Sorry about this,folks, but I'm going to backtrack all the way to Portsmouth. As I've mentioned earlier, I found this to be a god-awful voyage and so I think I must have unconciously erased it from my memory. I was moaning on about this to my other half...and within a minute had dumped all the letters I'd written during that "voyage" in my lap. So missing out the "lovey-dovey" and domestic stuff it becomes more like a diary. Consider this to be an adjunct to the last posting.
It would appear that the departure of the "Task Force" (as we were named) was filmed by many TV outfits. No doubt they dwelled on faces of weepy kids and "others". Always happens when the RN goes to sea for more than a week. But I doubt if any of the footage got aired beyond Hampshire. After a couple of days at sea regaining our sea-legs and just generally tidying up the ship I got my copy of the "Group" training programme up to Malta. Bloody Hellfire...it WAS Portland all over again. Mornings and afternoons was always to be taken up with RASing or Flying. (even though most of the RASs were "dummy" ones for practice). Then the "Boss Man"..or more likely some staff officer within the promotion bracket..wanted a copy of our projected internal training programme for fire-fighting, search and rescue (using the IR cameras), damage control, man-overboard (how many of us had ever seen that one for real?) and all the other gubbins that would push us a damn sight harder than the multi-manned RN ships. I hadn't expected the trip to be all sweetness and light as this isn't the RN way, but it did give me the first inkling that I may have made an awful mistake by agreeing to this so called "cruise". Considering that the basic crew of an RFA "O" class would be around the 85 mark, all this frippery was going to play hell with crew morale and ship maintenance. You, dear reader, must understand that any (indeed all) of the expected evolutions involve the entire ships company....or nearly so, whereas the RN ships can sort of parcel out everything into only the groups of people directly involved. I'm sure you can work out the impact on us for yourselves.
However, a real nasty "biggy" was about to hit the fan. "We" had discovered during refit and re-storing that the ships internal accounting system had been neglected and allowed over the previous few years to a level that was both unintelligible and unacceptable to us. I'm not impugning the financial side of things. The "accounts" system is divided into 3 main sections. "V & A" (meaning Valuable and Attractive), "Permanent" (basically stuff such as fixtures and fittings plus items that have no shelf life and are in more or less daily use), and "Consumables" (not just food, but rope, paint, bedding....you name it. If "it" can be used up or worn out it is likely to be a "consumable). To cut it short, the "books" and the "reality" belonged in 2 different worlds. And "we" weren't prepared to let this state of affairs to continue. The MoD then took the drastic ( in my experience) decision to abandon the accounts and start afresh. There was, in all likelihood , some criminality involved; but as far as I know only a couple of minor heads rolled. But the "on-board" consequences was a nightmare. A complete....and I mean complete....inventory of the ships entire contents had to be taken, done and dusted before we reached Singapore, wher a team of auditors would join us an reconstitute the "paperwork" side of things.
Lord alone would know where we could find the time to do all this...or how accurate it would be. In a perfect world the ship would be sent off to anchor (after the anchors had been counted) and left there until all was done. But during an operational tasking it was nigh on impossible. Inevetably, corners were cut and "assumptions" made. Just making the best of a bad job really, but even so we didn't "complete " the job until 2 days before arrival at Singapore many weeks later.
For once the Bay of Biscay was benign, but as a "fuel saving" measure our SOA (Speed of Advance) was to be 12 knots...not the 15 we'd planned for. Sounded like a long haul. Gave "Olwen" a bit of a breathing space. Boring but busy. It was only on arrival at Singapore and saw a new main engine waiting for the carrier that the truth dawned about the slow speeds. Lying sods.
Somewhere on the sunny side of Gib. we were attacked by the French Air Force. A bit of a half-hearted affair so we ignored it and carried on with lunch...bet the Rodneys were a bit miffed though...but no sympathy from this quarter.
About this time "something political" in the world must have been brewing up as we reversed course and then spent the next week doing a 100 mile "racetrack" . This wasn't a "voyage" more like an indeterminate sentence while being blindfolded. It was around this time that I seriously thought of asking the bosun if I could buy myself a broken leg...I'd had enough already, and we hadn't yet reached anywhere !
We also had a CTU embarked (Cadet Training Unit) of RFA cadets under the "control" of a shore based RFA officer. Only 8 of the little sods fortunately. The CTU training officer was all for an easy life and arranged for all his first-trippers to be "farmed out" to a specified ships officer (in all departments) on a weekly rotational basis. Their only orders were that "Where he goes..you go" (within some limits, obviously). The days of it being "your turn in the barrel " are long gone. It was like having a stray puppy on my heels for a week. Poor little mite never even asked a question for a couple of days...I suppose I must have got a bit soft-hearted as I began asking him the questions he should have been asking me. But over the months he developed.
A sort of lasting memory of the CTU is of their utter dismay when the ship got out of UK TV range. They were all "Eastenders" fans, and all of a sudden, unexpectedly and un-forwarned they were bereft. Quite pitiful. Odd that kids (even then) had to be pushing 18 years before some of the realities of "life" began to ease into the conciousness. Later (lots of "later") when we got back into TV range all 8 of them gathered in front of the TV "to catch up"....within 5 minutes all of them quit and rejoined the land of the living, all bemoaning the fact that in the past they'd been watching so much garbage. And so do children grow up. I imagine that now they are all now in positions of some responsibility they can look back on their first trip with many memories. I know that I can, and how different a person I am now to the callow youth joining his first ship in Glasgow in 1957. I suppose I had a small part to play in the way they turned out....for the better, I hope. Good luck to them all. BY.