National Service in the Royal Navy 1956 - 1958 
Just before answering the summons in 1956 to register for two years of National Service someone at school told me that it was possible to pursue a Russian course during National Service in the Navy. Perhaps it was my Greek Master M R F Gunningham? He was the officer in charge of the Naval Section of our CCF (Combined Cadet Force). He had probably seen war service and still wore the wavy navy insignia of a Lieutenant RNVR. He was aware of my strong interest in the Navy and probably had a misplaced optimism about my linguistic talents following my distinction mark in Ordinary Level ancient Greek. My Advanced level course was French, Latin and English. I had taken the entry exam for Dartmouth but had failed the mathematics paper so that ambition was nipped in an early bud. Nevertheless my interest in the Navy remained obsessive. 
So when I presented myself before the bored and dishevelled clerk at my local Ministry of Labour and National Service office and was asked if I had a preference of Service I answered that I wanted to learn Russian in the Royal Navy. 
The answer was curt. “Was you in the RNVR or Sea Cadets?” “No but I was an Instructor Cadet in the Naval Section of my CCF.” “Never heard of a Russian course and the CCF don’t count for nuffing. You’ve gotter choose either the Army or the RAF” 
When I persisted I was put into another much smaller queue leading to a Chief Petty Officer who showed similar incredulity but agreed to pass my request up the line. 
A month or so later I was summoned for an interview in Royal Naval Barracks Chatham where I was intrigued to find myself sitting opposite two Wren Officers whom I found attractive. I was 18 years old and very immature but found the interview more agreeable and less forbidding than I had expected. 
I undertook various tests among which was probably the test I have subsequently assumed to be of potential to learn a difficult foreign language which is used by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. So when I received the command to report to the Commodore Royal Naval Barracks Portsmouth to become a Coder Special (the title given to lower deck linguists) I thought that my sex appeal had paid off during my interview in Chatham. But that would impute the professional integrity of the two officers from the Women's Royal Naval Service. My guess that I had been put through language aptitude and other intelligence tests is probably right. And I had passed! 
On 12 September 1956 I strolled up to the sentry in RNB Portsmouth showed my chit and jocularly commented that I had been asked to come and see the Commodore. “Get fell in over there!” was the sentry’s response. My freedom as a civilian had ended for two years. My ambition to join the Navy had been realised. I had become insouciant about my failure to enter Dartmouth. Perhaps that would come later. I could “go aft through the hawse pipe”? 
Along with other newly recruited Coders I was kitted out as “a man dressed as a seaman” because “square rig” (round cap and large blue collar) had become the uniform for all ratings below Petty Officer. Coders, Writers, Sick Berth Attendants and Stewards had until the year before worn “fore and aft” rig (peaked cap and jacket with black horn buttons.) 
After four weeks of basic training we were drafted to H M S Mercury, the Royal Naval Signal School, East Meon, near Petersfield to await the next Russian course in November 1956 at the Joint Services School for Linguists in Crail, Fife, Scotland. 
In Mercury we learnt the basics of how radio worked and did a lot of cleaning ship. I remember the futile joy of sweeping autumn leaves against the wind. Some of us, and I include myself in their number, fantasised about gaining access to the Virgins’ Retreat as we so inaccurately called the Wrens’ quarters. They were strictly out of bounds in those sexually repressed days. Some were detailed to clean there but I never got closer than the adjacent pigsties. 
Then we started the seven month intensive Russian course in Crail at the Joint Services' School for Linguists; an army run establishment. Here I was able to compare our avuncular but strict CPO Robertson and his sidekick PO Mangan with the awful bawling army NCOs who bullied the army conscripts. Then followed a couple of months at RAF Pucklechurch where we learnt how to apply our Russian skills to radio interception of Russian military movements just over the border in East Germany. 
After a year spent with the Army or RAF I seized the chance of a temporary spell at sea to participate in "Strikeback" the biggest naval NATO exercise since the end of WW II. In the company of Alan Arthur Smith and Hugh St John Mildmay I joined HMS Cavendish in Plymouth. After rejecting the homosexual advances of the first Petty Officer I met after crossing the brow of my ship I found a small space in which to sling my hammock and looked forward to an exciting new adventure as a real sailor. I never saw the gay Petty Officer again. 
My enthusiasm at having finally joined the real Navy was doused quickly by permanent sea sickness, interrupted only by a short run ashore in Pembroke. It was Sunday in Wales. The only place we could find a drink was at a working men's Club where we were made very welcome. Back to the ship and a stormy (Force 9) passage up the Irish sea towards Iceland. 
We had been taught how to manipulate a new radar designed to pick up the presence of a submarine periscope. During the ten days of the exercise when we were working in simulated war conditions and working Nelsonian watches I detected one signal on my tiny radar screen which I thought was that of a submarine’s periscope.  
“Switch Switch. Target at 185º” I managed to relay the code words down the voice pipe between bouts of nausea. Immediately I felt the good ship Cavendish, built in 1941, change course towards the target.
 It turned out that the target was a large American flat top. I was assured later that one of her radars did indeed emit a signal similar to the one we had been trained to look for. As we were in the middle of a large and varied fleet the blips on my screen resembled the rain on a car windscreen in a typhoon and the submarine signal that I was looking for was almost impossible to detect. 
For the last two days of our return journey I stopped being sick. For the earlier part I was continually sick except when in my “mick” (hammock). The storm we had been through was severe enough to smash the catwalk which we had been using to go from our mess deck right aft to our duty station more than half way up the main mast: the “third office”. It had become too dangerous to walk on the upper deck with just the taffrail to hold on to. To go forward we had to go below by steep ladders through the engine room which was accessible from the hatchway to our mess deck without too much risk. 
The engine room route had to be used to get to the galley when “Cooks to the Galley” was piped. In those days broadside messing was used in smaller ships such as ours where each mess deck would have a roster from which the duty “cook” would go to the galley at meal times to collect enough food for his mates. The gruffly tolerant regular matelots on my mess deck had tacitly excused me this task because of my sickness. On the occasion that I responded to the pipe I had to negotiate the ladders into and out of the engine room. Inevitably the heat and the strong smell of diesel fuel in the engine room brought back nausea. Nevertheless I persisted and picked up my load. When I returned triumphant with a heavy metal tray my satisfaction was quickly dissipated by the reaction “Not fucking duff!” when I laid out the plum duff pudding. 
My short experience at sea taught me that a life at sea was not for me. There is nothing quite as debilitating and miserable as chronic sea sickness. Hence both the Navy and I benefited from my failure to enter the Navy for a career. Some twenty years later I volunteered to crew in a two masted sailing brig. She had been built in New Zealand for the Outward Bound School in Hong Kong and experienced sailors were sought for her maiden voyage to Manila in the Philippines. She left in calm weather to cross the South China Sea in a period free of Typhoons. The weather forecast was good. Yet, two hours into our trip the wind strengthened and the mal de mer struck again and stayed with me for the whole of the five days of our passage. The run ashore in Manila made the experience worthwhile and the weather was set fair for the return journey under full sail.  
Epilogue. 
After I left Cavendish I was drafted with the rest of our intake to HMS Royal Charlotte, a stone frigate which was a listening post on the Kiel Canal. We were housed in adjacent old Luftwaffe barracks which were very comfortable. No more sea time but a lot of dinghy sailing which did not bring on the curse of sea sickness. After National Service I did obtain a commission by the comparatively easy route of being a linguist whose services could have been useful if the cold war had gone hot. Provided I did not have to go to sea. 
Gareth Mulloy. February 2012