors blockaded and in any case they always outnumber their audiences by about two to one.’

  ‘Good God!’

  ‘Oh yes, it’s a battlefield all right, sir.’ Simon’s sense of grievance had obviously been roused by his reminiscences. ‘Sometimes they wave offensive banners. Like “Bring Back Flogging for Admirals”, and “What About Amritsar?” ‘

  ‘What about Amritsar?’ said The Bodger.

  ‘It was a massacre at a town in India called Amritsar, sir. In 1919, I think. The commanding British general ordered troops to open fire during a riot and some Indians were killed. One day they were giving their presentation lecture when the door opened and a girl rushed in and leaped up on the dais, absolutely topless, pointed to her breast and shouted “Why don’t you shoot me, you racialists?” ‘

  ‘So what did they do?’

  ‘Well, nothing much sir. For one thing, we were all quite struck dumb by her marvellous figure. She had one of the most sensational bodies I’ve ever seen in my life. Anyway, she pranced about for a bit, accused us a bit more about racialist atrocities and then rushed off again. Everything else seemed a bit of an anti-climax after that!’

  ‘But what effect does all this sort of thing have on our officers there? Surely we’re taking a risk that they’re going to pick up anti-Navy ideas?’

  ‘Well, that’s what the Old Guard tend to say, sir.’ Too late, Simon realised that The Bodger might think the description applied to him, and blushed at his solecism. ‘They say it delays the start of an officer’s proper training by three years, and all that. But there’s no evidence that any of this unrest affects any of ours very much. If they’d had any inclinations that way they’ve generally got them sorted out before they joined. We do get losses. But it’s some of the duller ones dropping out at the bottom. A few of the brightest ones at the top get seduced away by civilian employers’ offers. But very few really, sir, considering. After all, sir, they used to have much the same kind of argument about the introduction of the old Special Entry from the schools, before the First World War. That it would weaken the stock, dilute the Navy’s professionalism, and what was the use of having a place like Dartmouth if everybody didn’t go through the whole mill there, and all that. The hard fact is, sir, that we’re committed to university entry now. The sort of young man we want now goes to university more than he might have done in the past. If we want him, we’ve got to follow him there. Otherwise, we’ll be like fishermen waiting at the river estuary for fish who have all gone elsewhere.’

  ‘What do you usually say to them when they do begin to have doubts?’

  Simon grinned. ‘That sounds like the padres under training, sir, when they begin to have doubts about their vocation.’

  ‘Don’t they put something in their tea, to stop them having doubts?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s to stop them having doubts, sir ...

  ‘A sort of doctrinal laxative, or something ...

  ‘A most unfortunate image, sir, if you’ll excuse me saying so. No, when they have problems, I just talk to them, have a chat about things generally, try and find out what’s at the root of it. Tell them about what’s going on in the College and in the Navy at large. Tell them about anything special coming up in the Service line, changes in pay or messing allowances, pass on all the College magazines and the general bumph that we put out. Just generally keep them in touch, until they get back here.’

  ‘You must feel like a missionary in darkest Africa.’

  ‘Sometimes, sir.’

  ‘So you wouldn’t say that our lads are much affected by all this student unrest that you keep reading about? I suppose that must be the working-class students ...’

  ‘Oh, not necessarily the working class, sir. In fact it is unlikely to be the working-class students causing disruption. Firstly, because there are not nearly as many true working-class students at university as one is led to believe. You hear a lot about equality in education, but nine times out of ten it’s the parents who haven’t been educated and some of them try like hell to stop their children going to university. They think, we never went, why should you, and in any case it delays the time until they get a proper job by three years. Secondly, the working-class student is too keen on getting a degree to pay much attention to anything else. He knows what it can mean to him. He knows better than anybody just how vicious, philistine, ungrateful, racially discriminatory, jingoist and generally bloody-minded the true working class can be. No, the trouble-makers are hard to describe. Impeccably middle-class, but somehow disgruntled with it. They put on a working class outlook and attitude, even a working-class accent. You can see it in the student press, in student politics, everywhere, there’s a sort of Pavlovian response to the mention of the armed forces and things like Polaris. There’s all the preoccupation with rent strikes, and sit-ins and demos, and solidarity with the working class, as they call it. There’s a sort of phony ring about it all, even the language is put on specially. It seems incredible to me that students should know all about social security payments and rent tribunals and all the rest of the apparatus. Those are for people genuinely in trouble. They do a good job. I’ve seen them at work, because some of our students live in digs or flats in some very shaky neighbourhoods. But all that kind of thing isn’t for students. They’re starting out in life with the best of futures before them. And the really curious thing is that they all drop all the demos and the trouble-making and the social conscience bit, once they leave university and start making a living. At one place the staff showed me a letter in their local paper. It was from one character who had been a renowned demonstrator in his time. Whenever there was any excitement he was in the thick of it. He was a right trouble-maker, and he was well known by name to the local press. So when they reported that he had been at the head of some recent demonstration he wrote them an indignant letter back. Not at all, he said get your facts right, he said, I’m out of all that scene now, he said. I’ve left university and I’m a tax-payer and a ratepayer and while I hope that students will be able to revolutionise the university eventually, I hope they will do it without violence. Without violence! He’d been the biggest tearaway since Jack the Ripper!’

  ‘You obviously ought to get danger money, Simon. Or hard-lyers, at the very least! ‘

  ‘I don’t know sir. Deep down they’re a hell of a sight more civilised and less aggressive than we were at their age. There’s something terribly appealing about them all. Their sense of humour always slays me. In their heads, for example, you see all these obscene remarks and drawings chalked up on the bulkheads but right in the middle you read “Sudden Prayers Surprise God”. In one Student Union building I went to, th
e heads had a contraceptive dispenser, a french letter slot-machine. There was a notice on the front stating that the product had been tested and approved to British Standard one two three four, I forget what the specification number was. But alongside it some wag had written, “So was the Titanic”! And somebody else had written, “This Gum Tastes Like Rubber!”!’

  ‘And on that note,’ said The Bodger. ‘The best of luck, Simon.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Meanwhile, about a quarter of a mile away and slightly downhill, in the drawing room of the Captain’s House, Julia was bracing herself to grapple with her own problems of communication, though without any of The Bodger’s superb opening confidence. Julia was about to hold a coffee morning, possibly for the first time in her married life, certainly for the first time for very many years. Julia never had coffee mornings, absolutely never. She abhorred them, and avoided other people’s if she possibly could. But she had felt herself so undoubtedly socially overawed by the College that she had decided she ought to make some immediate gesture of friendly willingness and hospitality. Morning coffee could be organised at short notice, and was both formal and informal enough.

  Julia knew that however reluctant she personally might be, her husband’s job made her ex-officio queen bee, here and now, at this time and place; whether she liked it or not, it was inescapable. With the best egalitarian instincts in the world, she could not ignore Robert’s rank and position; she was the Captain’s wife and therefore required to provide a lead of a very subtle and very nearly indefinable kind. In different circumstances, households and social functions, she was successively the Captain’s wife, the Captain’s representative, a welfare officer, a damp shoulder, a marriage guidance counsellor, principal guest, an advocate with the father, a last resort, an éminence grise. Any Captain’s wife who tried to evade any of these roles, as they became appropriate, was not playing fair with her husband, the College, or with herself.