Life in Leander Mess
For most recruits, the Annexe was their first experience of living communally on the scale expected by the Royal Navy.
Home had disappeared overnight. Privacy had disappeared with it.
Leander mess became home instead.
Rows of bunks filled the room. Lockers stood in neat order. Boots, kit and clothing all had their allotted places and were expected to remain there. The polished deck demanded constant attention because even the smallest mark seldom escaped notice during inspections. You did not walk on that deck with your boots on.
Standing proudly at the end of the mess in front of the entrance were two silvered spittoons and the equally polished central rubbish bin. Each messdeck had its replicas although nobody dreamed of using the spittoons for their original purpose. Keeping them gleaming formed part of the routine, just as much as cleaning the deck beneath them.
Very little belonged to the individual.
The mess belonged to everyone.
That simple fact shaped everyday life.
There was always someone cleaning kit, polishing boots, preparing for inspection or trying (mostly unsuccessfuly) to snatch a few quiet moments before the next evolution. Consideration for others was not presented as a noble ideal. It was simply necessary if several dozen young recruits were to share the same living space.
The arrangement brought together boys from every part of Britain. Many had never travelled far from home before joining the Navy. They arrived with different accents, different backgrounds and different expectations. Within days, however, those differences mattered remarkably little. Everyone wore the same uniform, struggled with the same drill and answered to the same timetable.
The pace of life left little opportunity for anyone to remain apart for very long.
Humour appeared quickly.
It surfaced in quiet remarks after a difficult morning on the parade ground, in the anonymous recruit whose early-morning use of a polished spittoon guaranteed an unforgettable wake-up call, and in the good-natured teasing reserved for those whose talents lay almost everywhere except on the drill square.
The jokes were rarely elaborate.
They did not need to be.
A few moments of laughter could transform an otherwise demanding day.
The same mess that laughed together also cleaned together, trained together and, when necessary, accepted punishment together. Nobody had much choice about that. Life in the Annexe allowed very little room for individuality. Whether polishing the deck, preparing lockers for inspection or turning out at a moment's notice, everyone was expected to contribute.
Looking back after many years, it is easy to remember individual faces and isolated incidents, but that is not how life in the mess was experienced at the time. It was simply the background against which everything else happened. Days began together, meals were taken together, training was endured together and, eventually, the six weeks came to an end together.
Then, almost as suddenly as they had arrived, the recruits were dispersed.
The move into the main establishment broke up the messes that had formed in the Annexe. The Service required trained recruits, not groups of friends. Men who had shared every day of those first demanding weeks found themselves posted to different parts of HMS Ganges, many never serving alongside one another again.
The friendships had been genuine, but they had never been the purpose of the Annexe.
No Longer Civilians part 5 - A Sense of Humour
Annexe 120 - Primary source: RN-011
RN-E-149
Comments