Goodbye England

Posted to GHQ Signal Regiment, Far East Land Forces, I sailed for Singapore on board the Troopship Empire Orwell, one of several troopers in use at the time, most of them with “River” names – the Empire Fowey was another.
I don’t know how many of us there were on board, but it was an awful lot – probably upward of fifteen hundred. Officers travelled first class, in shared cabins, but as ordinary soldiers we were on what were known as the “Troopdecks”. These were big below-deck spaces – holds, really – filled with rows and rows of folding bunks. The arrangement of the bunks was very space efficient. They were in sixes – three high and two side by side. Another six started a few inches from your head, and yet another a few inches beyond your feet. Across a very narrow gangway was another row, and beyond that another and so on, into what looked like infinity. The whole ship just a big floating block of humanity. The most irksome thing about the arrangement – apart from the obvious claustrophobia of it all – was the lack of space to put your stuff. You had a locker, but it could be a long way from your bunk, and so it had to be locked and carefully watched – and you really couldn’t bring very much to your bunk. A book – and my specs -- had to stay in bed with me when I went to sleep because there was nowhere else to put them.
During the day, soldiers were drilled and lectured at, lest they get lazy and mutinous. The fear was, presumably, that we’d take over the ship and sail off over the horizon to an island paradise peopled by dusky beauties. Now there’s a thought.
So most of us were kept busy drilling and doing PE. A few, though – the lucky ones -- were given actual jobs to do, helping the crew, away from Army discipline. That, thank heaven, after a few days, was me.
I was doubly lucky, because not only did I have a cosy job in the bakery, helping the baker who already had a good enough assistant of his own, but I was also on the night shift. So at night, when I was working, I was in the depths of the ship, out of the way of the crowded troopdecks. Then in the daytime I could quite legally sleep on the empty troopdeck -- after, I should add, a huge breakfast in the galley. (Big breakfasts were a strong feature of my early months in the Army.)
The baker was a genial Londoner. He always had a fag in his mouth, with about an inch of ash on it, ready to drop into the bread mix. His assistant was Northern Irish and very kind to his incompetent slaves. We really had hardly anything to do except sit and gossip. They both had stories to tell about the great liners, including the Queen Elizabeth – that’s the first one, not the QE2—which they insisted was a death trap, its hull patched endless times by the simple expedient of pouring concrete into the gap between the double skin.
“Full o’ concrete!” they’d say. “Won’t catch me sailing on her.”
At some point during the night I’d go up on deck with a big cardboard box full of rubbish – potato peelings, tins – and drop it over the stern. I don’t think you’re allowed to do that now. It’s too environmentally unfriendly. The environment hadn’t been discovered then, so everything went over the side. It’s said that during the war the U boats followed trails of garbage to find merchant ships, until the crews got wise to what was happening.
After I’d dropped the box I’d stay there and gaze down at the wake and imagine myself just slipping over the rail and jumping, and swimming steadily until I reached whatever land was nearest – Malta, or North Africa perhaps. No-one would see me go. Everyone would assume me dead, until at some safe time in the far future I would turn up on the doorstep at home, with long hair and a beard. “Hi Mum, I’m home!”
All that went through my head as I gazed back along the ship’s wake. Now, my wife and I like to go on cruises, and I often re-enact that scene. I stand alone, in the night on the stern with the wake stretching away into the dark, and the memories come back.