Unsung heroes

There is an excellent book about them called ‘The Wheezers and Dodgers’ by Gerald Pawle. Funnily enough they were also involved with the bouncing bomb. The first trials at Chesil Beach were carried out using a Fleet Air Arm Wellington thanks to them, as it was first envisaged as a weapon for attacking moored ships like the Tirpitz. Amongst other notable acheivements were degaussing of ships for protection against magnetic mines and the hedgehog and squid anti submarine weapons.

I believe other bloggers -and I hope our secret blogger will become aware, via our Editor may be aware that I have a V close link to Nevil Shute and HM Weezers and Dodgers: I was born in Portsmouth -my father was in the same group (his link was via Weygood Otis Elevators and his having been part of the team who designed the lifts in the Queen mary and ammunition hoists for large shells in various warships prior to WW2.

I take the liberty of attaching two pieces -a poem about father and a description of NSN’s visit to our house near Portsmouth (I was six months old and not taking too much notice) in mid 1941. My mother told me about this just before she died in 2000. Sadly father died in 1943 -of TB caught during testing of his ideas. A Life in the day of………
This story is true: should you know any of the characters try to recall when and where you met them.
In the twenties there was a teenager. Not what we may now imagine by that word, but a sober hard-working upright boy. His home was poor and uneducated, and because he felt restricted he left home for “digs”. He worked by day as an office boy in a Drawing Office, by night at school: and after much effort and some tears he gained very good qualifications in Engineering. (This story can be told a hundred times, but please read on.)

He was a good Engineer, and was given responsibility because he showed that he could use, not abuse it! Then he met and courted a girl; and although she could see his shyness and reserve, she brought him out of himself sufficiently to persuade him to be engaged. His work took him to a Scottish City – she never believed him – where he designed and supervised the installation of lifts in a great new liner. The RMS Queen Mary. And he did it well. So well that, 30 years later when his son visited the Liner at her final mooring, they still worked. Our Engineer thought that he would be allowed to commission the lifts on the Maiden Voyage, but no! A “front office” man was given the job. Our man was justly annoyed and resigned. Telling the firm that, when they needed him again, which they would, they must send a Rolls Royce to collect him. They did. A couple more years passed. War clouds gathered in the East and our Engineer eventually married his girl. Their honeymoon ended on September 3rd 1939. He had poor health and eyesight and was refused admission to the Services. So he joined the Navy as a “civilian attached” for the duration. This was a time when the Navy still required its engineering officers to mess separately and wear red, not gold braid; so one can imagine the status that a “civilian attached” received. But our man was sure that in his Nation’s darkest, but finest hour, all personal thoughts and advances must be secondary to the common cause – to win. And he assumed that all other men, and particularly in a body as comradely as the Services, shared his views.

A step back in time. Summer 1939, Liverpool. Navy day. Crowds Flags, children, pretty girls, sailors in No 1’s Trips round the harbour, Tours round the ships, A special attraction – the latest submarine, straight from the makers. A queue to board her, cramped spaces filled with unfamiliar people; perhaps a stolen kiss in a darkened switch-room – who knows.
A switch accidentally tripped, and the interlock fails! Disaster!

Torpedo tubes open, water flows in, no means to stop it.
Cries and struggles, a few get out, but for the rest
A fusiform tombstone. A six-month memorial in the harbour.
An unlucky class of boat some say;
Only made three, and all with a “T”.
That new man seems bright,
Let’s tell him to fix it
As an engineering problem, the solution was simple:
Duplicate the interlock; hull-to-tube and tube-to-ocean
Why wasn’t it done before?
Mind your own business!

Our man is well trained, so he looks for a better way.
A ring of bolts, hand tightened to hold the tube end on?
Slow and difficult, takes an hour to reload
No fun at sea in a battle.
Casts round for a solution, finds it close by
Why not a breech block, as on a big gun?
Sketches, calculation, report.

“All right, Smith, leave it:
I’ll look at it if I’ve got time.
Aren’t you an upstart,
Just like all civvies
You know there’s a war on
Can’t have you new men
Telling us our business
We’ve been doing “very nicely” thank you.”
Our man is hurt
But he can’t knock the system
Pours out his troubles
To dutiful wife
One consolation
He now is a father
The future Prime Minister
He jokingly tells her.

He visits an author
Who offers to help him.
Even the Navy
Can’t stop the ‘gutter’ press
The Admiral considers
And then moves to try it.
“But whose name is on it?
My goodness how can they?
Still what does it matter?
The Country will gain.”

Now it’s testing and changes
Trials and winter
Wet spray and coldness
Sickness and temper
A weak body but a strong mind.

“Good show”, its accepted
And all through the Navy.
“Sorry about patents
There’s a war on you know
Of course there’s no royalty
The Admiral gets that”
“My widow may need it”
He jokingly says!
Reward to the Navy
Scorn for our human.
“He reads the Mirror you know!”

Pains in the chest
And request for some treatment
“You’re only a civy
Look after yourself
We’re helping our own kind
There’s no room for your kind
A bloody civilian
There’s a war on you know!”

Our man is a sick man
But what does it matter
There’s work to be done
No matter who pays

Now its periscopes
Up and down, in half the time.
Modifications to hydroplanes.
“Turn the wheel against the worm?”
They said, “it couldn’t be done;”
But the Engineer thought
And he showed how to do it.
The ‘sub’ could creep away
After a depth charge
How many Navy lives now saved
From that fusiform tomb

Red blood in his coughing
A rest says his doctor
“Those bloody civilians,
They’ve no guts you know”!

Cottage in the country
Cream cheese and cowslips
Laughter and coughing
Relax and enjoy it
Three months go by
Father to child

At last complications
A hospital bed
A home made soft toy
And a card with a birthday greeting.
“See you soon, love Daddy”
Never did.
The widow, she tells the story
With tears, but pride
The son, he’s a man now
With boys of his own.

MJB – June 6th, 1971

His were not hands used to toil, hardened by physical labour, strengthened by work. Hands guided and directed by arms, similarly strong. His were a writer’s hands.
Used to the pen, paper, pencil, and sometimes causing the clatter from the keys on the Imperial on which he wrote his works. But hands that were sensitive, caring, careful.

As well as of words, his life had been one of metal, of designs, of drafting, of calculation, of the single-mindedness that made an Engineer. Made a man (and sadly in the 30’s there were few if any women in that field) fit to challenge Nature’s Laws: to control and contain those great forces which were defined by them and to direct such to the value and benefit of mankind. All mankind.

And it was in that capacity, as an Engineer, that he had met the young man to whose house he was invited to supper and where he was now standing. Away from his own palatial home (that befitting a published author and respected public figure) and invited to a small rented house, tucked away in one of the estates behind the first line of hills that separated the great dock-yards and port of Southampton Water from the trees and rolling landscapes of the New Forest.

They had spent the day in discussion, in analysis of a project and its problems, in the calculations of force and reactions, of strength and materials, of routes to engage an enemy with superior technology: and to try to match it. His role was to bring experience and experiences of past success to bear on the untried but innovative solutions being offered.

The young Engineer had been surprised at his bravado in suggesting that ‘He’ join them for supper: and even more so when the dear man, the Author, had agreed. There was the need for a call to the young wife, to tell her of her distinguished guest and to arrange for extra food. This was a time of rationing, of restriction, of a need to eke out whatever was available. But bread and potatoes were not rationed, nor was offal: and as it was the high summer, there were vegetables and fruits from garden and allotment. The meal was made.

It was a fine early evening. June was giving way to July. The pair arrived at the house on foot after a tram ride up the hill from the centre of an already bombed city. Petrol was now rationed almost to extinction and the whole population, authors included, were being exhorted to save such for essentials. Travel from place of work to home was necessary but walking and public transport were fine! Shute thought of his story about the Corbetts: a family distressed, as were so many by the ravages of war, by bombing, by disruption, by the failure of services and the very breakdown of law and order. He had set the novel, written in the 30’s long before the start of the War, but it was now seen as frighteningly prophetic, in Southampton. He could almost have been revisiting the scene of his fiction, in the fact that he saw as they traveled to the young man’s home.

Shute was encouraged by the tidy house. By the well planned garden area, now completely given over to vegetables. By the regulated hall, with hat-stand and phone table, and with the door with its galleon motif set in the glass. He saw blackout curtains, and chris-cross tape on the windows, saw the buckets of sand and water at the ready. He saw precision, saw a young couple at peace with each other, or in as much peace with their situation as was possible in war.

The wife-(my mother) so young, so pretty, dressed in her best to welcome such a celebrity. ‘ John, didn’t you tell me you have a child’?
A pause as the girl, as her eyes confirmed, Hazel, smiled with that glow of beauty that every mother in the world has when their child is mentioned.
“May I see the baby?”
The ‘he’s in the nursery, asleep’ was not sufficient to stop the repeat of the request: and of course who could refuse such a request from a visitor of such stature.

There was an exaggerated ‘tip-toe’ by all three up the stairs, an opening of the door, a gasp of pleasure to see the little body, sleeping yet stirring and a move by the father to pick-up, hold for a second in his arms, to comfort and repay the mite for the disturbance. Then, the tiny bundle was held for attention.

Those hands, the hands of a writer, were placed so tenderly around the blanketed form. One smoothed a brow, while words of affection, soft calling to the muse and the gods of children and angels, were made. And then the little form replaced where it belonged.
‘Another Engineer?” asked as though the author already knew the answer.
“Either that or Prime Minister” the father said so softly and proudly as the door was closed and the three went down to their meal.
‘Perhaps he will be a writer and an Engineer?’

Only the time of their lives would tell.
And it did.

MJB