It Wasn't Like That in My Day: The Continuing Allure of the Bluey

Our resident veteran Chuck Unsworth looks at the importance to forces of ensuring the mail gets through and the vexed issue of whether those who have never served can ever understand

A Replenishment At Sea (RAS) is a searching test of every aspect of Seamanship for vessels and crews of the Royal Navy (White Ensign) and its Royal Fleet Auxiliary (Blue Ensign) support ships.  The Fleet Auxiliary ships have traditionally been crewed by civilians.  They are a remarkable group of men.  The RAS involves two or more vessels sailing in close proximity, parallel with each other, transferring stores, fuel, sometimes personnel, and crucially, mail from home.  The congregation of large amounts of seriously expensive capital equipment at a single point in any Ocean is enough to concentrate minds on the task in hand.  Failure to pay close attention will, inevitably, lead to Boards of Inquiry, stupendous amounts of paperwork and acute all round personal embarrassment. Watching one of these operations in full swing is akin to watching an impressive white-knuckle fairground ride, although I’ve never witnessed true disaster, despite the best efforts of one or two Ratings. 

Where Navy ships have their own aircraft – for example, helicopters such as the Wasp (and its successor the Lynx) or the larger Sea King - mail can be transferred at a considerable distances from supply ship or shore.  That’s an altogether more relaxed procedure.  Regular deliveries and collections of mail are pivotal to morale both of personnel and, reciprocally, their kith and kin.  The sentiments, spirits and morale of those at home have profound effects on the fighting man and woman - witness the recent calls for support of our forces.

One might think that modern communications systems have all but superseded the physical movement of mail but, for service personnel, mail contains much more than simple information and as such it has great significance.  As the culmination of a taxing logistical exercise, various small luxuries such as particular sweets, clothes, jars of condiments, and whole rafts of ephemera, souvenirs and tokens from families, arrive to the delight and amusement of the recipients.

In my time, scented letterheads from wives and sweethearts were treasured.  Photographs of these ladies, a few of whom seem to be decidedly uninhibited and limber gymnasts, were carefully stowed in personal lockers or wallets.  I recall my astonishment at the number and variety of ladies’ portraits on the inside of a locker door belonging to a particularly fit young Corporal.  I don’t suppose he’d have had a wallet big enough to contain all of them.  It was ever thus.  The wry toast in our Mess was ‘Gentlemen, here’s to the Ladies, our wives and girlfriends – may they never meet’.  Perhaps this is an unfair characterisation, but servicemen and women posted abroad spend a great deal of their free time thinking of hearth and home - usually their own.

For the families at home it can be more difficult.  In the field or aboard ship, service personnel support their comrades with intensity.  It’s much harder for families to band together for mutual solace – partly because of geographical spread and partly – I feel – because of an understandable Britishness, a shy reticence and perhaps embarrassment.  In my regiment, the Commanding Officer’s wife and the Regimental Sergeant Major’s wife made a point of regularly and jointly visiting and watching over the families of all those living in married quarters on the base, and maintaining close contact with those who lived off base.  Frequent social events were organised, and they were popular and greatly appreciated.  This was not intrusive nannying; it was an admirable and genuine care for one’s fellows.  Occasionally, and sadly, it required immense tact.

Recent communications developments – notably the mobile phone and the Internet – have changed the pace, type, volume and content of communication.  It’s relatively simple for soldiers to video front line action and post it on You Tube, or for pictures or news from families and friends to be transmitted to them instantaneously on mobile phones or by e-mail.  The Ministry of Defence has recently attempted to stop ‘unauthorised’ traffic from the front on the basis of ‘security’.  Frankly this position is arbitrary, largely debatable and in any event completely impractical.  Of course, mobile phones can also be used as photo albums – for a streamlined rapidly moving modern Army this has the great advantage of entirely eliminating the need for locker doors or bulky wallets.

The problem for service families and their supporters is the limited, sometimes inaccurate, information which they receive.  As repeatedly demonstrated in scrupulous academic studies, the absence of regular, accurate, information is undoubtedly damaging to morale in all walks of life.  Images and news from theatres of war are important.  Those left behind need that clarity and understanding. Caton Woodville’s celebrated work for the Illustrated London News - like this painting of an earlier British battle in Afghanistan, Saving the Guns at Maiwand - and the effect those paintings had on public morale, are but one early example of the real value of wide dissemination of such information and images.  Latterly, artists like the late Terence Cuneo have also rendered strikingly detailed images of modern warfare.  Neither of these two pulled many punches.  Don McCullin’s photojournalism in Vietnam was stunning.  Televisual ‘highlights’ – if that is not too inadequate a description - can help, equally they can increase worries and anguish for some.  However on balance I’d advocate that more, rather than less, information is placed in the public domain.