Good Enough For Nelson (11 page)

It was not the quantity, but the quality of his audience which was causing The Bodger misgivings. He was not getting the reactions he expected, and needed. With his long experience of public speaking, to all kinds of listeners and in all kinds of conditions, The Bodger was very quick to sense an audience’s mood, to realise what they were enjoying and what they were rejecting. But even The Bodger had to admit himself puzzled by his present audience. He felt that, in some unexpected way, he and a whole generation of officers whom he represented were under a reappraisal. Those faces he could see out there were expectant, but not in any way enthusiastic. It was not that they were hostile; they were simply waiting, yet to be impressed.

‘Leadership in any of the armed services,’ he said, ‘has an extra special dimension over leadership in other professions. You will find leaders in all walks of life, but in the Navy there is the added ingredient that the leader and his men are committed, literally to the death. Let us not be mealy-mouthed about this. The Navy is not just a nice uniform and a nice way of life. Ultimately, your job may well be to kill people.’

The Bodger had wanted audience reaction. Now he had it. A wave, as though swiftly moving outwards over a dark water surface, spread amongst his listeners. But The Bodger, though he watched very carefully, could not decide which emotion had caused it. Was it disgust, or shock, or revulsion, or disbelief, or was it even tolerant amusement? For all his intuitive sympathy with an audience, The Bodger was baffled.

‘Generally the best definitions of leadership, the best speakers on leadership, are those who are themselves the best leaders. Bill Slim of Burma was a very great leader of men, with an unrivalled knowledge of what a leader could and could not do, and a very good way of expressing himself. He used to say that a leader’s most difficult task was to handle himself, to be able to come back after a defeat, not to mope, not to indulge in what Montgomery, another very great leader of men, use to call belly-aching. From my own experience, I know that many definitions of leadership are expressed in such romantically heroic terms that they are not much use to the ordinary bloke for trying to keep order on the quarterdeck with a few dozen assorted drunks coming off shore on the night before sailing. I’ve listened to a hundred wishy-washy lectures on leadership in my time, and I dare say I’ve given some, too.

‘So, I’ve had a rethink, and I’ve decided that one of the best ways of defining the art of leadership is by calling it the art of taking just a little more trouble than the next bloke. To be a leader you have to pay just a little more attention and take just a little more care. For instance, it’s not a coincidence, I’ve known it myself time and time again as officer of the watch and as captain of my own ship, that the captain very often sights a ship on the horizon before anybody else, before even the lookouts who are specially placed there and supposed to do nothing but look out for ships on the horizon. To be a leader, you must be prepared to last out just that little bit longer, read a little more deeply, delve into things more deeply, think that little bit further ahead, go just that little bit faster. What I’m talking about is a mixture of endurance, and knowledge, and anticipation, and application. The difference is often not much, only a hair’s breadth, but makes all the difference in the world.

‘A good officer and a good leader should always
know
just that little bit more about the job. I remember, years and years ago, when I was First Lieutenant of a fleet aircraft carrier, a huge vessel of a type we haven’t been able to afford for many years now. One day we had a lot of trouble with the sea-boat. This was a motor-cutter, very like the ones we have here down on the river. It was kept permanently up on the davits, ready to go away if someone inadvertently fell overboard. These days, of course, we don’t have enough hands for a sea-boat’s crew, it’s done by whoever happens to be nearest. But in those days we had a sea-boat’s crew detailed off from the watch on deck. And the first thing they did on taking over a watch was to get into the boat, check all their gear and start the engine, to see if everything was OK. This occasion was our first morning at sea after a maintenance period, and they couldn’t start the sea-boat.
Nobody
could start it. So eventually they piped for the engineer officer in charge of the ship’s boats.

‘I can still see the scene clearly now. There was the boat up at the davits, with the crew in it. The starter motor was grinding round and round, uselessly. There was the ship’s boat officer, there was myself who happened to be passing, there was the boat’s stoker and the boat’s artificer, all of us standing round, baffled. It was all down to the boat’s engineer officer. He was a very young man, this was his first ship as a watch-keeper and now everybody was standing around looking at him, with expressions saying, what do we do now?

‘But it turned out that he
knew
! It so happened that this cutter had just been fitted with a new engine, with four cylinders instead of six. I’m a bit vague about the technicalities. But the important thing was that the new engine went round right-handed, while the old engine went round left-handed. It was a change in design and the boat’s engineer officer happened to have looked at the drawings and noticed this. During the maintenance period the boat’s artificer had changed the starter motor, which was designed for the old type of engine. He thought they were both identical. But now this starter motor was trying to turn the engine the wrong way round! Of course it wouldn’t bloody well start and was coughing out great clouds of blue smoke! Put the right kind of starter motor on, and the engine went away, first kick, like a bird. Smiles all round.

‘Now, there was a perfect example of a young officer knowing just that bit more than his sailors. You will find, especially the technical officers amongst you, that your ratings will be very highly trained, very intelligent men. But they will still expect you to know more than they do. It isn’t enough to shelter behind the principle that an officer isn’t supposed to know the details, all he’s supposed to do is to conduct the band. That may be all right in
theory
. But the most loyal rating in the world eventually gets dissatisfied if he finds his officer is ignorant. Soon he will get more than dissatisfied, he will get impertinent and possibly even insubordinate. Nothing destroys the proper relationship between officer and ratings more quickly than the ratings getting it into their heads that they are “carrying” the officer.’

At last, The Bodger noted signs of warmth in his audience, but he was still a long way from capturing them. ‘It has become fashionable these days, to think of the Navy as a good, safe job for good, safe young men, with a bit of managerial talent. Life in the Navy, according to this view, is like life in a rather sociable bank, with the difference that the bank very occasionally gets up and floats away. But let me tell you, from some thirty years experience, that the Navy is not like that, never has been like that, and never will be like that and the sooner you rid yourselves of any such impressions the happier and the better fulfilled your service career will be. Your job will be to give and not to count the cost, to labour and not to seek for any reward, to toil and not seek for rest, because if you
don’t
, someone will come along and court martial you until you
do
. The Navy is a very hard life, a very unforgiving life. It has some rewards, but many heart-breaks. I’ve known men who’ve given their whole lives to the Service, leaving it at the end, saddened and bitter. There are many more disappointments than successes, many more kicks than halfpence, believe me. Just now we seem to be going through a period when the Navy seems to be investing more in buildings than in ships. The food’s good and the pay’s good. It is summer time, and the living’s easy. But this soft time will pass away, believe me. The Navy, the real Navy is not like that at all. Long before you leave the Service you may well find yourselves serving under conditions you never dreamed of when you first came here.’

It was no good. The Bodger had not captured them, and he knew it. They were now restless, and unreceptive. He was more convinced of his failure when he was standing outside the Hall, in the sunshine, with a handful of staff officers. He fancied they were looking at him commiseratingly, as at someone who had unluckily lost a court case, or an actor after a pale performance. Unaccountably, The Bodger found himself yearning for reassurance and consolation.

‘I have the feeling they didn’t like being told they might have to kill people,’ he said. ‘That’s very strange, because they used to lap that sort of thing up. That was what they had all sold their little farms and run away to sea to do. In those days, it was not only exciting, of course, it was absolutely true.’

‘That’s not why they join the Navy these days, sir,’ Isaiah Nine Smith said. ‘That’s not what it says in the advertisements in the posh colour supplements.’

‘Yes, I’ve seen them. I must say it always seemed strange to me they ever needed to advertise for naval officers. Like advertising for beefeaters, or MPs. Surely anyone who wants to join just goes off and joins and those who don’t, don’t? All that was needed, if anything was needed, was a little notice in The Times telling them the right address to write to. Saved time. Even that seemed superfluous. Everybody knew how to join the Navy.’

The Bodger watched the midshipmen’s faces as they doubled past him, coming out of the Hall, saluting and then ducking away, to the lecture rooms, or the parade ground, or the swimming pool, or the river. The College syllabus ground ever onwards, just as though he had never spoken. The Bodger could read nothing in the faces as they sped past him. These were secret people, shut off from him by barriers of age and time and experience. He and his generation had something of value to hand on, something they
must
pass on or the Service would die. When he was last at Dartmouth The Bodger could have talked over this problem with another divisional officer, but now he was the Captain, and there was nobody to talk to. That was another point he might have mentioned in his lecture: sooner or later, leadership always meant loneliness.

‘I think some of them rather like to be told that the way is going to be hard and long, sir,’ said Isaiah Nine Smith. ‘But most of them are a different lot now, sir. They’re not nearly as responsive to the old romantic appeal. Not so very long ago you could still have simply told them that what was good enough for Nelson was good enough for them and they could think themselves lucky they didn’t join in Nelson’s day. You can’t do that now, sir. They’re a lot more sceptical. More wary. More
cynical
, I suppose, is the word.’

‘I can’t believe the basic British boy has changed,’ said The Bodger. ‘You can’t change the stock so radically in one generation. It’s not genetically possible, apart from anything else. I just don’t believe their basic beliefs and reactions are any different. If anything is wrong, it’s us. It’s me. Not them.’

The Bodger was unused to failure, certainly to such a failure of communication between himself and others so favourably disposed to hear him and upon a subject so favourably chosen to suit him. His reaction was characteristic. ‘There’ll be no more lectures on leadership here. Not as such. Not the same full frontal approach.’

The others mentally reeled away from the impact of such blasphemy. They could all hear the sound of the veil of the ark of the tabernacle at Dartmouth being rent from top to bottom, revealing an awful, an empty, a
leaderless
abyss.

‘No lectures on
leadership
, sir?’

‘Not as such, no. Of course we’ll still teach it. It’s part of the syllabus. It is the syllabus. But not so blatantly. It’s still what being a naval officer is all about, but we must stop beating people over the head with it. We must be a hell of a sight more subtle, teach it by suggestion, by example, by inference. Methinks we do protest too much about it.’

When the others had dispersed, one staff officer stayed behind. ‘I’m off this afternoon, sir, going round my far-flung flock again, sir.’

‘You’re off again, are you Simon?’

Simon Lefroy, the University Motivations Officer, had a title and an appointment quite new to The Bodger. There were midshipmen and sub-lieutenants, scores of them, at universities all over the country, reading all manner of subjects at the Navy’s expense. They were still naval officers, were paid naval pay and came under the Naval Discipline Act, but while they were actually at university could dress, grow their hair, and act in every way like other students. They were only expected to cut their hair and not to behave too much like Greeks when they came back to Dartmouth, for their vacation training. For a young man, out of sight was likely to be out of mind, and it was Simon’s duty to keep in touch with what he called his far-flung flock, to tour the universities, to keep the Navy in their thoughts, to refresh their motivations, to sort out their personal problems and generally to act as a link between them and the Service which was sponsoring them.

It suddenly struck The Bodger that Simon was fresh from the coal-face; he spent his professional life grappling with exactly the same problems of communication as The Bodger had now encountered.

‘Tell me, Simon, do they howl you down at universities? How do you get on with them all?’

‘No, they don’t howl me down, sir, any of them, or rather, just a tiny minority of far left yobboes. Funnily enough, I would say there were more of them at university than there are here who would respond to what Ikey calls the romantic appeal. They do actually like to feel that they are all part of a Service that goes back in history. But I agree it’s sometimes difficult to go on thinking that in the atmosphere at some universities, where the most difficult thing is actually getting in to see blokes and talk to them. Some places won’t allow the services in the Student Union buildings. Our notices are torn down from notice-boards. They let down the tyres of our motor-cars, if they are obviously service vehicles, sometimes they spray graffiti on the windscreen or the door panels with aerosols.’