JAMES TITHER 1943-1947

WATTS NAVAL TRAINING SCHOOL



Discipline was fairly tight at Watts, but to about 250 young boys in ages ranging from 10-16 it was all a part of life.

Within the main building and central to it was a large ground floor area called The Quarterdeck. On the first and second floors, and surrounding the Quarterdeck were galleries leading to the dormitories. These were accessible by a wide stairway which rose from one end of the Quarterdeck.

Surrounding the Quarterdeck on the ground floor were the classrooms where we were taught by very strict but very competent teachers whose diligence was to serve us well in later life.
All in all the school was self contained, having it’s own chapel and generally speaking there was no reason for anyone to leave the premises except on Sundays when non-conformists went to church in the nearby village of Elmham.

We did though have regular visits to the nearby town of Fakenham to see the dreaded dentist who inspected our teeth and extracted or filled where necessary. Fillings were done without anaesthetic in those days and much gasping and squirming greeted the drill’s close proximity to the nerve. We were all numbered between 1 and 280 and divided into four divisions named after admirals of the first world war. ie, De Roebeck took numbers 1-70, Jellicoe 71-140, Sturdee 141-210 and Tyrwhitt 211-280. No prizes for guessing who got number thirteen.

These numbers were used more regularly than names, in fact, they became prefixes that were used instead of Christian names so I was known as 13 Tither. We were given 2 pence (in old money) pocket money every week, and were allowed out once a month to a small market-town called Dereham which was about seven miles from the school in the opposite direction to Fakenham.

Dereham boasted one cinema the manager of which usually kindly allowed us in free
and on the occasion that " In Which We Serve" , a naval film,starring Noel Coward, was available and the whole school was invited to a special showing. We marched from the railway station to the cinema with the band leading so we were, in a way, helping to promote the film.

It wasn’t long before I joined the band which was run by an ex Royal Marine bandmaster one V.C. Joyce(Bandy) L.R.A.M. who decided I would be suited to the trombone. Bandy Joyce was immaculate in his turnout right to the white handkerchief he kept up the left cuff of his uniform. As I remember it all the officers, not the teachers though, wore naval officer uniforms with the single stripe of sub-lieutenants on their sleeves excluding the captain who wore four stripes and the first lieutenant who wore two.

We very seldom saw the captain whose duties very rarely brought him into contact with us but one of those duties was to administer punishment to anybody who decided to leave the establishment on their own initiative or, to put it more bluntly, ran away. This punishment consisted of six strokes of the cane administered to the bare buttocks of the offenders who were usually held face down on a bed, in one of the dormitories, by two officers while the captain wielded the cane. Six strokes was the usual punishment though I think that the word strokes, in this case, was misleading. In any event I cannot remember an instance of anybody re-offending.

A typical day at Watts would start with reveille at about 6-30 am when everybody would rise and make their beds down then head for the ablutions to wash, and clean their teeth. This was followed by breakfast in the one big dining hall. There was no choice of breakfast or any other meal for that matter, we just went through the motions and ate what was on our plates. We never looked on eating food as a pleasure especially the type of food we were normally served but then we were a fairly ravenous lot so we ate what was there. Next came school and we had to be in the classrooms and ready to start at 9-0 a.m. sharp.

The most colourful teacher was a tough Canadian who had seen service with "The Forgotten Army" in Burma, named Pike who everyone called basher. Basher Pike though feared for his abrupt and threatening manner was secretly respected and admired by all the boys in the way that all boys heroes are. Basher taught maths and one day after demonstrating the solving of a certain problem on the blackboard he stood back and asked " Can everyone see that?" One of the boys sitting towards the rear of the class said "No, I don’t see it Sir" whereupon Basher marched up to him and, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck, dragged him to the blackboard , rubbed his nose on it and barked "Now do you see it?" The chastened student confessed to sudden enlightenment and Basher let go of his collar.

We didn’t realise it at the time but the standard of maths at Watts was very high and this was to serve us well when we eventually left so maybe the end justified the means as far as Basher and his methods were concerned. In all my time at Watts though I never heard anybody say a bad word about him.
At 12 noon we left the classrooms for dinner which we had sometime between twelve and 1 p.m. Between 1 p.m. and 1-30 p.m. we went to our dormitories and lay on our beds for half an hour; this being called Siesta. A great sports field fronted the main buildings on which about ten football pitches were marked out and during the season, after siestas the early part of the afternoon was spent playing football. We would then shower and change before attending lessons. A break was then had for tea after which we had one more lesson. The rest of the evening was taken up by what could be called restful pursuits such as reading etc.

Once you got into the routine of things it wasn’t such a bad life. One of the things I have omitted to mention is seamanship lessons. These were fitted into the schooling schedule and were given by an old sailing ship tar by the name of Haslam or, as everybody called him, Bloater Haslam.

Bloater would try to put things into rhyme so that they could be remembered more easily by his classes. For instance a Turks-head knot was a ‘Wall and Crown followed round’ and when steering a ship, referring to the navigation lights, it was ‘green to green and red to red, perfect safety, go ahead’. Everybody liked Bloater Haslam probably because he gave the impression that he’d been through the mill as had most of the lads there.

If you were in the band though you would normally go to band practice instead of seamanship lessons after all knots are little use to potential Royal Marine Bandsmen. What we did not know at the time though was that the dubious honour for having the highest number of fatal casualties during the second world was was held by Royal Marine Bandsmen though I was too young to join until the war was over. The reason for the high number of casualties was that during naval engagements, the band would man the T.S. centre from where they would transmit information to the big guns on range etc.

As only battleships and cruisers rated a band the T.S. centre was usually about five decks down so if the ship was sunk the band had very little chance to escape especially as the order to abandon ship was usually left until the last possible moment.
One of the regular duties at Watts was to look after "New Boys" when they arrived who were given a number that immediately preceded your own thus when a boy named Ronald O’Brien arrived and was given the number 12 he became my charge.Ronald was quiet and unassuming and had a quiff of hair at the front that was quite unmanageable so someone gave him the nickname Brambles and it stuck. Brambles was a wonderful friend who, during the next four years, followed me into the band and even onto trombone then into the Royal Marines. Sadly, at this point in writing, I have just discovered that my wonderful friend died during the September quarter of 1999 in the registration district of Ipswich. I have sent away for a death certificate in the hope of discovering his next of kin.
One thing that sticks in my mind of the war days was running to the air-raid shelters which were long Anderson type shelters surrounding the sports field. Several large American air bases were close by and one day we were all invited to one of them as a goodwill gesture. The Americans couldn’t have been more friendly and made us really welcome. One sobering experience though made us realise what stress these men must have been going through though so far from home. We looked round the interior of a Liberator bomber that had been badly damaged and had just struggled home from a bombing raid on Germany. Strewn around were various digits and body parts that had once belonged to members of the crew. The Americans used to set out on their bombing raids in the early mornings and we used to count them out in their hundreds and the air was filled with their thunder as, heavily laden with their bomb loads they ploughed through the sky.

There was usually an even mix of Liberators and
Flying Fortresses and one morning while we were at breakfast there was a loud bang. We all rushed out to see the cause and witnessed a Liberator and Flying Fortress that had collided plunging to the earth. The crews roughly numbered about ten per plane and we only counted about ten parachutes so that meant, probably, that half the crews had perished.

At the rear of one end of the main building at Watts was a path leading away from the building and downhill to a slow flowing river, which could have been the Wensum, but I’m not sure. Lying close by the river and between the river and the school was the open-air swimming bath where we were all expected to learn to swim. I swam my first length at the end of the summer season of 1943 but when I dived in at the start of next years summer season I sank like a stone and one of the older boys had to dive in and rescue me and in my panic I gave him a hard time of it. However, all’s well that ends well; I regained my confidence in the water and never looked back.

One year we put on a bit of a show for the people of the town of Fakenham who, in return, laid on a big meal for us. The show consisted of a band concert and gymnastic display followed by a mass dancing of the sailor’s hornpipe which was choreographed to the routine duties on board ship during Nelson’s time such as swinging-the-lead and climbing-the-rigging. After all this we were allowed to wander at will round a large fruit-growing garden where the gooseberries were particularly ripe and succulent. Needless to say we all made pigs of ourselves and that night there were queues to the heads (toilets) many yards long.

I don’t know who decided when but at a certain time of the year we would change dress from full winter blues to shorts, singlets and bare feet until autumn when we changed back. This summer wear was quite comfortable once the feet had hardened to it. We all enjoyed being less cluttered up with clothing and like boys the world over relished this extra freedom.

On 6th June 1944 the allies landed in Normandy and we were all allowed onto the quarterdeck to listen to the B.B.C’s account of the invasion on the school’s only radio. As I have already mentioned, the school had it’s own church. Willing to try anything at least once I joined the choir and during the service something happened that has stayed in my mind ever since. During the sermon I noticed a frenzied struggle taking place at the foot of one of the alter walls. A beautifully coloured butterfly was caught in a spider’s web and was trying desperately to escape but only succeeding in further enmeshing itself. The spider made several sorties to get near it’s intended prey but decided to retire to the corner of it’s web and wait until fatigue eventually exhausted the butterfly. One of the boys in the choir raised appealing eyes to the choirmaster who had also seen the struggle and who nodded knowingly. Thereupon the same choirboy freed the beautiful butterfly and, in cupped hands, carried it from the church and released it, to the satisfaction of all the witnesses.
I have thought about this incident many times since realising that the spider is also one of God’s creatures and had probably been waiting in it’s web for days, hoping to ensnare something in order that it might live. Is human compassion and our sentimentality towards beauty allowed for in the laws and balance of nature. Without it’s beautiful wings would the butterfly have been better looking than the spider?
I guess that mankind is as much part of the natural order of things as the butterfly or the spider so it’s evolution and actions will all have been taken into account and allowed for.

All in all I spent nearly four and a half years at Watts Naval Training School from 26 February 1943 to the 7 July 1947. in the spring of which year I attended the recruitment office in London for a physical examination which I passed despite an inward bend in my left leg caused, I believed, by rickets from my earlier childhood. I suspect that the examination was not so strict because the Royal Naval School of Music, as it was then known, was regarded as a non-combatant unit. I distinctly remember looking from one of the recruiting office windows and seeing a large poster advertising the latest film release called "Becket" starring John Gielgud and Richard Burton so the reader will get some idea of the era about which I write. Watts was where I spent the most formative years of my life and no matter what I have done since or wherever I’ve been I have often found my mind returning there.

James Tither

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