There was also a laissez-faire attitude towards smoking. The whole of the junior rates’ mess was awash with smokers – on many nights the stratosphere of smoke in there resembled the Coach and Horses pub in Soho circa the late 1970s, where the clouds of tobacco were lit up by artificial lights. The junior rates’ dining hall, which doubled up as the cinema most evenings, was quite literally befogged as you squinted to see the film through a thick haze of smoke. You could also grab a cheeky smoke in the senior rates’ mess, the wardroom and some of the engineering spaces back aft. Thank God it was not permitted in any of the sleeping areas, as I’m not sure I would have got any sleep, anxious that the fire alarm would go off as someone torched themselves in their bunk.
I loved the odd cheroot – a thin brown cigar – usually after dinner with a beer while watching a movie. I think it was my teenage obsession with Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns that had prompted me to smoke them. I even invested in a poncho I’d found on a visit to Camden Lock market. I’d wear it some nights if I was showing a western; I must have looked a right tart. I was never a huge fan of puffing away, but I’d say that at least 30 to 40 per cent of the boat were smokers. Again, like boozing, smoking was regarded by the crew as a means of psychological escape from the grind of patrol, a relaxant, and the prospect of a nicotine addict going cold turkey while submerged somewhere under a vast expanse of ocean didn’t warrant thinking about. It was also a routine, something of paramount importance on patrol. I’d regularly see the same people having a black coffee and a couple of ciggies before they went on watch; it was the little things that got you through. One sonar leading hand who’d served about 16 years in subs told me he’d had a fried breakfast – when available – every day of his career, followed by three Marlboro reds. Then and only then would he be ready to go on watch. His skin had a deathly pallor to it; he resembled a living corpse – just like the character Johann in Das Boot – and was nicknamed ‘The Ghost’. I hope he’s enjoying a long and happy retirement now, but I have my doubts.
The worst part about smoking was the stink that it left on your clothes. Mine used to smell rank after about half an hour when I was showing a movie in the junior rates’ canteen, whether I was smoking or not. I started taking three extra shirts on patrol to stave off the whiff. Cigarettes were readily available for purchase from the canteen, 200 fags a time, all the popular brands. It was like shopping in the duty free of an airport, but in this case with neither flight nor holiday to look forward to. Nicotine stains on bulkheads and walls had to be removed when cleaning the boat (‘scrubbing out’ it was called), but thank Christ I never had to do those particular areas – buckets full of black water as tar from the fag smoke was removed, and many a submariner gagging while doing it.