This is me in the early 1950s wearing the uniform of the Naval Section of the CCF (Combined Cadet Force) at my grammar school in High Wycombe.   Two years before, once a week, I had put on an itchy brown serge army uniform to learn the various forms of marching, coming to attention, about turning, sloping and shouldering arms and so on which you had to master before taking “Cert. A Part One”, after which you could opt for Air Force or Navy blue if you wished.

My father was a sea captain, and my earliest vague memories are of visiting him on board one merchant ship or another during WW2, so it was bell bottoms for me some years before - to my shame - I actually dared to wear them in public in the late 60s, early 70s, just before they disappeared as part of naval uniform.

(Bell-bottoms first appeared in the 19th century, apparently so that sailors could easily roll them up when working. And one of the skills I had to acquire was the special way of ironing them. You started by turning them inside out and first pressing them flat, with the creases at the sides of the legs. You then folded them over a number of times and pressed them again which produced inverted vertical creases down the side of the leg and, depending on the height of the wearer, five or more horizontal creases down the leg.  And why all this palaver?  Well, naval ratings would store and transport their spare uniforms in kit bags, and folding the trousers into a series of creases meant that no unwanted creases would be seen. And folding them inside out meant that any dirt or fluff picked up would remain unseen).

But this was not the only skill I picked up as a naval cadet.  Most summers, and during the odd Easter holiday, I would go on a two-week course, more often than not on a naval base . One year I qualified as a Physical Training Instructor, a PTI, not the easiest of tasks, because - at something like 5 foot two or three I was by far the smallest, lightest and least heavily muscled of the 20 or so boys on the course.

I made up for it by sheer bloody-mindedness, however, absolutely refusing to admit that there was anything I couldn’t do.  Take the swimming test, for which you had to manage a dozen lengths of the pool. That doesn’t sound much. The thing was, though, that you had to do it fully dressed, which was like dragging something approaching your own weight along once your clothes had become sodden with water. And, just to make it that little more difficult, the Petty Officer in charge had carefully looked out a uniform intended for someone much, much taller and fatter than me, which meant that I had to roll the sleeves and trousers up quite a way before gingerly letting myself down into the pool and setting off, having to flounder around every few yards or so to hoist my pants back up around the waist again or try cleaving the water through layers of unfolding cloth. 

But I managed it, slowly but surely, with the first people to finish the test, by now showered , dried and changed, back at the poolside cheering me on.  And, being pretty nimble, there were some things I could do really well, like climbing up ropes, with or without using my legs. So it worked out alright and, come the end of the course, I had the right to sew a pair of crossed clubs onto my uniform just like the others.

The most memorable courses, though, involved actually serving - if only for a fortnight - on a real Royal Navy ship.  The biggest of these was the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, the fourth of five ships in the history of the Royal Navy to bear than name.

(According to Wikipedia, the first of these - built in 1587 - served as the flagship of the English fleet during the Spanish Armada campaign of the following year; the second was a merchant ship, converted to an aircraft carrier during WW1; the next was launched as a carrier in 1937, being sunk by a U-boat four years later; mine was launched in 1950 and decommissioned in 1979, to be replaced by a fifth, launched in 1981 and decommissioned two years ago).

I can’t really recall what my duties were on the Ark Royal. I just remember taking most of the two weeks desperately trying to find my way around while reeling in amazement at the different syntactic functions which the F-word could be contorted into. “What a fucking fucker, that petty fucking officer, fuck him!”, being fairly typical.

The fortnight I can remember most clearly, however, was spent on board a much smaller vessel, HMS Loch Ruthven, an anti-submarine frigate which we joined at Rosyth, on the Firth of Forth.  As I set foot on deck I gave a smart navy-style salute, proudly sporting the newly acquired  badge on my sleeve, showing that I had been promoted to the rank of Leading Seaman.  This represented an anchor with a length of rope twisted around it, the sight of which caused a tough looking Ordinary Seaman - six inches taller than me, several stone heavier and, nominally, junior to me in rank - to exclaim ‘Fucking hell! He’s a fucking hookie!’, which lead, for the next two weeks, to my becoming the ship’s mascot, the butt of the occasional always friendly practical joke, one of which I’ll tell you about later.

The great thing about this time aboard ship was that we cadets actually stood watch.  We were not allowed to do so during the ‘darkness hours’ (First Watch, 2000-000; Middle Watch, 0000-0400; Morning Watch, 0400-0800); but were expected to serve any of the remaining watches (Forenoon Watch, 0800-1200; Afternoon Watch, 1200-1600; and the two “Dog” Watches: First Dog Watch, 1600-1800, and the Second Dog Watch, 1800-200.

We spent much of our time heading out to sea, including two or three days firing dummy depth charges at a real submarine.  If you’ve seen the film “The Cruel Sea’, you’ll be aware of the use of a special form of radar known as ASDIC (anti-submarine direction indicator control) used for tracking submarines. A ping sound indicates the sound wave emitted by the ship, while a slightly different sound comes from the submarine (or, indeed, from a large shoal of fishes or some other misleading source), the gap between the two pings diminishing as the ship nears the target.

In the early years of the war a depth charge had to be dropped straight down onto a submarine (which meant that the ASDIC no longer helped in the final seconds before the drop, during which time the U-boat could slip out of range). By the end of the war, and certainly during the 50s, the technology had improved, however, and the depth charge could be fired some distance away from the ship, with much greater chances of success.

For us youngsters it was incredibly exciting actually participating in a chase, even a practice one. But some of the things we were allowed to do were the real thing. For example, the afternoon we left Rosyth to head round the north coast of Scotland to the home base in northern Ireland I actually spent a whole hour at the helm of a genuine Navy frigate. The order would come down from the bridge above me, “Port 20!” for example, and I would repeat it (“Port 20, sir!”), while turning the wheel the appropriate distance; “Amidships!”, (“Amidships, sir!”) and so on. 

When four bells rang to mark the end of the watch (the first ‘dog’ watch) I went back aft to check the wake to see how smoothly I’d kept to the course. It was far from perfect, but not bad for a first try I reckoned. So, having already done the forenoon watch that day, I knew I was off duty till the next day, so went to have something to eat, followed by time reading in my hammock and a peaceful night’s sleep.

Or so I thought. Because at 0000 hours, midnight, I was shaken awake and told to go up to the radar room for the Middle Watch. Rather groggily I said ‘but we’re not supposed to do the darkness hour watches’, to which the Petty Officer, tapping the crossed anchors which represented his rank, retorted ‘You might have one hook, but I’ve got two! Get on with you!”   And, rather shakily, I made my way aloft, the wind having risen considerably during the three or four hours I’d been asleep, and joined the two ratings whose duty was to check the radar for signs of anything unexpected.

I really had nothing to do, and the combination of the radar arm going round and round on the screen, with the ship increasingly rolling and pitching, was beginning to make me feel decidedly queasy. A mug of cocoa which arrived around 0100 hours didn’t help, and eventually I had to head out on deck, clutching my way to the rail, and threw up both cocoa and supper, narrowly avoiding it heading straight back at me, such was the force of the wind (gusting from force 8 to 9, so I learned next day).

Luckily I didn’t have to stand the whole watch. At 0200 it was CPO’s rounds, and the Chief Petty Officer - seeing me slumped on my chair dazedly staring at the screen - sent me off below, asking if I didn’t realise that cadets weren’t allowed to stand any watches during the darkness hours.

All good clean fun, of course. But my plan of trying for the Navy when I was called up for national service took a bit of a battering; and, anyway, by the time I left university in 1960 national service had been abolished. So now I’ll never know if I’d have made a sailor, a real one I mean, not a miniature in bell bottoms.