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D-A-M: a story

(This story is based on a true incident)

The 1960s were slap bang in the middle of the period in international relations that is generally known as the Cold War, this being a time characterized by intense suspicion between the Eastern and Western blocks of nations, a lot of spying activity, and military forces of the various powers keeping a close watch on each other.

British governments took an active role in being suspicious, and to this end they established listening and watching posts in remote places around the shores of Great Britain, including St Kilda.

St Kilda is the furthermost piece of Britain before you get to America – go to northern Scotland and turn left. It is a tiny island that once had a permanent population but was uninhabited between 1930, when the last settlers were evacuated, and 1957 when the Army arrived.

During the early 1960s there was a small detachment of gunners and technicians on St Kilda but they had the company of a lot, an awful lot, of sheep.

If one had the misfortune to be posted to St Kilda one would, on getting up in the morning, look out of the window. If it was brown and streaky, low down, it wasn’t a bad day. If it was brown and streaky, high up, it was a bad day, because the brown objects were sheep. If the wind was normal they flew past the window at a low level, but if it was high they would sail past somewhat higher up.

The job of the soldiers, however, was not to watch the sheep but to keep an eye open for passing Russians and try to make sense of the confusing signals that were constantly being received on the various radio channels which the station monitored at all times of the day and night.

One such signal in 1963 referred to a Russian nuclear submarine that had had an incident in its reactors, although nobody could work out exactly where it was. The Officer Commanding on St Kilda decided that the post should mount a submarine watch just in case it should surface off St Kilda, although there was absolutely nothing in the radio messages to suggest that it would.

The irony of this situation was that the next morning the station awoke to find a Russian fishing vessel in the bay. The OC decided that the only course of action was to board this vessel and arrest the crew while awaiting the arrival of support units. A boarding party left for the vessel and a general purpose machine gun was set up on the beach.

The OC’s orders were that if he didn’t come to the bridge waving a handkerchief fifteen minutes after boarding, the gunners should assume that the boarding party had been captured and they were to open fire.

Sergeant Terry Mathers was a peace-loving man who was absolutely horrified by the prospect of actually having to shoot at anyone, and it was probably the case that he was not best suited to being in the Army. A posting to an island full of sheep and not much else suited him down to the ground. He therefore grew steadily more concerned as the fifteen minutes sped by with no sign of anyone on the fishing boat waving a handkerchief or anything else. Twenty minutes passed, then twenty-five, then thirty.

His corporal nudged him in the ribs. “I suppose we’d better fire the gun then, Sir?”

“DAM” said Terry.

“Is that a yes or a no, Sir?” asked the corporal.

“DAM” said Terry – a second time.

The corporal could fully understand why the RSM should give way to mild bad language, but he did not see how this helped the situation. He took the risk of saying precisely this to the sergeant.

“Sorry, Corporal”, said Terry. “I didn’t mean Damn, I meant DAM – D-A-M.”

“Sir?”

“It’s what my old dad used to tell me. When you are faced with a really tricky situation, D-A-M – Don’t Act Mental. This strikes me as an occasion when acting mental would be the worst possible thing to do.”

So they did nothing, and after another ten minutes had passed they saw the OC appear on the deck of the fishing boat. He was distinctly unsteady on his feet and had to hold on to every support he could find. He was, however, able to wave his handkerchief in the general direction of the machine-gun detachment on the beach.

The other members of the boarding party then appeared, and they also seemed to be having problems putting one foot in front of the other. They did not find it easy to get safely into their boat and head off back to the beach, but this they did eventually. They were waved off from the fishing boat by a cheery-looking bunch of Russians on the deck.

When the OC reached Terry on the beach he explained what had happened, although his words were distinctly slurred. What transpired was that the fishing vessel had just stopped to pay a courtesy visit and the Captain, with typical Russian hospitality, had offered our men copious amounts of vodka.The minor matter of communicating to the firing party had been overlooked during the celebrations.

“I’ve only got one thing to say, Sir”, said Terry.

“Wassat, then?”

“DAM, Sir”

“Yerwhat?”

“I’ll explain later,” said Terry.

It turned out that the Russian submarine was in the South China Sea!

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Written by Indexer

7 Comments

  1. Great anecdote, especially since the sub was not in English waters at all. What an even bigger international incident it would have caused if it were not for the DAM.