A Fortunate Life (20 page)

I cannot pretend that I was a very modern father – indeed, I fear I am anything but a ‘new man’. On one occasion Jane left me with Kate for a few hours, with firm instructions not to forget to change her
nappy. She arrived back to find Kate nappiless and naked and us both asleep on the sitting room floor after an afternoon’s playing together.

In August of that year we took our first-ever family holiday together. We borrowed a car-top tent from a friend and, together with six-week-old Kate and our heavily pregnant dog Pip, spent a week camping close to Abergavenny in South Wales. We slept in the tent on the mini-van roof, and the dog slept in the van below us. One morning when we were camping at Talybont Reservoir I came down early to try to catch some fish for breakfast, to discover our numbers had increased from four to nine, Pip having given birth to five puppies overnight. The rest of our holiday was more crowded but no less fun for the additions.

In January 1966, after a very happy seven months in Poole, I was posted back to Singapore again, this time in command of an operational SBS based in the Royal Navy base on the north of the island. A month later I became 25, and so Jane and Kate were at last eligible for a free passage to join me and for service accommodation when they got there. We eventually found a little planter’s bungalow in a rubber plantation not far from my work.

There were at the time two operational Special Boat units in Singapore, Nos 1 and 2 SBS. I was to command the latter, in the overall charge of an SBS theatre supremo, Captain Pat Troy. Both SBSs had been very active during Confrontation, carrying out raids and reconnaissance on Indonesian targets. Most of the operations had been canoe-and submarine-based raids and reconnaissances of various islands in the Malacca Strait that were being used as jumping-off points for terrorist groups being infiltrated onto the western coast of Malaya. On one of these the SBS party missed its rendezvous with the submarine because of strong tides and was well embarked on the long swim back to Singapore across the Malacca Strait when they were eventually (and very fortunately) found by a Royal Navy ship and rescued.

But Confrontation was now spluttering to a close,
*
so further operations were put on hold for the time being, for fear of disrupting the
delicate peace process then under way. Then what we had thought would be a temporary lull turned out to be a permanent peace.

We were now asked to see what we could do to resolve a serious tactical problem that had come to light during the Confrontation operations. It was decided that it was becoming too dangerous for submarines to surface in order to launch their SBS canoe teams, and we were tasked with finding a way to launch and recover combat swimmer teams from a submerged submarine.

Much of my first year in Singapore was spent working with the ‘A’-class diesel-powered submarines of the Seventh Submarine Squadron, also based in Singapore, developing a technique codenamed ‘Goldfish’ at Pulau Tioman, a remote island off the east coast of Malaysia.

The procedure we devised started when the submarine first left port, usually long before the date of the intended operation. A submarine patrol can last a number of weeks during which it will probably have other tasks to accomplish, apart from landing and recovering SBS teams. Meanwhile, the SBS team needs to be kept in peak fitness and fully up to date with the developing intelligence picture. It cannot afford to be cooped up on a submarine for a long time and so should, ideally, join it as close as possible to the scheduled date of the operation.

To solve this problem, we loaded all our equipment onto the submarine before it left port and then, some twenty-four or forty-eight hours before the operation, parachuted at night to a fixed rendezvous point in the ocean, perhaps two hundred miles out to sea where the submarine could safely surface to recover the team. It proved somewhat nerve-wracking to jump into an apparently empty expanse of water, trusting that the pilot of the aircraft was right when he promised this was the correct position and there really was a submarine down there somewhere, waiting for you.

Once on board the submarine, we would have time for the last-minute periscope reconnaissance and final adjustments to the plan. Half an hour before launch time, the swimmers got dressed for the operation. Invariably, their task was to go ashore at night and spend, say, two or three days on the operation before returning to a rendezvous point in the ocean at a given time for the night-time pick-up. This meant that, although the first and last parts of the operation would be in the water, the main part would be on land. So the team had to be dressed and equipped for a normal jungle patrol, with the difference that they wore swim fins (flippers), and everything that could be damaged by
water (such as wireless sets, detonators, etc.) had to be very carefully sealed in plastic. The operators, complete with weapons and packs, then crammed themselves two by two into the empty escape chamber of the submerged submarine, which was fitted with rubber hoses and mouthpieces attached to the submarine’s compressed-air system. The lower lid was then closed, the swimmers put the mouthpieces in their mouths, gave a signal that they were breathing off the submarine’s system, and the escape chamber was flooded with water. As soon as the pressures inside the escape chamber and outside were equal, the upper lid could be opened, and the swimmers reached out to find a second compressed-air line attached to the outside of the submarine.

From this moment onwards the whole operation had to be carried out in darkness and by feel. The swimmers exchanged the mouthpieces attached to the submarine’s internal breathing system for those on the external breathing lines, carefully placing the internal breathing lines back into the escape chamber and closing the lid for the next pair to follow them. They were then free to make their way up the outside of the submarine into the conning tower, using specially fitted hand lines and taking good care not to let go of them, as the submarine was still moving at two to three knots. Once in the conning tower, the leader could plug himself into an underwater communication system (called DUCS) which he could use to talk with the submarine captain. There was then usually quite a long wait as, two by two, the whole team was assembled. When all were in place the captain steered the boat to the agreed drop-off point and gave the command ‘Release, release, release’ to the patrol commander over the underwater communications system. The whole team then released together and popped to the surface, fully equipped with weapons, packs and everything needed for the task ahead. Now it was just a question of swimming the three to six thousand yards to the shore with the aid of swim fins. These were buried where they could be found again, and the patrol was ready to move off at daybreak and complete its mission as a normal jungle patrol.

Recovering the swimmers was done by reversing the process. Swim fins were collected from their hiding places, all the equipment not needed on the return journey was carefully buried, and the team swam out to the fixed rendezvous point for the submarine pick-up. This point was established by reference to two previously calculated bearings on prominent points (such as headlands) which could be easily seen in the dark on a moonless night (we always tried to chose the no-moon
periods of the month, as these give the best cover of darkness for this kind of operation).

Having reached the pick-up point the swimmers split into two groups about a hundred yards apart with a strong piece of line (referred to as the ‘snag line’) running between them. The teams at each end of the lines then turned on a specially developed electronic homing device, called a ‘trongle’, which emitted a signal that the submarine could use to home in on the swimmers. After this it was just a question of waiting for the submarine to arrive. Its captain steered his still submerged vessel between the two signals, with his periscope up. The first sign the swimmers got that the submarine was coming was the slight ‘swish’ of the periscope creaming through the water. This caught the snag line between the two groups of swimmers, who pulled themselves forward to the periscope and, reaching down under water, found their breathing lines and mouthpieces attached just below the surface. They then plugged in their mouthpieces and reversed the process that they had followed to launch, stepping out in the submarine wardroom at the end of the operation.

The swimmers had to leave sufficient hours of darkness to swim back to the shore if the rendezvous was missed, get themselves hidden and prepare to try again the following night. It was always a most depressing moment when, at the end of a couple of hours treading water after a long swim out, the decision had to be made to start the long plod back to the shore again for another day in the jungle and all the uncertainties of another possible failed pick-up twenty-four hours later.

At the end of canoe-borne operations, we used to describe the moment that the submarine surfaced for the final pick up as the ‘Jesus Christ’ moment. But it didn’t compare with the moment when, on a dark night at the end of three or four days ashore and a five-thousand yard swim to the pick up point, you suddenly heard the sound of the periscope in the dark and felt the reassuring tug of the submarine on the snag line that told you that warmth and safety were only twenty feet below you.

Where an SBS team had to be flown out to a submarine before the start of an operation, ‘Goldfish’ also allowed us to do this without the need for the submarine to surface where it was considered too dangerous to do so. In this case, the SBS team would sink their parachutes after the jump, stretch out their snag line, turn on their ‘trongles’ and wait for the hoped-for periscope to come creaming towards them,
much as they might a London bus. After this it was just a question of using the ‘Goldfish’ re-entry process to make their way down to the still-submerged submarine. For dramatic transformations of circumstance, there cannot be many to match going from a thousand foot above a darkened sea to thirty feet below it, having experienced the fear of the jump, the elation of the descent, the nervousness of the long wait, the relief at hearing the periscope approaching, the heart-lifting sharp tug on the snag line, the satisfaction of closing the escape hatch and the sheer joy of the welcoming handshake and warm glass of Royal Navy rum at the end – all in the space of an hour or so.

While these operations were not, at this stage, being carried out against a live enemy, they were nevertheless dangerous, difficult and required the highest concentration. I have always been fascinated by the extent to which it is possible to do the seemingly impossible through a combination of teamwork, technology and a high degree of professionalism. Nevertheless, we were operating at the limits of what was sensible, even with good equipment and the most professional people it was possible to get. I developed a principle during this period which has stood me in very good stead, in politics and out, ever since – that I was never prepared to take with me into a dangerous situation anyone who was not at least as frightened as me. For the person who does not recognise fear when everyone else is gripped by it is not an asset, but a danger to success and comrades alike.

We practised and developed these techniques with our submarine colleagues until we felt we had them finely honed. The submarines,
Ambush
,
Anchorite
and
Andrew
, were our usual partners in this, and one of those with whom I worked most closely at this time was a certain Mike Boyce: then, as a young Royal Navy Lieutenant, the ‘second hand’ on HMS
Anchorite
responsible for launching me and my SBS colleagues in canoes or as swimmers on many a dark night off the coasts of Malaysia. Today he is Admiral Lord Michael Boyce, a former Chief of the Defence Staff and one of my colleagues in the House of Lords.