“So there was no question of abandoning ship by jumping over the side?”
“No. We were lucky. Going back to this house at Leydene, the Peels had a business, which was linoleum manufacturing and the elaborate rose garden on the south side of the house was laid out, or said to be laid out, in the pattern of the most popular linoleum.
“The Navy no longer owns Leydene and the rose garden has, I believe, been resuscitated. The house was requisitioned during the war and after the war. In theory, estates that were requisitioned were meant to be handed back in the state in which they were bought. Which would have been awful, because the whole place was totally changed, and not only Nissen huts over the garden, but they put in some more permanent buildings.”
“And people had marched into the flower beds?”
“Oh, yes, the place was totally different. Luckily, the Peels didn’t want it back. At least, they started by wanting it back, then Lady Peel died and so, in 1949 I think it was, the Admiralty bought it for a surprisingly small figure by modern standards. I think it was for £60,000, and it’s a big estate. And of course from then on, it was developed over the years, buildings were put up, proper instructional blocks, mess blocks and so on and it lasted. The Navy held it until 1993, just over 50 years.”
“When you were at Leydene, did you engage in these dances?”
“No, because I was only up there briefly during the war, for the summer term’s courses. I went back shortly after the war to do the long signal course and from then on I was back and forth. We were both back and forth - my wife was a Wren signal officer - for the next forty years. I ended up as Captain of the Signal School, and of course we were very involved with the locals in those days.”
“Did you go in any craft except the ones you have mentioned?”
“I was in a destroyer, the Candela, in the Mediterranean. Then back, yes, after my subs courses, I went off to a destroyer called the Racehorse, but then we went off to the East Indies for the rest of the war. I was mostly in the East Indies station and I don’t think I actually went back to Leydene during the war.”
“Did you experience any kind of alarms or bombings when you were in this area?”
“Not much, because the Signal School at the Portsmouth barracks had closed down by the time I got there. We certainly didn’t up at Leydene, which was about seventeen miles north of Portsmouth. There had been a landmine dropped somewhere in the grounds, before it was taken over, but that was the only hostile act against Leydene. Part of the time, when we were doing these courses, we were also living at Roedean School near Brighton - not exactly Hampshire. We were there during the Dieppe Raid, so there was quite a lot of activity going on, but we weren’t really bombed there. It was a question of aeroplanes flying overhead. We were still doing our instructional courses. I think my war experiences [in Hampshire] are limited to that time in 1942.
“One other thing I was going to say about Leydene House: it was reputed the walls were covered in expensive tapestries. They were covered up by the Works Department when the house was taken over. We were there after the war, when these panels were removed. They turned out to be some quite ordinary material. It was wall covering, not wall paper, but nothing expensive about it, and of course it was full of holes where the lights had been fitted.
“The Peels had Leydene decorated by a Dutch firm. The house has a lovely big hall and a figure-of-eight staircase and this staircase sort of bounced as you went up it. Everybody got very worried, so only a few senior people were allowed to use it. But it was an extraordinarily beautiful staircase. Long after the war somebody thought it ought to be strengthened - put a piilar underneath it. So of course, it was quite the wrong thing to do because instead of bouncing it tended to crack it. So they took the pillar away again!
“The other thing that happened was that with a lot of sailors up there, they had ended up with up to 2000 people at a peak during the war. There was an awful lot of pigswill left over from the sailors’ mess, so they started a piggery. That was a great success. They hired a proper pigman - a paid piggery man, civilian. He was helped by sailors from time to time, and those days it produced quite a good income, which was used for the Welfare Fund and various activities were paid for - by the pigs! And this went on right until about the 1970s when it became uneconomic to have pigs.”
As with other forces, The Fleet Air Arm was not above a bit of improvisation when it came to acquiring and training personnel, as recalled by Mr Arthur Butterfield of Portchester, born in 1920. He was originally recruited in Skegness, Lincolnshire, and served in a Butlins holiday camp there. “They asked me if I wanted to go to sea. You had to go to Russia on supply stuff. Then they asked for volunteers to go in the Fleet Air Arm. That appealed to me!”
In November 1941 “they sent me along to Pensacola” [in Florida] where we had to wear civvies because they were still officially neutral, to learn to fly. Twenty-seven of us. I didn’t know the first thing about aeroplanes. While we were there, they had Pearl Harbour, so we went into uniform. Three passed out as pilots and were sent to the Far East. They were all killed. But they said I would be a pilot later. We all got back to Britain, the rest of us. They said ‘we want observers and officers’. Well, that suited me. We had 18 months’ training and I was appointed to the aircraft carrier, The Implacable. We patrolled the North Sea at 100 knots with the wind behind us. The Germans couldn’t believe we were so slow and always fired ahead of us. We had changed to Barracudas.
“I became a training officer. They were so frightened, the students. I used to hear them talking to themselves, ‘We’re too far down, what shall I do?” and I’d be quietly getting into my parachute in the back seat.
“They said ‘How would you like to be an Intelligence Officer?’ was promoted to Lieutenant, NAIO. I spoke several languages. That’s two gold rings, and they sent me home to await to go out to Japan. I got compassionate leave to get married. By VE Day, I was to go to sea again. But, the war ended. I became an editorial assistant to various publishing firms. Eventually, with three other editors, we formed our own publishing company.
“I interviewed some very interesting people. Like Bader [Sir Douglas Bader, the Battle of Britain ace] and wrote some books, all non-fiction. My father went out to South America. He was an accountant. My mother went out to join him there. I was born in South Amercia, but when my mother was expecting me, she realised the state we were in had conscription, and we moved to the next state, Uruguay. I met my wife at Sunday School.”
As the war grew and spread, it became clear we were in for a long haul, so the Navy encompassed many new units which would not even have been thought about in peacetime. Like the Fleet Air Arm, the Royal Marines were called upon to develop new skills and specialities.
John Cook, Royal Marine, tells his story:
“I was in the Royal Marines from early 1942 at the age of 17 (just) until the middle of 1946. After training at two camps in Devon I, with many others, were posted to Fort Gomer, Gosport. We had volunteered for SBS [Special Boat Service] training. At this fort we lived in the dungeons and life was unbelievably hard.”
Men trained, non-stop, in full kit. “You had to climb up a brick-built flat roof air raid shelter, without any help. You went everywhere at the double and the parade ground was the end of life for some. I saw two die on the square, so how many more did not last the pace? Not known.
“The galley/cookhouse was overtaken with cockroaches, the food was eatable, just about, if you could eat