I Sank The Bismarck by John Moffat Page A

St Vincent so
many months before. My friend Buster May from Durban
was one. During our stay we produced a concert party that
gave two performances at the local Empire theatre in Paisley.
It was a fantastic success, so much so that we were allowed to
travel for free on the local corporation trams and we were
treated in every bar we went to – and we went into many, I
can tell you!
    The wartime forces were a great melting pot; people from
the strangest occupations and places, all over the Empire,
were thrust into uniform and told to get on with it. It produced
the most amazing juxtapositions. One of the junior
ratings who looked after our billet, and who was obviously a
wartime recruit, asked for a grand piano to play in the
concert. On the night he appeared in immaculate white tie
and tails and performed a solo act which was just unbelievable.
After a couple of classics he asked the audience for
requests and they would not let him leave the stage. He was
so popular that his original slot of fifteen minutes stretched to
forty-five, after which the MC had to go out and tell the
audience to let him finish. It was a remarkable performance,
and did a great deal to boost the popularity of the navy.
    When my South African friend was due to leave, we
decided we would have a weekend on the town, so on
Saturday night we went off to Glasgow for a meal at a
popular restaurant called Rogano's. We decided after the meal
to look for some local female talent and were told that the
best place was the Locarno dance hall. This was a very
respectable establishment, where the doormen inspected you
to make sure that you were smartly dressed before letting
you in, and where no alcohol was served. Eventually we
teamed up with two nice-looking, well-dressed girls for some
enjoyable but fairly chaste dancing. Towards the end of the
evening they told us that they were going home together, so
we were forced to say goodbye. The girl that I had been
dancing with asked if we would like to come along to a tea
party at her parents' house the next day. We accepted. The
following day, to my annoyance, Buster, feeling perhaps
slightly more predatory, decided that as he was leaving on
Monday a tame afternoon in a suburban house was not for
him. I, however, felt under some obligation to go. Knocking
at the front door, I found about twelve people of both sexes
gathered in the parlour, chatting over sandwiches and cups of
tea. I was asked by my hostess to join a Ludo game where a
young lady needed cheering up. She had, I was told, recently
lost her boyfriend, who had been a pilot in the RAF.
    As soon as we were introduced I realized that she was
someone special. Her name wasMarjorie Cochrane and she
lived in a small town south-west of Glasgow. There was something
about her that I had not met in any other woman.
Eventually, when we were on our own, I was able to get her
to talk about her boyfriend and she said that he had been
killed in a plane down south in Eastleigh about three months
ago. I didn't know of any accident at Eastleigh other than the
one I had tried to stop. We talked further, and it became clear
that her boyfriend was the pilot at the controls of the Hudson.
I explained that I had tried to prevent him from taking off. All
she knew was that his passengers had been some very important
people from the Air Ministry in London. It was a
remarkable coincidence. I was so struck by her that before the
evening was out I told her that I was determined to marry her.
I think she thought I was mad, but I am pleased to say that we
were married in June 1944 and remained so for almost sixty
years. It was the best decision that I ever made in my whole
life.
    I learned a lot at Abbotsinch.Dive-bombing in the
Swordfish was very different from doing it in a Skua. This
manoeuvre was enough to show what a reliable aircraft the
Swordfish was. At the beginning you do a banking turn and
head the nose of the plane down in a dive. The plane starts to
accelerate, and the wind