Hero of the Fleet

[Halder]

Apologies in advance for this rather (or very) long review, but I hope you'll forgive me. The book's out mid-month I believe; the review appears in November's Navy News.

IN THE streets of Plymouth there was singing and dancing.

Sailors and soldiers shook hands with each other – and with complete strangers. Sirens and hooters blasted constantly. People rolled up newspapers into trumpets and bellowed their delight

The bells of the city’s churches chimed, while Plymothians hung the Union Flag from any building – or object they could find: trams, poles, windows.

The city’s pubs closed early. They didn’t want a repeat of the “wild and unrestrained behaviour” in Plymouth which had followed the relief of Mafeking.

The date is not May 8 1945. It is November 11 1918.

But this is how Britons celebrated the end of the Great War – and this is what William ‘Bill’ Stone experienced.

In the final years of his life, Bill Stone came to symbolise the sacrifices made by his generation alongside fellow WW1 veterans Henry Allingham and Harry Patch.

TV directors would show footage of men going ‘over the top’ while reporters would bang on about the ‘futility of war’, ‘slaughter’, ‘senseless sacrifice’.

But as the late senior rating reminds us in his excellent memoirs Hero of the Fleet (Mainstream, £17.99 ISBN 978-18459 65082), it wasn’t seen like that at the time.

It’s ironic that the Devonian would be singled out as one of the nation’s last Great War veterans: he never saw action in the 1914-18 (he was still undergoing training in Devonport, training which was protracted by illness).

And the media focus on Bill’s WW1 career unjustly ignores what followed: a quarter of a century’s distinguished service.

Indeed, Bill Stone’s life is an echo of the RN – and the nation – in the first half of the 20th Century.

He joined the fledgling Boy Scout movement. He was struck down by the flu pandemic in 1918. He witnessed the scuttling of the High Seas Fleet. He served as an engine driver during a rail strike. He was part of the transition of the inter-war Navy from one of big guns to a submarine hunting and escort force. He experienced the Empire in the halcyon days of peace when men did indeed join the RN to ‘see the world’.

To the very end of his life, Bill Stone was fêted by the HMS Hood Association (and sang unrepeatable ditties at their events…). He took part in what became known as the ‘Empire cruise’, a flag waver intended to rally Britain’s distant colonies and remind the world of the greatness of the RN.

His memoirs give a fascinating insight into what became known unofficially as the ‘world booze’: the heat of Sierra Leone and South Africa (in days when air conditioning meant sleeping on deck); the warnings of rampant venereal disease in Singapore; the 140 men who deserted in Australia in the hope of a better life; the Maoris and Fijians who welcomed the visiting sailors with festive dances.

There are some choice extracts from journalist Scott O’Connor’s tubthumping Empire Cruise which perfectly capture a middle-class Briton’s view of the inter-war world: of Sierra Leone – “if the hand of England were removed from this Colony it would be a disaster for its people”; of the Empire – “we alone of the great nations engaged in the war had begun to pay our debts and it was plain to all men that our word, long honoured, would continue to be our bond”; and of the British sailor – “every man on the ship becomes a sort of envoy from the Homeland”.

Like HMS Hood, Bill Stone would have to wait two decades for his first taste of active service. It came with a vengeance: Dunkirk.

He sailed three times with HMS Salamander to rescue troops – “the most terrible experience of my life”. It may have been described in the newspapers as some great triumph, but the experience for the ordinary sailor was rather less glorious or victorious.

“The bodies of the clothed and the naked were covered in oil, which coated large sections of the sea as the swell and tides either took them out or brought them back to shore.

“The dark nights were alive with the sight of tracer bullets and the sounds of gunfire.”

He was Mentioned in Dispatches for his service with HMS Newfoundland in the Med, particularly during the invasion of Sicily when the cruiser was torpedoed.

“It was a dramatic scene down below,” he writes, “but we stokers weren’t prone to panic. On many previous occasions I had been fighting imaginary fires and repairing make-believe destruction, sometimes in the dark.”

Newfoundland made Malta and eventually Boston in the USA for repairs.

Bill’s last service to his country came on the German island of Sylt making sure the Nazi resistance movement, Werewolf, didn’t flare up (it didn’t).

To reach the remote island, he had to pass through Hamburg – pounded by Allied bombers in July and August 1943.

“I remembered how I had wept as I walked through the devastation of Plymouth and was somehow glad to see it was not only the British cities that had suffered,” he recalled.

“However, seeing the effects of the Allied blitz and the many starving, homeless people lining the street was another matter. It was terrible to see such destruction, no matter which side was the victim.”

Britain lost all three of its last WW1 veterans this year; Bill Stone passed away in January.

All three left memoirs and Bill’s are undoubtedly the most coherent and comprehensive, an important addition to our literature on the lives of the lower decks between the wars and during WW2.

Add to that the extra information and accounts included by the editors and you have a gem of a book which brings Bill and his era back to life.

He ends his tale with 90th anniversary commemorations of the end of the Great War which will leave many a reader with a tear in their eye.

“Sometimes I can hardly believe that me, a farmer’s boy from Devon and now well over a hundred, should have been to so many important events and met such wonderful people,” he wrote just weeks before he died.

“I feel sure that someone has been taking care of me over all these years. I only have to think back to Dunkirk when, with ships sinking all around me, I said: ‘God help us’ – and He did.”

[Jonathan Saunders]

Many thanks for posting. This may leap-frog several other books in the reading list.

[simonharley]

Did Stone have anything to say about the Invergordon Mutiny, out of interest?

Simon

[Halder]

Did Stone have anything to say about the Invergordon Mutiny, out of interest?

Simon

Not a jot, although it's mentioned in an appendix. He was serving in the sloop Harebell at the time, mainly on fishery protection duties. I do wonder whether he was affected too much by the economic situation; he wasn't married at the time and owned his own car in the late 20s, which can't have been common for a leading hand/petty officer of the day. He remarks: "The Wall Street Crash seemed very distant to us in the Royal Navy."

[simonharley]

The fact that he had a car is quite remarkable. Wasn't it only 1 in 43 people in Britain had a car in the late twenties, and I can't see that proportion extending to the lower deck of the Royal Navy. His financial obligations can't have been as crippling as they were for many other seamen when the depression hit.

Simon

[Guest mjdamd]

The fact that he had a car is quite remarkable. Wasn't it only 1 in 43 people in Britain had a car in the late twenties, and I can't see that proportion extending to the lower deck of the Royal Navy. His financial obligations can't have been as crippling as they were for many other seamen when the depression hit.

Simon

[Guest mjdamd]

It is worth noting that as well as being a Stoker he earned extra money as Ship's barber in his off-duty time and since he was not married he could afford to buy and run a car.