Читать книгу Under Pressure. Living Life and Avoiding Death on a Nuclear Submarine онлайн

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What did I learn from basic military training? Not much, to be honest. Everyone talked about it being good for developing team skills, but I wasn’t so sure. It seemed more like 11 weeks of self-preservation by any means. I learnt how to iron and I became an expert shoe-shiner. If all else failed I could keep my kit nice and neat; ‘Humphreys kept a good locker’ would be a fitting summary of my time there.

The most rewarding aspect of basic training was that I was taught how to sail at sea. I spent a long weekend on Plymouth Sound on a boat learning the basic skills of seamanship and how not to endanger myself or other crew-members. I loved it so much that in the time between my leaving submarine school and joining the Polaris fleet – some three to four weeks – I used to sail two retired admirals from Portsmouth round to Southampton, a distance of about 12 miles, where they’d lunch at the yacht club while I’d get a fry-up at the local café. They’d talk about the scourge of communism, Labour leader Neil Kinnock being a Russian spy, and bringing back the death penalty and the birch as I sailed them home to Gosport. They’d head off to their houses and I’d pootle around the boat, have a gin and a smoke, then return to base. Heady days.