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to bring up a family, had purchased a cottage in Sussex, a wholly delightful 16th
century house that provided peace, quiet and clean air. The latter was important;
as Britain was in reality insolvent after the war, the government had decided
to export its one important commodity – high quality coal – and condemn
the British themselves to subsist on the lowest quality of usable coal consistent
with warmth and the needs of industry. The result, especially in London, was
immediately apparent; a foul-smelling smog besmirched the city whenever there
was a temperature inversion, and when there was not, the prevailing westerly
wind ensured that the smell and the particulate nature of the fog fell upon the
poorer and more industrial eastern part of the city. This became personal. David
as a youth was a sickly boy, and the wise Dr Lucket opined that without fresh
air, he would possibly never truly get better. At the time, this seemed realistic
enough, and in the fullness of time, it proved truly prescient; at the time, the
British Government decided not to publish the figures for ‘smog deaths’, but
there is little doubt that many thousands of Londoners in particular suffered
restricted lives, if not a fatal lung cancer, because of this policy. Both my maternal
grandmother and my mother herself suffered grievously from what seemed to
be asthma, the latter recovering only after moving to Sussex. As for David, it
was decided that he had to go to school where the air was pure, so I was sent to
Westbrook House School (a ‘preparatory’ boarding school) in Folkestone, Kent,
to see if the air was good enough for David, and two years (our age difference)
later, he joined me. He never looked back; the good doctor, one trusts, received
his reward in his heaven (he was Egyptian, and therefore probably has a different
heaven where I don’t expect to go. This was typical; Britain lost its doctors to the
U.S., and the third world lost theirs to Western Europe, a loss of expertise that
they could ill afford to lose).

In part, this sort of experience was what determined me to go to sea. Living
in Woolwich perhaps gave one a distorted view of the world, but it was real. The
Royal Docks were very important in the delivery of wartime supplies. Moreover,
the town harboured Woolwich Arsenal. Though not as important as in the past
(legend had it that the guns that defeated Napoleon at Waterloo were cast at that
arsenal), it was still an important aerial target. And up the hill lay the barracks of
the Royal Artillery. Being in the south-east corner of the country, Woolwich had
been a large and close target for the Luftwaffe and virtually without any ability
to hide, because although there was a strictly enforced blackout, the Thames
reflected all available light. The Luftwaffe had a ‘lighted’ path that was easily
followed; it could not be masked.
For most of the war, my parents had lived on the north side of the river,

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