Grandad's writings extract

[David_Hayward (RIP)]

Grandad Ernest Edward Thomas Hayward worked int he Admiralty from around 1916 to 1957. He wrote his memoirs which I am now taking notice of! Here are some extracts that might interest:

16th January 1939.

Ran into the Canadian Naval Liaison Officer, a cheerful friendly chap like most of the Canadians I've met at the *Admiralty*. Very unlike the Australians. He insisted on my "having one with him". I said firmly, if priggishly, that I'd gladly exchange a glass with him but would then have to run - couldn't take much liquor, wife - and young family - couldn't let myself go much on a junior Civil Servant's pay, etc. (This is my invariable line). He was handsomely understanding. Walking along he suddenly dived through an open door and down some stairs, me in his wake. There I spent an uncomfortable quarter of an hour sitting at a table with him and a damsel who was making maximum play with a minimal skirt. When I asked him what's yours he laughed as at a huge joke. "You can't call for drinks here, you're not a member". I am sure his choice of the night club and not a pub was out of kindness to me, nevertheless I was glad to escape from such an exotic lair to the more familiar underground haunt of the platform of Green Park Station. *I'm intrigued by my use of "minimal skirt" in 1938; was it a chance phrase of my own or as familiar then as the (aptly) abbreviated mini-skirt today? *

Or was it another of Sir Winston's perverse whims like his insistence at the beginning of the 1939-45 War on the recruitment of fishermen from Newfoundland. “These gallant seamen will be invaluable in the R.N." he said, and overruled the objection of those in the Admiralty who remembered how a similar policy in the first war had proved a failure owing to the tendency of the Newfoundlanders to develop the Newfoundlanders to develop neuroses and, surprisingly for natives of a notoriously foggy area pulmonary complaints. Most of them had to be invalided home.

If I were not too lazy to consult the War Histories I could fix, almost to the day, the occasion when the Listening-Post Boys had the opportunity of a real scoop; not that I should have been perturbed as we were "in the clear". My first assistant rushed in very agitated, to say that he had just had a call from a woman from Newcastle asking whether her husband could have compassionate leave as his ship, the "Warspite" (I think), was in the port. I misunderstood his consternation. For months I had accumulated about 50 mental cases (Sir Winston's gallant seamen) for repatriation to Newfoundland. As each needed a male nurse and some were violent I had been unable to persuade any westbound captain to take them until the Captain of the "Warspite", to my profound relief, made light of it. "Let'em all come" he said. Two or three days later it was public news that the "Warspite", with many other warships, had been in the chase of the German battlecruiser "Bismark (?)" which was running amok in the North At1antic. I had assumed, when the "Bismark" was sunk, that the "Warspite" had resumed her interrupted course, to the U.S.A. with the invalids aboard. I was concerned as my assistant by her presence in a home port but for a different reason, his alarm was that the lady had blandly announced from a public call-box over a public line that a major British “battleship" was lying ripe for a torpedo, in a named British port. Telling him to get through to the Newcastle police to have a word with the innocent cause of his agitation if they could locate her was free to fret over having to begin al over again with the fifty invalids who were likely to be in a worse plight than ever as a result of the action. Hush- Hush again robbed me of the last chapter of the story, I never heard more of.the invalids.