Extract from Diver by Tony Groom

29th May 2008

‘Diving is a cold, wet, and dirty business, son.’

‘What did you do before you wanted to be a diver?’

‘I was a shithouse attendant in Alaska, sir!’

When I joined up at HMS Raleigh in November 1975, I was a little over 17 and I was going to be a diver. I'd decided.

            Basically, when you join at Raleigh you are a seaman first, as in pulling ropes and doing up shackles, but as a baby seaman, there’s a lot of cleaning and painting also. Then, if you pass basic training, you go on to learn your trade: Radar Operator, Torpedo and Anti-submarine (TAS ape), Mine Warfare (Muppet) or others, perhaps even a Bubble Head (Clearance Diver).

            My very first day there, our class Petty Officer (P.O) said, "Right, whose the wannbee bubble head, eeer Groom, the one who's just come from Indefatigable?"

            Me, Sir?

            ‘Right. You know how to march. You’re now class leader until you fuck it up. Where's Fuller? You are deputy class leader. March the class off, Groom.’

            Dave Fuller and I were best buddies from boarding school days at the Indefatigable (Indy) and chance had us join the Navy on the same day, and be in the same class again, only unlike boarding school, this time our roles were reversed; I was class leader and he was deputy. The Navy knew the Indy was a nautical boarding school so we already knew the orders to march and the correct way to do it. I didn't really need or want this. In my class of 40, there were some lads who had changed over from the Royal Marines, who I thought would make much more suitable class leaders. There were lots that were mid-20s, (old timers) and here I was having to take charge of them all at the age of 17.

            If you told them you were there to be a diver, as I did, they gave you that knowing smile and asked you to pick a second and third choice, 'Just in case you are disappointed and don't make it.'  Well I could understand that for other people, but not for me. I was only going to be a diver, you see, 'But you need to choose something else, just in case,' they kept saying.

            What's the point? Is all I think. I'm here to be a diver; nothing else will do. Tears, near death experiences, hypothermia, hospital, you name it, I couldn't do anything else, because that was what I was in for, that was what I was going to be. Simple as that. Non-negotiable. The others can fail. I'm not going to.

            Some, on the other hand, had seen Jacques Cousteau on the telly, cave diving or dolphin stroking, and probably thought, 'I'll try it. If not, I'll do something else,' but the reality of jumping into Plymouth Dockyard soon puts you right.

            The first time I'd taken an 'aptitude test' to see if I would cut it, was at HMS Raleigh about a week after I'd got there. I'd never even gone sports diving, never been under water apart from holding my breath, which I'd done hours of in preparation! I was a bit worried about the diving part; would I even like it? That was the least of my worries. Before you even get near a diving set in the Navy they try their level best to put you right off the very idea.

            Over the 10 weeks you're there doing basic training, I would guess some 4 or 500 lads must've thought: 'I'll give diving a go,' Now they aren't going to give them all a dive, so the first thing they have to do is get the numbers down to a manageable level.

            Around fifty went on the same first day as me. The first thing you do is go for a nice long run. When we got back we were already down to 40. Then it was beasting time: sit-ups, press-ups, star jumps, burpies and lots of shouting that seemed to reduce our numbers again. Next, it was time to put you in a diving suit. Mine I remember was a size 5. I am 5ft 5in and then, at the tender age of 17, not exactly built like a brick shithouse. I would say I was fit, thanks largely to having a year at boarding school with a merciless P. E. teacher.

            When I eventually started course I was wearing a size 2 dry suit. So this one was more than double my build, there was room for a few guests inside with me!

            'Wow! Maybe we’re going diving?' The next couple of hours were spent in pairs, doing fast dresses until your fingers bled. To the shout of "AWKWARD!" each pair had to get into their Avon neck-entry rubber dry suits within two minutes. ‘Not fast enough! Get undressed. Try again, and again.’ You don't just have to get into the suit through a seemingly impossible size, rubber hole, you must also get your neck rings, next seal, and neck clamp on both divers, before you are finished. You keep this up until there is a more realistic class size. Then we must be going diving? When I did eventually manage to get into my enormous suit, I looked like I had elephantiasis-legs. There were rolls and rolls of spare rubber down by my ankles. The numbers were down to around 15 to 20 already, and it wasn't even lunchtime.

            Next we went for what they called a mud run. How it got that name, I'll never know. 'Run' should not be in the title at all. Mud-drowning, mud-crawling, flailing around in the mud in a gasping manner with no sense of purpose or direction. I know that is too long a description but it would be about right. Another thing that has always bothered me is, why are Navy bases always so near to thick black stinking mud anyway? Is it by design, or luck?

            Running as a group we came across the mud flats and luckily for us the tide was right out, leaving a majestic swathe of the black, stinking mess for us to go fall and get stuck in. There was a distant post stuck out on the horizon.

            ‘Right!' said the Chief. 'Run round that post, and back here in 10 minutes. Any questions? GO!'

            After only 10 or 15 minutes, people to my left and right who, not long ago, were sane, reasonable, normal-thinking young men, were turned into gasping, heaving, black, lumbering wrecks. Some of the aptitudees seemed to be going in one direction only, and that was down. I was making light work of it compared to some and I was going full speed to nowhere. My titanic efforts didn't seem to be appreciated at all by my superiors and they seemed intent on encouraging me on and on to even greater endeavours. I thought my lungs would burst.

            There was one lad who was a little too stout for all this strenuous activity and after getting less than 50 yards into the course, just could not move, or breathe. It was not unlike a climber who cannot go up or down. The thing I discovered over the years was, if you stop, you've had it. The longer you are in one place, the more you sink. If you stop and sink you have to put your weight on one leg to lift the other one out of the mud, to try and stride forwards. If you do this, your standing leg is now stuck, so you have to put weight on the other leg to lift your standing leg, and so on. Exhausting isn't the word for it, it drains you to the very core. In the end they threw him a line and someone had to tie it under his arms and the instructors pulled him unceremoniously over the mud, mostly on his back, but sometimes on his front, to safe terra firma where he lay for an age trying to catch his breath. His face was the colour and shape of a bruised tomato and he kept getting long, black muddy worms out of his nose and sinuses. Somehow, the mud seemed to have even got behind his eyes! The instructors barely looked down at this dying swamp monster at their feet. I never saw him again.

            An hour in, and even I was not fairing so well now. I had rounded the post - but I was dying. The life would get sucked out of you, you get so hot because your body heat cannot escape the neck and cuff seals. Because you are water tight, you are of course, air tight. It's like being a boil-in-the-bag meal, like being poached alive.

            My huge suit was in charge of where we went, not me. I had to take about three steps before the boot parts of my suit, which were dragging a way back behind me, started to move. I was actually standing in what would be the knees for a six footer. You see, the suction of the mud just takes your boots off. Sometimes I would drag myself forward that one more step, so they could see I hadn't given up, and the boot, stuck in the mud behind me, would lose its fragile grip in the suction and come flying at me like a catapulted welly, which is what it was. Just over half way around, I was constantly getting abuse and being told to give up, but being 'very determined,' I was not going to. I was eventually dragged out close to the finish by one of the 'Second Dickies.' I'd not given up, that's what had kept me there. I'd survived. That part anyway. Only one racing snake, had managed to complete the mud run.

            The Navy's excuse/reason for inflicting these 'mud flailing' exercises was, "If you attack an enemy shore it may be muddy!" It might not, I thought.

            In the lunchtime eating our bag meal I thought long and hard about my career choice, i.e. ‘Do I want to spend the rest of my Navy time and maybe the best part of my life, doing this; being abused, being boiled then cold and wet (if I ever get diving) and getting shouted at? Why not become a radar operator or maybe a store man, always in the warm, or get into mine warfare?

            I couldn't do it, that would be giving up, that would mean they'd beaten me; no way is that going to happen. They had passed, so would I.

            The afternoon got considerably better. We started in the classroom, a heated one at that, learning a little about what being a clearance diver entailed. Some seemed shocked to learn that the 'clearance' part of the title meant clearing bombs and mines. One lad just stood up and said "Fuck that!" and walked out. The instructor didn't try to stop him. He didn't bat an eyelid; he just carried on with his lecture. That must happen a lot, I thought. It was the 'racing snake' who had left the building, the only one to complete the mud run. So, fit as you like, muscles in his piss, yet he was still not quite all they were looking for. They were after people with that, but they had to have a bit extra as well, a bit of mental strength. It was a mental and physical breaking down process. It was a means of getting the men that 'might' have the right stuff, onto the course.

            I don't remember how I dealt with this shocking piece of information.  I think I let it just wash over me, it wouldn't be me dealing with bombs and mines anyway would it? If I did eventually pass, I would only be 18; they wouldn't let me do anything like that. That would be a chief divers job, and they all looked about 50 to me. We weren't at war with anyone and didn't look like we were going to be. And anyway, didn't we have mine hunters, minesweepers? If we did find anything, wouldn't we just blow it up? It wouldn't be like the old black-and-white war movies, sitting alongside a bomb trying to defuse it, would it now? I had no idea then how wrong I was.

            I took a bit of time to look around at my assembled trainee accomplices. Some were a lot bigger than me, tougher looking, and a lot older. How was I going to bear up against this lot? They all had thick, black mud in their hair, in their ears, everywhere. I didn't realise I was so bad myself until I got back to my class and spent an hour in the shower.

            Just as I started to settle in the classroom, the chief diver shouted, "AWKWARD!" and we ran outside into the rain and started getting into our dry suits again. There was no way any pair could dress each other in less than two minutes. I and my partner did manage to get it down to just over three, though I couldn't see how it could possibly be done any quicker. The chief didn't seem to think that was very good and made his feelings known by giving us "A little run in the mud," as he put it.

            By 5 p.m., I was shattered, completely drained, but my spirits rose when the four of us left were told to come back the next aptitude day, a week later. Crikey, I'm virtually there. They gave me all they had and I took it, I was 'meant' to be a diver. The four of us were invited back for 'diver training two.' We were given a sheet of paper with 'DIVER SIGNALS' written on it and were told to learn them by next week. Hey, maybe we'll be going diving then?

            A signal is a tug on the rope attached to you telling you what to do or telling the surface what you are doing; four pulls: (tugs on your line) come up, or if you give it, 'I am coming up.' Two bells: swim away from me (or I'm swimming away. Bells are faster and given in groups of two: ding ding . . . ding ding . . . . Ding, equals five bells, i.e. come back in)

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