The Sixteen

by John Urwin

  ‘Where do they make the best cheese in England?’ I demanded.

  ‘Eh? What do you want to know that for?’ he asked in surprise.

  ‘Never mind, where is it?’

  ‘Well, there’s stacks of places, depends on what you consider to be the best, I suppose. There’s Cheddar, Cheshire…’

  ‘Lancashire,’ someone else chipped in.

  ‘Leicester!’

  ‘Wensleydale.’ Suddenly, they were all at it.

  ‘Well, I like Caerphilly!’

  ‘What about Derby?’

  I burst out laughing as I realised that in the end Dynamo had told me nothing about himself at all!

  And I thought he’d broken the rules, but should have known better!

  I looked up at the ship we were about to board, The Devonshire. It was a fairly small ex-passenger liner, which had been drummed into service as a troop carrier during the war. We’d been told that torpedoes had hit it on a couple of occasions and obviously it hadn’t sunk, but whether this gem of information was to make us feel more secure or not was difficult to say.

  Well, the enemy didn’t get us but it looks as though some stupid civil servant probably will by trying to save a few quid and cramming as many of us on to this old tub as possible, I thought. Looking at it, it seemed impossible to me that it could carry so many men.

  ‘Not to worry lads!’ the officer in charge told us. ‘We know it looks a bit on the small side but it was designed to carry two thousand civilians and it’s been altered to carry all of us.’

  ‘Oh, well, that’s made us feel a lot better, Sir,’ I said.

  We were kept hanging around for a few more hours, for whatever reason nobody knew, before we eventually started to board the old rusty bucket. Fed up with having to wait around for so long, by this time most of us couldn’t have cared less what it looked like, as long as it got us home.

  Going up the gangplank ahead of Bill, I kept stopping and looking back. I had some stupid notion that a miracle might happen, that there would be a sudden change of plan and they’d say that we weren’t leaving, that there were just too many of us and we had to disembark immediately, that somehow ‘The Sixteen’ had managed to fix it. For once, I actually wanted to hear some big-mouthed sergeant calling out my name, telling me that I had to stay behind.

  ‘Come on, Geordie, get a move on,’ Bill nudged me. ‘You’d think you didn’t want t’go ’ome. Are you sure you’re not going t’miss place?’

  We’d been told that as soon as we boarded we were to go straight to our allocated sleeping quarters, but it was a struggle to get through the doors with our rucksacks and rifles. The ‘sleeping quarters’ consisted of row upon row of hammocks and I quickly picked one near a porthole. There was nowhere to stow our gear so we just threw our things on the floor; dozens of us were crammed into a room that was probably designed to accommodate half a dozen civilians.

  The majority of us went up on deck and hung around there until, after another couple of hours, we felt the ship eventually move. A huge cheer went up and we watched as Cyprus, our home for the last eighteen months, slowly and gradually began to fade from view.

  I stood alone leaning on the rail and kept on watching, long after most of the others had become bored and gone off elsewhere. Were Dynamo, Chalky, Spot and Ken up on that mountain somewhere practising, possibly sitting with their binoculars trained on the ship watching me, I wondered? Perhaps they were already off on another operation, or maybe, just maybe, they were here on board amongst all of these thousands of troops. And if they were, what would I do if I saw them?

  The thought had occurred to me that they might already be training someone else, my replacement, but I really didn’t want to think about that and pushed it as far to the back of my mind as possible.

  I was glad that it had all taken place, not from any political point of view, as I really neither knew nor cared about that and never discovered whether what we did actually made a difference, but for the change it had brought about in my life. It had given me the opportunity to become me.

  Eventually, when I could see the island no more, I went to join the others, as there wasn’t really anything else to do. Within minutes of going below deck, sweat was pouring off me, now I just wanted to get back home as quickly as possible.

  None of us had used a hammock before and we had a lot of laughs trying to get into them. By the time we did manage it, we were so worn out that we just lay there with our arms hanging over the sides chatting to one another, cracking jokes. This went on for hours until we finally docked at Malta, the place where it had all really started for me.

  Some of the lads went ashore in the brightly coloured gondolas that came alongside the ship. All they could talk about before they left was a place called ‘The Gut’ – a notorious area full of bars and prostitutes! But that wasn’t for me and after they’d gone, I lay in my hammock thinking – nothing had changed for these guys, they were all two years older but none the wiser. Yet everything had changed for me and about me!

  We stayed overnight in Malta and then were on the move again, our next stop being Gibraltar. About an hour out of Malta all hell broke loose, the sea became so rough that most of us were thrown out of the stupid hammocks and crashed on to the deck. The waves were huge and The Devonshire was tossed about like a cork. Then the seasickness started! Hardly anyone escaped it and even those who did still felt pretty rough.

  It was with immense relief we finally docked at Gibraltar. Again some of the lads went ashore but most were just too ill to move. I was OK, just a little queasy. None of us thought it could get any worse than what we’d just been through.

  ‘If you think that was bad wait until we hit the Bay of Biscay!’ one of the ship’s crew cheerfully informed us! He was dead right!

  We left Gibraltar and steamed into the Atlantic. Things were uneventful for a few days then the ship began to be thrown about like a matchstick. It was much worse than before and I really felt sorry for the lads who had just recovered. Again, I wasn’t actually seasick but it was a pretty awful few days. Apparently, even the captain was ill.

  Eventually, the weather improved and things settled down again after a couple of days but by now everyone was worn out, bored and fed up with a journey that seemed to be taking forever. Suddenly someone came dashing in.

  ‘It’s land, it’s Blighty!’ he yelled.

  Everyone flew up on deck and there it was. At last, we were home! It was 4 January 1960 and the journey had taken us twelve days.

  By now just about everyone on board was on deck, excitedly talking to each other. The sky was grey and leaden, it was bitterly cold and I was shivering, but I didn’t care, I was almost home! The icy wind was clear and fresh and I felt that it was blowing away the last remnants of heat, flies, sand, dirt and sweat. It was wonderful.

  As we sailed closer we began to see hundreds of people waiting there on the jetty, waving and cheering as the ship drew nearer. All of a sudden, everyone began dashing about, rushing below deck to grab their gear; we all just wanted to get off this flaming bucket as quickly as possible.

  The ship slowed almost to a stop and then began its docking manoeuvres. We had to parade on deck as the gangplank was put in place. People were shouting and screaming as they saw their husbands, boyfriends and sons, and lads were shouting back as they spotted their families in the crowd; there was even a military band playing for us. The noise was incredible!

  Everyone seemed to have someone to hug, someone waiting to greet him. I stood alone on the cobbled jetty, glad to be back on terra firma but I knew that there’d be no one waiting for me. Mam just couldn’t afford the cost of a journey down to Plymouth. I glanced down at my feet and there to my surprise I saw words engraved on the piece of marble I was standing on: ‘The Mayflower left here in 1620’, it said. I stood there looking down at it, wondering for a moment what that ship must have looked like and whether any of those people felt as I did right now.

  All around me lads
were hugging and kissing their girlfriends, wives, mothers. I suddenly I felt very cold and desperately lonely. Although my mother had written to say she’d be unable to afford the fare down, it was still a bit of an anticlimax as I stood alone surrounded by a sea of happy faces. I couldn’t help but think how lucky they all were, and realised just how much I longed to be home to see my family for the first time in two years. It was a very long while since I’d thought of my father but now suddenly he came to mind.

  What a shock that little waster’s going to get when I get back, I thought. His days as a tough guy are well and truly over!

  I took one last look out over the sea and thought of Dynamo, Chalky and Spot, then made my way with everyone else towards the huge convoy of waiting trucks.

  It had been two long, incredible and unbelievable years!

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Born in 1938, the son of a rag-and-bone man, John Urwin was brought up in the tough back streets of Newcastle’s Byker. At the age of eighteen he was called up for National Service, which he completed in Cyprus. While remaining part of his ordinary regiment, John also secretly became part of ‘The Sixteen’. Following the completion of his National Service he returned to England where he married, had three children and became a successful stock-car racer. He later began a survival and unarmed-combat club which includes survival courses, in the Outer Hebrides. While writing The Sixteen, John met Helen, who is now his second wife. They live in Newcastle. To contact the author: john@ucsdefence.com

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  ePub ISBN 978 1 78418 307 3

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  PDF ISBN 978 1 78418 309 7

  First published in paperback in 2004

  This revised paperback edition published 2015

  ISBN: 978 1 78418 268 7

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