Portfolios > In Landscapes of Memory and Forgetting

Dear Nina, I joined the Royal Navy in 1969 at age 15. My father was conflicted, or rather, tortured, when he signed the consent form. He thought I’d hate him if he didn’t sign. By signing, he knew what dangers lay ahead. My mother cried at the railway station as I left for basic training at HMS Raleigh in Devon. I signed a twelve-year contract, including three years of boy’s service and nine years of men’s service, with an option to buy myself out (discharge by purchase) after six months.

Basic training was a miserable experience. There’s nothing good to say about it. It was the most violent time of my life—violence from insecure recruits and from those in charge of conditioning us, including being kicked and punched by drill instructors. I remember a pep talk from an admiral who told us we were being trained as hired killers. It was clearly intended to titillate our teenage macho imaginations. He understood the audience. I recall thinking, I didn’t want to be a hired killer. I wanted to see the world, just as the recruitment brochures had promised.

At the end of basic training, we were presented with three career options: radar, sonar, or gunnery. Because gunnery was the least popular option and the Navy wanted to distribute available brainpower, the top three from my class of thirty were assigned to radar, the next three to sonar, and the third three to gunnery. Because I ranked ninth in the class, contrary to my wishes and further promises made in the recruitment brochure, I was assigned to gunnery school at HMS Cambridge. After completing gunnery training, I joined the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, which, ironically, had no guns.

Seeking options other than being a gunner on a ship without guns, I applied to become a Navy diver. The aptitude test didn’t go well. I was placed in a recompression chamber to simulate pressure at depth. I didn’t make it past one hundred feet. The pain in my ears was unbearable. Later, though not from anyone associated with the test, I learned that the common cold I had at the time likely made it harder to equalize pressure. I then applied to join the Royal Navy’s Oceanographic Survey branch, but the minimum age was eighteen. Two years felt like an impossibly long time to wait. The Royal Navy was rapidly losing its appeal. The brochures lied.
Love, Roddy