Growing up in Lee-on-the-Solent

by John W Green

  When I was away in the Merchant Navy, Jean would write to me every week, as she had done when I was in the RAF. I vividly remember a letter that Jean sent me and which I received at Mombasa on 14 February 1955, ironically on St Valentine’s day, a month after the ‘adventure’ in Mauritius. In it she wrote ‘Dear John’. That was a shock for a start - not the usual endearments - and the letter lacked the usual smell of perfume. ‘I have met a nice chap ...’ At this point I felt decidedly apprehensive and was ready for the worst. Had my naughty escapades of sowing my wild oats in the land of the Rising Sun resulted in the setting of the Sun on our Relationship? Of course I hadn‘t mentioned any of my shenanigans in Japan. Anxiously I read on ... ‘He has asked me if he could take me to the cinema. Would that be alright, just for the company?’ What a relief. But that was short-lived as I next read .... ‘His name is Roy, and you probably know him’. At least it was not a real ‘Dear John’ letter.

  Normally I was rather slow in answering Jean’s letters, with a ‘send one off at the next port of call’ approach. You would have thought I had learned my lesson when I was in the RAF, but no! This time, however, I wrote back rather promptly .... immediately in fact, suggesting that going to the cinema with Roy might not be such a good idea, in case it unfairly built up his hopes. Mind you, although I didn’t know for sure what his hopes were, I had a pretty good idea. I should point out that at the time Jean was working as an usherette at Lee Tower cinema.

  It was either in the next letter or the one after it, in which I proposed to Jean. In this anxious letter I mentioned a song that I had heard on the radio: ‘You belong to me’ by Patsy Cline’.[7] To show that I was serious, I put a signed note inside the letter to the effect that I would pay for the wedding dress: a letter which she could take to a dressmaker. It was a long two weeks’ wait for her reply, but I was so relieved and delighted when I received it and learned that she had accepted my proposal. Not long after this, she went to ‘Tudors’, a dress shop in the High Street in Lee-on-the-Solent to have her wedding dress made.

  Jean outside the Bluebird cafe after my proposal

  It was not until years later, after we were married, that I told her about Margaret ... and about Japan. She replied something to the effect that she had been surprised how quickly I had replied to her letter on that occasion. She also said that she had gone to the cinema with Roy two or three times, and he had always bought her a box of chocolates, but he had been a perfect gentleman on every occasion. This prompted me to ask her why she should want to go to the cinema when she worked there. She said that it was just so that she could watch the films through without being interrupted. How disappointing for poor Roy, after investing in all those boxes of chocolate. I don’t think I will go into what was said about Japan.

  7 www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Belong_to_Me_(1952_song)

  Time to Go Home

  From Mombasa we set course for India: our first port of call was Quilon but we were only there briefly before moving on to Mangalore, where I received Jean’s proposal acceptance letter. Another brief stop, and then we made our way to Cochin, where we anchored off for a week unloading and loading cargo. After that we headed north up the Bay of Bengal, back up the Hoogli to arrive in Calcutta on the 14 March where, to my utter delight, I was signed off the Padana. By that time I was the longest-serving officer on board. In eighteen months I had served under six captains and sailed with numerous different deck- and engine-room officers, but now it was my turn to say goodbye to the ‘old bucket’, with no feelings of regret. I was to be repatriated to the UK. Although I was keen to get home, when the Marconi office offered to fly me home later that week, I said that I would prefer to travel home by sea. This was not based on any love of the sea, but merely a financial consideration. If I arrived home before 5 April, I would have to pay income tax on my earning for the previous two years.

  Therefore I was first ensconced in the Seaman’s Mission in Calcutta for ten days, after which I was transferred to the Chinkoa, sister ship to the Orna, as a supernumerary radio officer .The Chinkoa would be making her way to London. By now I was really anxious to be on my way, but we didn’t leave Calcutta for another three weeks.

  Although we only took five days to reach Colombo, we were there for ten days, and it felt as if everything was conspiring against me. I was extremely pleased when, after the ten days were up, we left Colombo and headed for Aden - no Bombay this time. When we were just two days out from Aden, I did something which has to be in the list of the ‘top ten most stupid thing that I have done in my life’. Once again, showing off was my downfall, and once again downfall is a most apposite word. When I had been at St John’s College, I was a member of the gym club for a number of years. Diving over the box using a springboard, onto large coir mats, was an everyday activity. On the Chinkoa I was, no doubt boastfully, telling a group which consisted of a Third and Fourth Mate and a cadet how, because of my gymnastic background, I could dive from a height of five feet onto a solid surface, do a forward roll and get up without hurting myself. ‘How oft we mar what’s well’. ‘I’ll show you,’ I said. We went on deck and I looked for somewhere to show off my prowess. I saw a hatch covering that looked reasonably flat and was covered with a tarpaulin, which appeared to be reasonably soft. ‘I’ll dive onto that,’ I said confidently, pointing to the hatch covering. But I couldn’t see anything to dive from. By now a few of the twelve passengers that the ship was carrying had gathered around. I looked at one of the cadets - he was reasonable tall. ‘I’ll dive off your shoulders,’ I said. That was a big mistake! I clambered onto his shoulders. ‘Ready? ’ ‘Yes. ’ Without any further warning, I dived on to the hatch cover. I hadn’t allowed for the fact that the cadet would not be braced. As I did the dive, he was pushed back and I lost all of my forward momentum and landed with my arms outstretched, and most importantly, I didn’t have enough forward motion to complete a roll. Did that hurt? You bet it did. Perhaps you have seen comedy sketches where someone is hurt and they go into another room before yelling, and you may have thought that people don’t do that in real life. They do. I did, as soon as I reach the solitude of my cabin, which was not far away on the same deck. The next day I realised that I had hurt both of my wrists, especially the right one. I had to resort to opening doors with my left hand and to shaving left-handed, which I found very difficult. The ship’s doctor said that it would be a good idea to have it checked ashore when we arrived at Aden.

  On arrival, the local agent arranged for me to go up to the RAF Hospital, where I had my arms and wrists x-rayed. I was a little anxious because the ship was only on a brief call, and it was scheduled to leave the same day. After the x-rays were taken I was told that the right arm was OK, with just a sprain, but I had chipped the bone on the back of my left arm. They bandaged it and put it in a sling. Now I had to open doors with the arm that was hurting the most. As they were fitting me up with the sling, I looked out of the window which overlooked the harbour. There, to my utter horror, was the Chinkoa, my ticket home, sailing out of the port, and already over a mile away. To say that I panicked is a magnitude ten understatement. I had no money and no belongings other than what I stood up in. Fortunately, my fears were unfounded: I had not been abandoned. RAF transport delivered me to the harbour where I was taken out to the Chinkoa in the boat that was sent out to collect the pilot.

  By the time we had left behind the crystal waters of the Red Sea and completed what was still for me the magical journey through the Suez Canal and arrived at Port Said, my arms were both back to normal, and I could now raise a glass with my right hand without any problem. As a Supernumerary Radio Officer, I didn’t really have any watches to do, but I offered to fill-in for the ship’s Radio Officer whenever he felt that he would like a break. In fact it only amounted to a few watches during the whole trip. When he was not on watch, I would spend a lot of time with him in his cabin, drinking and chatting. He was a most interesting ch
aracter. He was about sixty years old, Irish and married to a gynaecologist. He spent most of his time off-duty sitting in his cabin wearing just a towel. Between us we drank every bottle of Guinness on the ship before we reached Genoa where, fortunately, the stores were replenished. One day I noticed that he had three scars on his back so I asked him how he got them. He told me that he had been a captain in the Irish Battalion, at the front, in the First World War, and that he had been shot in the back on three separate occasions by his own men, when he had attempted to lead them over the top. Now I know that Irishmen are supposed to have the gift of the blarney, and I don’t know whether what he said was true or not, but from the way that he told of the events, I believed him.

  A couple of days after Genoa we called briefly at Marseilles, and then made our way to London, arriving at the Royal Victoria Docks on 30 May 1955. Unbeknown to me, at the time in the UK there was a railway strike in progress. I had sent a telegram home to let the family know what day I was arriving and at which docks. Dad sent me a telegram in reply saying that he would come up to meet me. Because of the train strike, Dad travelled to London by coach, and I met him outside the dock gates as we had arranged. Now it was my turn to take charge. I took his small case and said to him ‘just keep talking to me, and act as if you were one of the crew.’ We casually walked through the gates to the ship and up the gangplank. That was how I smuggled him on board.

  That night he slept in my bunk and I had the cabin settee. The next morning, I took him to breakfast, and introduced him to the Captain and the other officers. For some reason introducing my Dad to these members of the crew has always given me a feeling of great satisfaction. I was proud of my Dad and pleased to show it, and I am sure that he also appreciated it. After making my farewells to the crew, Dad and I made our way home by coach. I was able to get a ticket without too much trouble. Although I should have reported to the Marconi office in London, being just a supernumerary crew member, I thought that I would be able to get away with it and report at Southampton. Well, I suppose that is not completely true. I believe that I actually I said ‘Oh Sod ’em! Let’s go home.’

  The next day, when I did report in at the Southampton Marconi office, they were quite niggled, and told me at length that I should have reported-in at London. I was not particularly bothered because they had messed me about in Hong Kong, so as far as I was concerned, it was payback time. Anyhow a week later I resigned, because in just over two weeks after that, I was to be married.

  While I Was Away

  When I arrived home I could see how much had changed in Lee- on-the- Solent, and how people had changed: their lives had ticked on like an orchestra of unstoppable, incessant, inexorable metronomes. They had not remained fixed and set in time, as they had been in my memory. As the saying goes ‘change happens’. It took me a little while to catch up with all that had been going on in the two years that I had been away. Most significantly, Jean was living with Mum, Dad and Pat at number 24.

  Jean was part of a very large family. She had seven or eight brothers and two sisters, but she - together with a sister and several brothers - had been removed from the parental home because of neglect, and placed in the care of Winchester County Council. She was only four years old when she was put into foster care, and she remained there until she was fifteen, when she left school. From then on, she’d had to fend for herself, which meant she had to get employment that included accommodation. When she became 18, and no longer under the control of the County Council, she had decided to pay a visit to her family, who were then living in Aldershot. The visit was not successful. She said that she felt like a complete outsider.

  When I had left for my unexpectedly long trip to Hong Kong, Jean had been working for the Erskine family in Foster Gardens in Gosport, and was living- in as a domestic-cum-nanny. One evening, after visiting Mum, Dad and my sister Pat, she was cycling back to Gosport along Browndown Road in the dark when she fell off her bike. It was a badly lit area and the road was in a very poor state of repair with lots of pot-holes. As Jean’s bike had large wheels and heavy frame, she could very easily have been really badly hurt. Nonetheless, it was very painful for her and she was badly shaken-up.

  When Dad heard about her falling off the bike he said: ‘That’s it! She can come and live here and then she will only have to cycle in daylight.’ That was how Jean came to sleep in my bed. I was away, and what had been my bed was moved into Pat’s room, and it became Pat and Jean’s room. So, for more than a year before I returned home, Jean had been living with my parents and sister. By the time I arrived home, they were already just like a mum, dad and sister to her. For Jean, this was the first time that she could remember feeling part of a real family. Effectively she had lost contact with all of her birth family. When I came home, Jean had to keep to sleeping in the room with my sister for the three weeks before the wedding. That was a very long three weeks!

  During those three weeks, I heard all about what had been happening in my absence. The first escapade involved the time when Jean and Pat went to the Coronation Ball at Lee Tower. Pat had been given free tickets at the Quick Turnover greengrocer’s shop where she worked. It was the custom for the organisers of events which involved a large number of young servicemen, to give free tickets to young women in the local area, to balance up the numbers. Well, like Cinderella, they went to the ball. They said that in the ballroom there had been many American sailors, and practically every one they danced with asked if they could take them home after the dance. I understand that it ended up with them saying OK to quite a few of the sailors, just to stop them from asking. Shortly before the end of the ball, Pat said to Jean: ‘We had better make a fast getaway,’ so they quickly got their coats and did a runner, with more than half a dozen American sailors in pursuit, each calling out ‘You said I could take you home.’ Pat and Jean ran all the way down the High Street to the east end and hid in the doorway of the last shop, which was the ‘Bazaar’, a small sweet shop. Although I have sympathy with the young sailors, I am rather pleased that Jean and Pat did a runner. You know what sailors are! Well I do - I was one.

  Jean on her bike at No 24

  Pat and Rob had become engaged just after Pat’s seventeenth birthday in September 1953 but after about six months it had become a bit of an on-off arrangement, so much so that in the summer of 1954, Pat and Jean started going out as a foursome with Reg and Tony, a couple of chaps from Gosport. They went out two or three times, but Mum and Dad were not pleased when the two young men called at the house. In fact Mum and Dad were not keen on either of them. But it didn’t last. After a visit to the cinema, Tony walked Jean back to where she worked, because she was house-sitting for the family who going to be out until quite late. At the house things became a bit too serious, so the next time that Jean had a half-day she cycled to his home and told him that she wouldn’t be seeing him again. Pat also packed up Reg.

  In the Christmas period of 1954 it was all to change. One evening when Mum and Dad were out, Pat was in bed with the flu, and Jean was ‘sister- sitting’. There was a knock on the door. Jean went downstairs to see who it was. She went back to Pat and said: ‘You’ll never guess who it is. IT’S THAT ROB.’ They were back together. Shortly after this, wedding plans began to be made. When I learnt that Pat and Rob were getting married, I wrote to the family and suggested that we should make it a double wedding. And that is how it came about. Nineteen days after I arrived home, Jean and I were married in a double wedding ceremony with Pat and Rob.

  Married At Last

  On 18 June 1955 my sister, my new brother-in-law, my bride Jean and I held our wedding reception in the restaurant in Lee Tower. At our double wedding at St John the Evangelist in South Place, Herb Cottrill had given Jean away, and Brian Cottrill had been my best man. Once again Lee Tower was centre stage in our lives.

  Our wedding

  So in the few short years since doing the most stupid thing in my life, I
moved on to doing the smartest thing that I have ever done.

  After we were married, we lived at Anglesea Road. Like many other newlywed couples at that time, we lived with Mum and Dad, and it worked so well that we continued to live with them for the next eight years. In Anglesea Road, Jean and I had the upstairs. One bedroom was converted into a kitchen, another into a lounge; and Mum and Dad had the downstairs. We all shared the upstairs bathroom.

  Pat moved out and she and Rob lived with his mum and dad in Gosport. After we returned from our honeymoon on the Isle of Wight, I joined a different radio company - IMR - and was appointed as Second Radio Officer on the Samaria. This was a Cunard passenger ship which travelled to and fro between Southampton or Liverpool and Quebec.

  I missed the Bank Holiday at home, which by all accounts was a scorcher. Jean came to see me off at Southampton - she had intended it to be a surprise, and hadn’t let me know that she was coming, but unfortunately I was ashore at the time, at the IMR office. When I came back to the ship she was waiting for me at the bottom of the gangway in the hot sun. The hot spell had started a bit before the Bank Holiday (then at the beginning of August), and it was reported in the press that ‘the August Bank Holiday weekend was almost too hot with hundreds of cars lining the cliff lands. Lee became a boom town.’ It also reported that many were treated for cut feet by the St John’s Ambulance Brigade. When I read this I wondered if those who had to be treated had paddled on the mussel beds near the pier.

  The trip to Quebec was different to most of those I had become accustomed to. The food was of a similar standard to that on the Corfu; I even had my own table to which several passengers were allotted. I was not particularly impressed by Quebec, but I did managed one trip ashore on one afternoon. On the voyage back, as we were approaching the mouth of the St Lawrence, the ship’s radar failed. I was not on watch, but the chief called on me to fix it. I had the distinct impression that the other radio officers on the ship were not up to dealing with the radar because at that time it didn’t form part of many radio officer courses. I was able to fall back on some of my RAF training. By a careful process of elimination, I was able to find the fault, and fortunately the ship carried spares that enabled me to rectify the problem. After about a quarter of an hour I managed to get the radar working. Almost immediately a handful of icebergs appeared on the screen. They soon became visible to the lookout, and the ship changed course slightly in order not to get too close to them. As we passed by, I noticed some seals on one of them. I was surprised to discover that the icebergs had a smell, even the ones without seals.