North of the Border

After the 2 weeks in Portsmouth in the Harbour Training Ship HMS Kent I had an extended weekend (Jack-speak - Extenders) at home in Oxford before boarding the train on an 8 hour journey bound for Inverkeithing (Jack speak - Inver queer thing) in Fife Scotland. Here I was to undertake my Part iv task book training for the next 18 months to 2 years under the guidance of shore based Senior Rates - this would be on the job training in the Main Galley at HMS Caledonia which at the time was the Marine Engineer Artificer's training school (Jack speak - Tiff's School).
After nervously climbing out of the taxi and duly reporting myself to the CPO in the Guardhouse of the Main Gate as Junior Assistant Cook Jessett I was immediately given forms to fill in and directions to the Ship's Company Accommodation block where I reported to the Leading Hand of the Block who duly allocated the 6 man mess I would be housed in. 5* luxury by comparison to Mountbatten block back in Chatham.
After meeting some of the guys I was sharing with and a pretty restless night I was taken to the Main Kitchen where I met the CPO Cook and the PO Cook - at that time possibly the scariest two individuals I had met since joining up.
For the next 18 months I was trained in the fine art of cooking for high volume numbers whilst completing task after task in my Part iv book and becoming proficient in working the 3 watch Galley routine. This consisted of:
Standby Watch: 0800-1400 Preparing and cooking of Lunch and deep cleaning Galley Equipment such as ovens, fryers and industrial mixers etc.
Duty Watch: 0800 -1900 Preparing and Cooking dinner that day as well as prep for next day's breakfast.
Morning/Off Watch: 0430-0830 Preparing and cooking Breakfast and then having the rest of the day off - luxury - first full days off apart from leave and off duty weekends since Sep the previous year.
It was during the off watches that the younger cooks in the watch were introduced to the fine art of an all day drinking session (Jack Speak - All Day Sesh) and I quickly became adept at this side of my new career.
Following a successful spell in the Main Galley I was transferred to the Wardroom Galley to complete the last part of my task book. It was here that I was employed in April 1982 when the news came that Argentinian Forces had landed on South Georgia. At that point nobody appeared to know exactly where South Georgia was...this was something that was very quickly remedied in the coming days when the Argentinian military went on to invade the Falkland Islands and the whole conflict became headline news in the press and other media. Very quickly a stream of volunteers came forward adding their name to the list of servicemen willing to put their life on the line in the name of Queen and Country; me included. And so it was that after the brief conflict and the loss of many lives both at sea and on land that this 18 year old cook was drafted to Naval Party 1242 to be based in Port Stanley, the Capital if the Falkland Islands, for an as yet undetermined period with little or no idea as to what would be required once I arrived. All I knew was that I was to mobilise at HMS Nelson in Portsmouth along with the other members of NP1242 to be bussed to RAF Brize Norton on Monday 12 July 1982 for the flight to Stanley via Ascension Island.

Who called the cook a C**t? Who called the C**t a cook???

And so the day after my passing out parade at Raleigh I was shipped onto a bus bound for Chatham on the Medway estuary in Kent to commence my 9 weeks of cookery training. OK let's get all the old ones out of the way now!! "It must be the hardest course in the Navy cos no body has ever passed !!!" "Who called the cook a cunt? Who called the cunt a cook?" Yes yes heard em a million times before!!

Anyway whist we were crossing the counties of the south west we pulled into RNAS Yeovilton for our lunch. Having only seen the delights in Traf Galley at Raleigh up to this point it was a refreshing change and I was assured that there was no Bromide in the tea here.

Back on the open road the world was our oyster and we duly arrived at the Main Gate of HMS Pembroke and the infamous Terrace Road. We had been forewarned about the training accommodation at East Camp within the establishment however 20 or so of us did not bank on being the overflow party and having to live in the dilapidated older Junior Rates accommodation in Mountbatten Block with its hot and cold running water (Mainly down the walls) and broken windows and bunk beds straight out of Colditz. To cap it all when we mustered to be classed up we were told that there were too many trainees, not enough instructors and kitchen classrooms and that we would be 'Work Ship' Party for the next 3 weeks until the next class completed Part 3 (Cookery) training. Work Ship involved lots of gutter clearing, leaf sweeping, gash ditching and the like and was absolutely not why I was there. Anyway eventually the 3 weeks passed and I started week one of the course under the watchful and experienced (and scary) Dave Avery; an old and bold CPO Cook with many years service under his belt. Not even 3 days in and I was struck down with tonsillitis, had to report to the Sick Bay (Have you seen One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest??) and was back classed a week in to POCK Trevor 'Paul' Newman's class.

My Part 3 Training had now commenced for real and we were quickly into preparing salads, stocks, soups and sauces, vegetable and potato dishes, meat, fish and veg delicacies, pastry and bakery items. Then one day we were sat down and told to make notes on the Gaco Mini Dairy - a space age mechanism that was used for making perfect milk from Milk Powder.

Funny how the thing I remember most is an the method we were taught for remembering Ice Cream Machine sterilising agent called BHC 318 - Big Hairy Cunt 318 - it still makes me laugh now!!!

We undertook weekly phase tests both practical and theory and all of a sudden the 9 weeks was up we had passed our final tests (bar a few re scrubs) and we were given our Part 4 Drafts - mine was HMS Caledonia in Rosyth Scotland and to say I was a little nervous was understatement of the century. But....before we were to join our establishments for Part 4 training we had an extended weekend and 2 weeks on HMS Kent in Portsmouth (A Harbour Training Ship) to look forward to....this was the end of Feb 1981...

6 Weeks Basic

Week one in the New Entry block and we were issued our kit and an official service number which I will always have emblazoned on my memory - D187666C, told to shave whether we needed to or not, taught to 'bull' (spit and polish to a high sheen) our boots after being told by the New Entry Chief Petty Officer 'I wanna be able to see my face in those!' and iron kit and then fold it into the size of our Seamanship Hand Book (smaller than A4 Paper). This was our new life and our home for the first week. Here I was also exposed to the fine cigarettes available at Duty Free prices only to Royal Naval personnel - they were called Blue Liners and sadly they did not last as long as I did in the Senior Service.

Once the initial shock of getting up in the middle of the night (05:30) and having people shout at us and make us run up and down in step etc etc had sunk in we were then introduced to the delights of 'Clean Ship' - basically cleaning everything that did not move for inspection during evening rounds. This was all to prepare us for the next 5 weeks in Part 2 Training where we would 'Clean Ship', square bash, assault course, fire real live big dangerous rifles, be gassed in a chamber, partake in the RN swimming test and circuit training, climb ropes, run about, wash, iron and fold kit, 'Bull' our parade boots and shoes and polish beret badges and generally be introduced to the pomp and ceremony of Naval life while earning a meagre 40 GBP per fortnight.

To collect our pay we had to go on pay parade, where a select few (usually me) would be picked up by the 'Joss' (Jack Speak - Master at Arms; Regulating Branch equivalent to Chief Petty Officer rate) for poor kit upkeep and long hair and 'Chop one off' (Jack Speak - salute) to the pay officer whilst shouting the last 3 digits and the letter at the end of our official service numbers - commonly known as our Ship's book number.

So the subsequent 5 weeks flew with all the above being undertaken, passed, achieved and boys becoming men, and all that George, culminating in a passing out parade in late October 1980 with 9 weeks cookery training looming over the horizon at the Royal Navy Cookery School, HMS Pembroke in Chatham, Kent. The Passing Out was the first time I had seen my family for the 6 weeks since I left home on 22 Sep and it had seemed like an eternity - nothing though compared to the 8-9 month seagoing deployments I had to look forward to but knew nothing about at that infantile stage of my career. Also little did I know that, less than 2 years after completing 6 weeks Basic Training, Britain would be involved in the biggest conflict involving the Royal Navy since the end of World War 2...

22 Sep 1980

1980 was the year I left school - I wouldn't say I was an under achieving pupil; neither was I ever going to win awards for studying excellence. I started work on a part time basis at the local CO-OP store in Kidlington (5 miles north of Oxford) as a general dog's body. I quickly came to realise that this kind of work was not for me - and decided that before I became a victim of RSI from pulling the trigger on a price labeling gun I would broaden my horizons. I had been one of the first boys in my school (Gosford Hill Secondary) to fore go metal and woodwork lessons and take up Home Economics - in 3rd year I had attended a careers seminar where all 3 of the forces had been plying their respective trades; the seed had been sewn that day - I would become a cook in the Royal Navy. Some years earlier I had learnt how my granddad on my mother's side of the family had run away to join the Navy during the 1st World War and was told to come back when he had grown up - he was 13 at the time. 
And so it was that some 3 months after leaving school and having taken various skill/aptitude and medical fitness tests I entered full time military service (at the ripe old age of 16 yrs and 9 months) with the RN. On 22 Sep 1980 Life in a Blue One had begun in earnest. (As this Blog unfolds you will gain an understanding about this term plus many other words/terms/phrases that are Naval Jargon - a whole language of it's own commonly known as Jackspeak!!) - more to follow soon...

Intro

I was introduced to this web site by a current friend and colleague who had decided to Blog his exploits at work in Angola (as well as a short period of upheaval following his Naval career). Following a 26 year engagement (Sep 1980 to Sep 2006)of my own with the Royal Navy as a chef/caterer and more or less falling into a new job/career immediately I thought I would jump on the Blogging bandwagon. What follows are snippets/memories/tales of the sea and anything else I can remember from the day I walked through the gates at HMS Raleigh in Cornwall to the present day. I make no apologies for my punctuation/grammar/typos/spelling or for the random manner in which this mini autobiography is set out. Here goes...