A Sense of Humour
Looking back across more than half a century, it is tempting to remember recruit training as an unbroken succession of inspections, drill and shouted orders.
It was certainly full of those things.
It was also unexpectedly funny.
Not because the Royal Navy intended it to be, but because young sailors have always possessed an instinctive ability to find humour where none officially existed.
The Annexe provided plenty of opportunities.
The first full morning began with a silver spittoon hurtling the length of the mess deck immediately after the lights came on. No one seemed to know who launched it. Most of the occupants were barely awake when it happened, and whoever was responsible possessed enough sense never to confess. The resulting commotion ensured that nobody overslept.
There was nothing sophisticated about the joke. It was simply one recruit taking advantage of a moment before authority had fully established itself for the day. The consequences for the polished deck were less amusing to those responsible for keeping it immaculate.
The parade ground produced humour of a different sort.
Every intake seemed to contain one recruit whose relationship with drill remained deeply mysterious. One young sailor, remembered only by a pseudonym, became famous not through laziness or lack of effort but because no amount of instruction appeared capable of persuading his feet to perform the correct movements.
His classmates encouraged him. His Junior Leader persevered. His instructors became steadily more exasperated. Nothing altered the outcome.
Asked one day whether he was getting it wrong deliberately, he smiled and quietly denied the accusation.
Whether anyone believed him scarcely mattered.
The joke never became unkind because everyone understood that tomorrow somebody else might become the target for entirely different reasons. Life in the Annexe left little room for superiority. Every recruit had something to learn, and everyone found at least one aspect of training unexpectedly difficult.
Even enthusiasm could become a source of amusement.
One member of the intake had been a Sea Cadet before joining the Royal Navy and appeared to enjoy every minute spent on the parade ground. His obvious competence earned more admiration than resentment, although his companions felt entirely justified in suggesting that previous experience amounted to something approaching an unfair advantage.
The humour itself was seldom organised.
It appeared in passing remarks, exchanged glances and observations made quietly once instructors had moved out of earshot. It was rarely directed upwards. The Navy remained the Navy, and recruits understood perfectly well when silence was the wiser course. Instead, most of the laughter was shared among the recruits themselves.
None of it made the training easier.
It simply made it more bearable.
Years afterwards, individual commands and parade-ground corrections inevitably faded from memory. The laughter remained remarkably clear. It had formed part of the unwritten routine of the lower deck, reminding young recruits that even in an establishment as demanding as the Annexe, there was still room for the occasional grin.
The Answers Were Already There
Annexe 121 - Primary source: RN-011
RN-E-150
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