TO DIE in a hospital bed was not the end Ted Briggs expected. He thought he had copped it when, at 16 and on Atlantic patrols on HMS Hood in 1939, he looked up to see a black object “as big as a London bus” tumble gently out of the sky and pepper the deck with shrapnel. Or, some months later, when a stick of bombs from an Italian aircraft blew him down the ladder from the flag deck, giving him a cut on the nose that bled like a torrent. Or the moment when, inching out along an upper yardarm to retrieve a halyard (for he was a signal boy), he saw the engine-room safety valves pump out a column of red-hot steam, and expected to be boiled alive.
The life of a boy-sailor on the navy's prize battlecruiser was no cakewalk. From Fall-in at 05.25 to Turn-in at 20.45—swinging into a hammock under a heavy wool blanket, his mouth still dry with gritty cocoa—came constant swabbing and scrubbing of the grey corticine decks, interspersed with instruction and drill. That was in time of peace. But Mr Briggs knew only two months of quiet before he was ordered to hoist flag “E” and “show up 46”: “Commence hostilities against Germany.”
Read Full Article »