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of how to live in a hammock. I arrived in time to see an able-bodied seaman deftly put one up between two hooks, then vault into it without falling out. It looked easy. Nobody wanted to sleep. I worked out we were waiting for the tide. About one o’clock the ship took on an air of departure. Gangways were removed. Hatches covered. Chains rattled. The ship started to vibrate as the engines came to life. Waters swirled. Tugs moved in. Donkey-engines rattled, hawsers were dropped from the bollards, and trailed like dead eels into the oil-tinted Mersey. We were away. Slowly we glided downstream. To the east we could hear the distant cough of Ack-Ack. The time was 1.10 a.m., January 8th, 1943. We were a mile downstream when the first bombs started to fall on the city. Ironically, a rosy glow tinged the sky, Liverpool was on fire. The lads came up on deck to see it. Away we went, further and further into the night, finally drizzle and darkness sent us below. I set about putting up my hammock. It was very easy and I vaulted in like an old salt. No, I didn’t fall out. Sorry. In the dark, I smoked a cigarette, and thought…We were going to war. Would I survive? Would I be frightened? Could I survive a direct hit at point blank range by a German 88 mm.? Could I really push a bayonet into a man’s body—twist it—and pull it out? I mean what would the neighbours say?

March to Boxhill Station, midnight, January 6th, 1943

JANUARY 1943—AT SEA

By dawn the regiment were at sea (but then we always had been). Reveille was at 07:00. Sailors wore bells to tell the time. They would shake their wrists, shout ‘Six bells’, swallow cups of hot tar, sing several ‘Yo Ho Hos’, tie knots in each others appendages and hornpipe the dawn away. Breakfast was at eight o’clock bells. Two men from each table were detailed to collect it from the galley.

Joke of the day.

“Captain, I’ve brought your breakfast up.”

“Serves you right for eating it.”

After a breakfast of kippers, anchors, and scurvey, we had roll-call. There had been soul-searching at high level as we were unexpectedly excused boots and allowed plimsolls, at. night we were excused plimsolls and allowed feet. The confined air-tight sleeping of 10,000 hairy gunners below-decks had filled the air with a reek of stale cigarettes, sweat, and a taste in the mouth like the inside of a long distance runner’s sock. We groped our way through the fog on to the main deck. The day was dove-grey, low cloud, a slight green-grey swell. We gulped in the clean air. During the night several ships had joined the convoy. Two low-slung destroyers were the outriders. Alongside floated serene, silent white seagulls, whose dignity dissolved into shrieking scavengerism at the sight of ship’s offal. There was a canteen on the main deck, open from ten till twelve, then three to six, then eight till ten, for the sale of tea, and biscuits that tasted like the off-cuts of hardboard. Harry and I promenaded the decks. From what we could glean, the Otranto was a fine ship: perhaps it was, but why did the captain sleep in a lifeboat? Harry and I promenaded the decks. At nine o’clock and a half bells, we heard BBC news over the ship’s speakers. The Russians were advancing on all fronts. Where did they get the money? Gunner Simms, an amateur astronomer with a compass from a Christmas cracker, had worked out we were going south.. Harry and I promenaded the decks knowing full well we were going south. The rest of the day was spent doing nothing except going south. In our wake the sea was a mixture of bubbling turquoise and white. The seagulls stayed with us two days and nights, then suddenly left. Every third day we were to wear boots to stop our feet getting soft. Whereas the days were getting warmer, the weather was deteriorating. (The worst of travelling on the cheap.) The Otranto, with capacity loading, was low in the water. She started to do a figure-of-eight roll. The first seasickness started. In the three days since leaving, the convoy got bigger by six ships and two destroyers; these always joined us after dark. Still