We escorted HMS Plymouth and HMS Glasgow to Ascension island today. The Plymouth looks a right state – not surprising given the hammering they have been through.

My counterpart on the Plymouth is George Peddie – a real salty old sea dog if ever there was one! George invites me on board to take a look around. What a mess!

Plymouth had been attacked on June 8th whilst in San Carlos harbour and had been hit by four bombs. It is hard to imagine what that must have been like. As an aside, I was disgusted to find out that our ‘allies’ the Americans had refused to help us with AWACS – these could have saved many lives by helping us spot the Argentinian planes before they got to close. That was Reagan at the time but I don’t think thing have changed to much since then. So much for our ‘friends!’

Sorry, I digress. Back to the Plymouth. Remember Bob on the Ardent? Well, George had a pretty hairy story to tell. We were sitting in George’s sick bay having a brew and a chat. I noticed a couple of holes – one on the inner wall of the sick bay and one on the ships’ side; they were, pretty much, opposite each other. I, idly, commented on them.

George told me the story of the holes. He had been sitting at his desk when a missile punched through the wall just behind him. It couldn’t have been more than a foot, or so, behind his head. The missile then punched it’s way through the ships’ side before exiting the ship.

Bloody hell! I figure George is a very lucky man. I wonder what odds you could have got against that bomb not exploding!

Extract from  a Navy Lark – memoirs of a RN Medic

Certainly, when I joined the Leeds Castle for my ‘jolly’ to the Falklands it took me a little time to get my sea legs. It’s a physiological thing – your body has to adapt to the new motion it finds itself subjected to. After a couple of days, generally feeling queasy, I soon settled down and was fine with my ‘new sea legs’.

You soon get used to living with perpetual motion. In fact, for most of the time, when you are not working it can be quite relaxing. It becomes an automatic reflex to lift a mug of coffee or tip the side of your dinner plate to compensate for the pitch of the ship. You only need to lose you food once to get the idea! So there we are! I’ve now got my sea legs so no further problems. Wrong.

The oceans can be crystal clear with a smooth surface or they can be a raging cauldron. Certain circumstances will effect all but the most ‘salty’ of sea dogs. when the ship is rolling from side and rising and falling with the waves, even if they are particularly rough, most sailors cope admirably. Me included.

There is a third motion that when added to the pitching and rolling has very unpleasant effects. Occasionally, a ship will be buffeted quite violently. Now I’m not really a sailor, I’m a medic – a different thing entirely. But as far as I understand, this buffeting is caused when the ship is heading sort of sideways into the waves.

So now the ship is pitching, rolling and shuddering violently. Guaranteed to bring sickness a calling. Sea sick tablets don’t seem to have to much effect in these conditions – those that are effected, either go to their pits and sweat it out or, if on duty – tough it out!

On a number of occasions I found my self wedged into my bunk – with a couple pillows jammed against my back to prevent me from moving to much. Really, just lying there hoping to die! What a wimp! Mind you, at least, I was not alone in my misery.

So do dogs get seasick — damn right they do!

Extract from  a Navy Lark – memoirs of a RN Medic

We came alongside the jetty at Grytviken yesterday and spent the day shifting stores – that’s what we do! Of course, Grytviken and Leith is where this conflict kicked off. It was on the 26th April that South Georgia was retaken with the help of the Plymouth and Antrim – the Argentinians didn’t like their fire power at all.

The day before the Argentinian submarine – Sante Fe was bombed by the Brilliant’s 2 Lynx helicopter – it then limped into Grytviken bay and there it still lies. As you enter the bay you can see the turrets breaking above the water line.

South Georgia is an amazing place. Beautiful and unspoilt. It is a place of striking contrast. One moment you can be in bright sunshine gazing at the snow covered mountains and then the next you can find yourself in a blizzard. A truly spectacular place.

Grytviken, itself, is an old whaling station abandoned many years ago. This is truly an eerie place. As you walk up the old slipway, used for dragging whales out of the sea before processing, you are struck by the quiet of the place – a bit like a ghost town, I’d guess.

As you walk through the station you realise things are ‘preserved’ by the climate conditions here. It’s almost as though the whalers were here just yesterday – old equipment looks like it would still work. There a large containers full of bits and pieces of equipment still in relatively good shape. You come across gloves just left behind, still in good condition. This is a really spooky place, almost like stepping back in time.

I will revisit this place in 1984 with the Yarmouth. Until then, I will leave you with this image. A little ways behind the whaling station is an old football pitch. As I looked across this expanse a small herd of reindeer, yes – reindeer, hove into view. They ran across the pitch in front of me and disappeared into the hills. A quite amazing site – I cursed myself that I was not armed with a camera!

South Georgia is blessed with some amazing wildlife – more of that when we come back to South Georgia with the Yarmouth.

Extract from  a Navy Lark – memoirs of a RN Medic

The Leeds Castle from the superstructure to aft is all flight deck – this probably accounts for half of the length of the ship. Pretty big for a ship of this size.

On this particular foray South, we are stuffed to the gunnels with stores – it seems that every nook and cranny has found a home for something. This means that stores have been stacked and secured on the flight deck.

These supplies take up a significant area of the flight deck and are stacked 12-15 feet high or more. No problem while the seas remain relatively benign.

As we get further South the conditions deteriorate with increasingly stronger winds and heavy swells. During this weather things take a dramatic turn.

It is early in the morning, maybe 5 or 6 am – it’s still pretty dark outside. The seas are heavy and the winds strong. I am awoken with a start. ‘All hands to the flight deck’ is piped over the tannoy. As I struggle to get aft, I can’t help but notice that the ship is listing severely to starboard – we are, in fact, at a crazy angle!

As I reach the flight deck it is now obvious what the problem is – the stores have slid across the flight deck and now lie starboard. The only thing keeping them from Davey Jone’s locker appear to be the guardrails. The crew is turned to and gets rapidly to work.

We spend the next few hours shifting the stores back to a centre position on the flight deck. We then make sure they are firmly strapped down – panic over.

Mind you – it was a little hairy for a while. Being no seaman, I have no idea how severe a ship can list before it capsizes – I sure as hell didn’t want to find out. I’m no Gene Hackman!

Extract from a Navy Lark – memoirs of a RN Medic

Again I’m up here keeping lookout for signs of enemy aircraft. A pretty boring, but necessary job. I continually scan the horizon looking for tell tale signs of aircraft above. We are particularly concerned about Hercules bombers who have already bombed a tanker; these planes have a range of 1800 miles so are an obvious threat.

I’ve been up here for a couple of hours and am feeling pretty tired. It’s difficult to keep awake and concentrate but I manage it.

The ship is rolling gently as we make our passage. Wait a minute! Is that a light? As the ship rolls a light high in the black sky comes into view and then fades again. As the ship rolls I see this light a couple of more times. Bloody hell! Could that be the light from a high flying plane – does anyone else see it?

I phone the bridge and talk to the officer of the watch to report what I see. A couple of minutes pass before he gets back to me. Well, I feel a bit of a pillock.

The light in the sky that comes into view when the ship rolls is, in fact, the moon! Amazing what tricks fatigue can play on the senses.

Mind you, the officer of the watch thought that it was better to be safe than sorry!

Extract from  a Navy Lark – memoirs of a RN Medic

We are again in the TEZ and spend the day transferring stores to RFA Fort Grange. This was to prove quite an eventful day.

The weather was very cold and the seas a little choppy, but not too bad. The flight deck is covered with a thick sheet of ice, making moving stores extremely difficult – however, we press on.

The stores are being transferred via the ship’s sea riders and with the aid of a Sea King helicopter from the Fort Grange. Quite an impressive site seeing this large aircraft landing and taking of from our flight deck!

The crew works hard getting the stores shifted and all proceeds well until mid afternoon when the Sea King has a mishap. It had just taken off from our flight deck and had moved away some 30 yards, or so. It obviously had developed some sort of engine problem because it just dropped from the sky! Fortunately, not from a great height – if it had done, the outcome may have been different.

The aircraft’s flotation bags deployed as it hit the water and then it just sat there for a while bobbing in the water. Our sea rider responded rapidly and recovered the crew with minimum fuss. A good job – well done. The aircraft’s crew were all fine with no injuries. They had not been immersed, so no problems with hypothermia or water ingestion. In fact, they were drier than the sea rider crew that picked them up!

There was a further bit of drama when the Fort Grange’s sea rider capsized while trying to attach a line to tow the ditched aircraft back to their ship. This crew were then rescued by our sea rider crew. Again, no injuries.

I can’t quite remember the fate of the Sea King – I suspect it sunk.

So, another eventful day demonstrating the skills of the well trained men of the Royal Navy!

Extract from  a Navy Lark – memoirs of a RN Medic

HMS Antelope took part in the Falklands War. On May 23, 1982, while Antelope was on air defence duty at the entrance to San Carlos Water, protecting a beachhead established two days earlier, she came under attack by Argentine A-4 Skyhawk jets. Not long after the ship exploded while bomb disposal worked onboard.

This was a particularly sobering experience for me. Let me explain…

Back in 1980, I think, my mate Andy Till and I were serving at the naval airbase – HMS Osprey in Portland.

Now, both of us had not yet had a draft to a ship – this is 7 years after joining the Navy. This was not particularly unusual, there were a lot of medics and not too many ships. Nevertheless, both Andy and I were keen to serve on board a seagoing warship – after all, that’s what we had joined and trained for.

The Navy attempts to send you on draft (new posting) to the ships or establishments you asked for. Often this is not possible. Andy and I both put down Antelope as a choice for our next draft.

At the time, I had been dating my girlfriend, Sue, for a month or so – nothing too serious at this stage (she is now my wife of 26 years and counting). Whilst having a beer or two at HMS Osprey’s club, the Flying Fish, I happened to mention to Sue that I had put in for the Antelope. Well! She rushes out of the club in tears. Now, what the hell had I done? Women, eh!

It was obvious that our relationship was a little more serious than I had thought. So, I withdrew my request for the Antelope. Subsequently, Andy got the Antelope as his next draft. So there you have it, my best mate sailed to the Falklands in 1982 on the Antelope and the rest is history. Fortunately, Andy survived the fate of the Antelope, at least physically. I saw him a few years later – he wasn’t the same happy go lucky guy I used to know.

There are no guarantees that I would have got the Antelope if I had left my request in place – there is a good probability that I might have. I do know, that Sue, inadvertently, stopped me making what could have been a fatal mistake….

Footnote. The Antelope had been in the TEZ for one day before it was crippled.

Extract from – a Navy Lark! - Memoirs of a Royal Navy Medic

So, what makes a hero?

Is it a member of the public who takes on a bank robber, a man who saves a child from a burning house or a soldeir who storms a machine gun nest? Who knows – I’m sure we all have our views…..

The Falklands war saw men hailed as heroes – some were, some were not. I’d like to tell you about a man who was.

Heroism can take many forms; from the person who finds himself in an extraordinary situation and responds with gut instinct, to the military figure who is expected to do his duty. These people don’t view themselves as heroes. They were there at a moment in time and just did what they thought was right.

I try not to name people in this blog, but Bob Young deserves mention. I first met Bob in 1973, we joined up at HMS Ganges as naval medics and were in the same class. He is a decent sort, from the west country, down to earth taking pretty much everything as it comes with a matter of fact approach.

We move forward to 1982, a time when servicemen were to find themselves thrust into extraordinary circumstance. When we joined up in 1973, I am sure that none of us actually considered that there was the remotest possibility of going to war. We were wrong.

Bob was serving on HMS Ardent at the time and found himself in the heat of the conflict. On May 21, 1982 the Ardent was sunk with the loss of 22 lives. Fortunately I was too meet Bob again, soon after this tragic event.

The Leeds Castle was tasked with transferring troops from the QE2 to the Canberra in preparation for their return home. I was amazed and relieved to meet Bob on board – he had survived relatively unscathed physically, emotionally was probably a different matter. This is what he told me.

Whilst under attack from Argentine planes Bob found himself at one of the Seacat launchers tending to a severely injured officer, unfortunately this man was fatally injured. Bob stayed with his patient, trying to make him as comfortable as possible by administering morphine.

While doing this, Bob described to me, witnessing the incoming Argentine aircraft dropping their bombs – he watched the bombs fall on the flight deck below him. The ships helicopter and the crew attending it disappeared before his eyes. He still remained with his casualty.

I asked him what was going through his mind during this attack. He just said, he had to concentrate on his job. It struck me that he retold this harrowing tale in a calm, matter of fact manner. No histrionics or drama. He was just doing his job.

To my mind, that is true heroism. I for one, salute you Bob.

Extract from a Navy Lark! – Memoirs of a Royal Navy Medic.

Steaming towards Ascension Island from the UK.

We have now settled into the routine. There are constant exercises – obviously, very necessary. An effective crew is one that has been well drilled. The aim is to practice for all eventualities – attack, fires, damage control, men overboard, aircraft ditches etc. As you can see, an awful lot can occur on board a Royal Navy ship…..

So, although repetitive exercises can seem a drag it is clear that they are vitally important. You never know when you might be called upon to put into action all that practice.

One of my duties is to train the first aid teams. These sessions would usually be undertaken on the flight deck (when not in use for other things). Remember, the average age of the crew is around 19-20 years old. Sometimes it is difficult to get the first aid teams to take the training to seriously – their minds are often on their normal duties and I don’t think that they really believe that they’ll need first aid skills.

The light hearted approach to first aid training was to change quite dramatically. I always believed that it was highly likely we would suffer losses; the Argentinian forces weren’t up to much, really. But, the law of averages were against us.

May 4th saw an event that changed the attitudes of my first aid teams to training and one that concentrated the minds of the whole crew. This was the day that HMS Sheffield was hit by Exocet and sunk with the loss of 20 crew. It was now, obvious to all, that this was a bloody serious situation that we approached.

To their credit, my first aid team members, paid serious attention to my lectures and training. Although not called upon to perform under fire, I have no doubt they would have performed admirably.

Extract from a navy lark!  – memoirs of a navy medic