by Brian Carlin
“If your mother was still alive, she’d never have let you go,” she said.
For the umpteenth time, I explained that it was the best thing for me because I would be learning a trade.
“You’ll write, won’t you?” She asked. Then she gave me a little package of writing paper and envelopes so that I wouldn’t have any excuse not to. And she gave me some money. “Here, take this,” she said as she pressed it into my hand, “it’ll buy you something to eat on the boat.” She was so kind to me, it broke my heart to have to say goodbye.
When it was time to leave, tears filled her eyes and she repeated what she had said earlier about how things would have been much different if my mother had been alive. Then she gave me a hug and kissed me wetly on the cheek, which I tolerated although I hated being subjected to sloppy stuff like that, like most young boys of my age. When I left, she watched me from her front doorway as I walked down the long straight street. And then just before disappearing around the corner at its end, I turned and waved her a final goodbye.
My father had told me that the Parish Priest wanted to see me, so I made the long trek up to the Parochial House, all the while wondering what I was going to say and what Father Close would have to say to me. He was a brusque kind of a person, so I felt just a wee bit intimidated, although I needn’t have worried. The housekeeper answered the door when I rang the bell and I told her that I’d come to see Father Close. She asked me to wait there on the porch and then disappeared into the gloomy interior of the large house. Shortly after that, the middle-aged, balding, grey-haired priest came to the doorway. He didn’t invite me inside, but instead asked me detailed questions about where I’d be going as we stood there on the Parochial House porch. He told me that I was going out into the world where there would be a lot of temptation and that I needed to be a good Catholic and keep up my faith. Then he said “Wait, I’ve got something for you.” With that he produced a small metal capsule-like article, about an inch in length, from the pocket of his cassock. It rattled when I took it from him.
“Open it,” he urged.
I unscrewed the cap and a miniature statuette of the Blessed Virgin slid out on to my hand.
“This has been blessed at Lourdes. Keep her with you always, she’ll protect you.”
I did keep the little statuette with me always, and still have it to this day; in fact she should have her own frequent flier account with the amount of travelling I’ve done around the world. And Father Close was right; she does seem to have protected me wherever I’ve gone.
As we stood there on the porch, Father Close made the sign of the cross over my head and said a prayer.
“God be with you,” he said, shaking my hand. And with that, we parted.
The last two days were difficult, knowing that my life was never going to be the same again. It was tough saying goodbye to my friends John and Melvin, and we all solemnly said that we would get back together when I came home on leave at Christmas, but it was never really the same after that.
* * *
On the day of my departure, both my father and John Moore escorted me to the railway station again, but on this occasion it was for the last time. My Aunt Alice was also there to see me off. She was my father’s sister, and had intervened when things had become difficult for me in the family home while I was still attending school. She had rescued me by arranging that I would spend the weekend days at her house. This arrangement had worked out very well for more than a year. I went over there on Saturday mornings, did some chores and ran some errands for her. Then she made lunch for me—a good lunch too—and as a reward for doing her chores, usually sent me off to the Saturday afternoon cinema matinee. I didn’t stay there overnight, but went home after having dinner with her and my Uncle Frank. Then on Sundays after Mass, I would go to her house again and take the dog for a walk. That done, I was free to spend the rest of the day as I pleased and would usually go somewhere with John Moore, but I was in her charge for the day, so any misbehaviour on my part would have wrecked the arrangement. And for that reason, I behaved; otherwise the privilege of spending my weekends with Alice would have come to an end. The alternative wasn’t too appealing; it would have meant confinement at home under the distrusting eyes of my stepmother, Annie, who was always of the opinion that I would only get up to no good if I was out of her immediate supervision. Even after I left school and had started working for Paddy Corning, I still spent Sundays with Alice, right up to the end. And now, she had come to the station to say goodbye.
The train came and my father shook hands with me; he told me to be careful and wished me luck. I knew he felt awkward, but no more awkward than me. Aunt Alice gave me a hug and told me to remember to go to Mass on Sundays. John shook hands with me too, but he also had an awkward air about him. The Irish male culture that the three of us shared didn’t provide us with the tools necessary to deal with a sentimental moment like this. So we shuffled our feet, fidgeted and engaged in small talk, wishing that it was all over and we could get back to our respective comfort zones. Then the train Guard blew his whistle, which meant it was time for passengers to get aboard the train. I climbed the two steps into the train, went into a compartment and put my suitcase up on the luggage rack, then pulled up on the big leather strap that lowered the window and leaned out. We made some more small talk until the Guard blew his whistle again, at the same time waving a green flag and with a few powerful chuffs from the steam locomotive, the train started to move out of the station. We all waved as the distance between us increased and we became small in each other’s eyes. Then, when my little send-off party had completely disappeared from view, I closed the window and settled down in a corner of the compartment. There came an unexpected twinge of homesickness that moved me to drink in the vision of the emerald green fields and autumn tinted trees and hedgerows of Ireland as they raced swiftly past the train window, as though they were passing symbolically out of my life.
The nostalgia lifted, however, when I got to the recruiting office in Clifton Street. Sergeant Malloy was there again and so were the friendly faces of the other boys. I joined the group and talked and joked with the others, as we all waited for something to happen.
They gave us a meal at the Sandes Home again and we then lined up for our travel allowance—I always liked that part!
Sergeant Malloy said, “Gather round lads.” And, when we all got around him in a circle, he briefed us. “We’re going to take the Stranraer boat this time. It’s a shorter sea journey,” he explained, “but there’ll be a longer time on the train when we get to the other side.” He then went on to tell us that we would travel to Cosford first, drop off those boys who would be training there and then the remainder would continue on to St. Athan in South Wales, a total journey of around 500 miles. He also proudly informed us that our group was the largest ever to have left Northern Ireland to join the Boy Entrants’ service and that a press photographer was there to take our picture. The photographer was from the Northern Whig & Belfast Post, one of the morning papers I used to deliver to people’s homes as a newsagent’s delivery boy in my earlier years. He went to an open upstairs window of the recruiting office and leaned out, aiming his camera at us as he called out directions. At his urging, we squeezed tightly into a group, then tighter, and tighter still. Finally, he took the picture and it appeared the following Monday, on page 3 of the October 15, 1956 edition of the Whig. I know this because Melvin Jackson’s mother saved it, and showed it to me a few months later.
The Scottish town of Stranraer is due east across the Irish Sea from the port town of Larne and coincidentally, the distance between the two ports is the narrowest stretch of sea separating Ireland from its neighbour, Great Britain. In 1956, the average crossing time between Larne and Stranraer was only about two hours, which was nothing when compared to the eight or nine hours of overnight sailing across the wider stretch of sea and longer diagonal route from Belfast to Liverpool. So Stranraer did seem to be the better choice, especially s
ince we had a lot of territory to cover the next day. Sergeant Malloy might also have known that there was a threat of fog in England the next day that would surely delay our arrival into Liverpool, while the more northerly Stranraer route had the reputation for being less troubled by that particular weather phenomenon.
The crossing was calm, and in truth really did take only two hours. The only downside was that Sergeant Malloy managed to get himself drunk. I don’t know why that happened, but it was a Saturday night, which, for all I know, might have been his pub night. Ordinarily, he was a very pleasant, patient man, but his darker side came to the surface courtesy of a few pints of Guinness and by the time we docked at Stranraer, the sergeant was several sheets to the wind. He swore profusely at us for no apparent reason as he fumbled around trying to get us organized on the dockside, frequently calling us little fuckers and angrily throwing our luggage around. Fortunately, the train was waiting for us right next to the dock, so it was just a matter of stepping a few feet from ship to train and finding our reserved compartments, in spite of the sergeant’s inebriated state. It was easy, now that we knew the drill and so we settled down with plenty of reading material and waited to start on the long rail journey ahead. It was still the middle of the night and chilly in the compartment without the heat that would come only when we got under way, but there seemed to be some delay. That’s when we heard about the fog further south, across the border in England. A “pea-souper” the railway people called it. Progress was going to be slow as we headed south.
I wasn’t very familiar with fog. We rarely had it at Coleraine’s latitude. All we’d get was an occasional sea mist that cleared in a few hours. Nothing like the thick fogs—the pea-soupers—that we had often heard blanketed England for days on end. Now I was going to experience thick fog firsthand. Everything was clear for the first few hours, as the train rattled through the pre-dawn hours towards Carlisle. It was certainly no express, and seemed to stop at every station along the way, but we were making progress. We were scheduled to catch a mainline train at Carlisle that would take us on to Crewe, our next destination, but the mainline train was late in arriving. I can still hear the sound of the barely understandable station announcer’s echoing voice announcing something like, “The train to Crewe will be late arriving at platform three,” over the public address system. We waited in the cold early morning air for what seemed like hours, drinking endless cups of British Railways tea and smoking Woodbines. Yeah, I smoked in those days, like most people, and had been at it since I was about 13. “Wild Woodbines” was my weed of choice because it was the cheapest and besides, that’s what my father and Annie smoked like the good role models they were. The Woodbines cost one shilling and tuppence for a packet of ten, or eightpence for a little open-ended packet of five.
Eventually, the train pulled into the station and halted in a cloud of hissing steam and with a long, eardrum-piercing screech of brakes. Doors came open and then slammed closed with the loud noise that only those old solidly wooden railway carriage doors could make, as some passengers alighted and others climbed aboard. Sergeant Malloy was looking more sober by now, but a little white around the gills as he led our little party along the platform until we found the compartments that had been reserved for us. As before, this was signified by white “Reserved” notices pasted on the insides of the windows. We climbed aboard the train and waited. Eventually, the guard’s whistle-blast preceded a sudden jolt, as the locomotive took up the slack in the large chain links that connected the carriages of the train to one another, and then we were off on the next leg of the journey.
Everything seemed to be going well for a while, but then the train’s speed dropped off to a snail’s pace. It was impossible to see anything in the darkness outside, but occasionally harshly yellow sodium lights would come into view as they floated eerily past the compartment window in a disembodied kind of way, each ringed with a halo of swirling fog. Other than the lights, there wasn’t anything else discernible. Then, as daylight gradually seeped into the world, it became obvious that we were travelling through a thick grey blanket of fog. Visibility was maybe 20 feet and I could only make out the railway embankment, with everything else beyond swallowed up in the impenetrable greyness. The trees and undergrowth that I was able to see were dripping wet, and the fog swirled around as our train made its painfully slow way south. Frequently, the brakes would screech on and we’d come to a jarring stop, then sit there for what seemed ages, probably waiting for a signal to change. And it was like that all the way to Cosford, where we arrived several hours later than scheduled.
The stopover at Cosford was short, but long enough for us to get a meal. Then, it was time to say goodbye to those of our friends who would be staying there. In a way, I was feeling envious because it was over for them while we had to battle on through the fog to Wales. But at the same time, I felt that Cosford was ancient explored territory with nothing new to offer and I was eager to tackle the new and unexplored—namely, St. Athan. With only another 200 miles or so to go, we set off under the trusty eye of a slightly fragile-feeling Sergeant Malloy who, by this time, had mostly recovered from his bout with the demon drink.
For a few hours the name-boards on stations that we passed through had seemingly English names, like Kidderminster and Hereford, but then I started seeing strange names like Abergavenny and Pontypridd and Llan-this and Llan-that. Meanwhile, day had turned back into night again before we arrived at our last-but-one destination, the town of Barry. At least its name sounded English and was easy to get my tongue around, unlike those Aber and Ponty places that we’d passed through earlier. Our dwindled-down party of about twenty souls climbed down from the train and onto the platform. We groaned with relief as we exercised our stiff limbs while waiting for the local train that would take us to Gileston, the nearest railway station to our final destination, RAF St. Athan East Camp.
This train, when it came, was rickety and cold. There was no corridor, just separate compartments and it was just too bad if you needed to heed the call of nature. Fortunately, the journey was mercifully short—no more than thirty minutes and then we were there. Well, not quite! We still had to get from the railway station to the camp itself and it was much too far to walk carrying luggage, especially at that late hour. Sergeant Malloy, stone cold sober by now, went to the Station Master’s office and used the telephone to call the Camp Guardroom, asking them to send transport to pick us up. Waiting for that took up another chunk of time, but we were too tired to care.
It was half an hour later that a 3-ton lorry pulled up at the station entrance. Like most military lorries, its cargo space was covered by a tarpaulin supported on a metal frame to form an enclosed shelter, with the tail-end open. After the driver got out and dropped the tailboard, we heaved our luggage on board before grabbing a hefty rope that hung down from the metal framework and hauled our tired bodies up after it. There was slatted bench-type seating along both sides of the cargo space, so we sat ourselves down and hung on to the nearest metal stanchion as the lorry lurched and bumped off into the night. Sergeant Malloy, exercising the privilege of rank, sat up with the driver in the warmth of the cab.
This final short journey wasn’t very comfortable; it was cold and draughty as the wind blew through the flapping canvas that supposedly sheltered us from the elements and the fumes sucked into the back of the lorry from its exhaust pipe made the air nearly un-breathable. To make matters worse, the combination of hard wooden bench seats and what seemed like a lack of springs in the lorry’s suspension system inflicted such punishing treatment to my rear end that I joined some of the others who had already stood up and were now hanging on to the overhead part of the frame, swaying with the motion of the lorry like strap-hangers on a crowded bus. I tried to see something of where we were passing through, but it was too dark to see anything except a small part of the road surface and nearby grass verges that were dimly illuminated in the glow cast by the lorry’s rear lights. Thankfully, Gileston railway sta
tion was only one mile from the camp, so it wasn’t too long before we pulled in through the brightly lit St. Athan main gate and stopped at the Guardroom. The driver hopped out of his cab, then came around to the back and lowered the tailboard so that we could all jump down. As we were getting down, Sergeant Malloy came around to meet us, accompanied by a tall Service Policeman who towered above him. The huge police corporal wore a red and black armband bearing the letters “SP”, with a white hat, a white belt and white gaiters complementing his immaculately pressed uniform.
Although the initials “SP” properly stand for “Service Police,” they also conveniently give rise to the derogatory terms “Snoop” or “Snowdrop,” either of which we commonly used in referring to this particular sub-species of the Royal Air Force population. And the Snoop now standing alongside Sergeant Malloy, who happened to be the first one I’d ever set eyes on, appeared sinister in the extreme. The gleaming black peak of his hat dropped in a sheer vertical direction down over his eyes, almost like a blindfold, to press tightly against the bridge of his nose, requiring him to keep his head tilted back at an angle to be able to see anything to his front. This, together with his height advantage, gave the appearance that the Snoop was looking down his nose at anyone on whom he had reason to fix his gaze. It was a deliberate psychological tactic, successfully employed by many of the Snoops to be more intimidating in the furtherance of their work. It was certainly very disconcerting, when confronted by one of these much-feared individuals, to stare up into the darkness underneath the peak of his hat, searching for the eyes that we knew were hidden somewhere in there and looking down at us along that lofty nose, only to be frustrated in our ability to make human-to-human eye contact.