Read I Sank The Bismarck for Free Online

received
a letter from the Royal Navy. It was a request to go to Queen
Anne's Mansions for a medical exam. The address turned out
to be a row of Georgian houses just off Harley Street in the
West End. The letter was not what I wanted to receive. I had
abandoned any thoughts of taking up flying, having convinced
myself that I would be accepted into the Southern
Rhodesian Mounted Police. This was the aim on which I was
now focusing my ambitions, and I waited impatiently for the
letter of acceptance with details of how I would be expected
to travel to Rhodesia. However much I wanted to learn to fly,
all that the navy could offer was a part-time job in the
Reserves, while the Mounted Police was full time, a career
with long-term prospects, clearly much more of a vocation. It
was, after all, nearly six months since I had attended that
rather strange interview with those sailors in civilian clothes
in Glasgow and it seemed odd that I had heard nothing more.
But there was no reason why I should refuse to take a
medical, so I duly presented myself before the men in white
coats, coughed, had my eyes and hearing tested and kneecaps
hit with a hammer, and then went back to my dismal job at
Harrods.
    Within a week or so of this appointment I received a second
letter telling me to report on board HMS Frobisher at
Portsmouth naval base to begin my training. This caused a bit
of soul-searching. I still had heard nothing from Rhodesia
House and, despite my reservations about the navy, it did
offer an alternative to the storeroom at Harrods, so I went.
    On the train going down to Portsmouth my thoughts were
mixed. I was still coming to terms with the sudden interest
shown in me by the navy, and I was apprehensive about what
I was letting myself in for. I had absolutely no idea what naval
training entailed and was beginning to wonder whether this
really was a wise move. I managed to find my way to the
naval office in the harbour, from where, with my small suitcase,
I was eventually given a lift on a motor launch out to
the ship at her moorings. My feelings of trepidation were
compounded as I approached Frobisher. She was a big cruiser
that had been detached from the Atlantic fleet a few years
previously and designated for cadet training. The boat I was
on tossed about in the harbour and, as we got closer to the
ship, I could see that there were rust streaks on her hull, and
she looked grey and forbidding above me. This was the very
first time that I had seen a warship, or been out on a small
boat. The experience was unsettling.
    I learned later that Frobisher was scheduled at that time to
be taken out of her training role with a view to her being
mothballed. If I had known that, perhaps I would have been
less surprised and confused when, after I had climbed up the
gangway on to the ship, the duty officer immediately issued
me with a travel warrant back home. I returned to the mainland
once again on a small boat, only to find I was too late
for a train back to London. The harbour office sent me to a
naval dormitory in a large building that housed the Sailors'
Rest – known as 'Aggie Weston', after the woman who
founded them – and there I bedded down for the night.
    I felt upset, rejected and close to despair in that strange bed,
in a building full of sailors who ignored me. I had been uneasy
as I approached that forbidding ship, and now the journey
from London had proved to be a complete waste of time. Very
little had gone right with my life since I left school at sixteen;
I felt that I had no idea what to do with myself; and, worse,
it seemed that nobody else had any use for me either. The
truth was, of course, that the Naval Air Service was in a
complete state of flux. The handover from Royal Air Force to
Admiralty control was still going on, and how and where the
training of naval pilots was going to take place had not yet
been properly decided. It was one thing to advertise for
people, it was another to set up a proper organization.