The Tim Heale Podcasts S3 E34 Ed Searle Pt 1

In this episode I chat with Ed about his Navy career from public school to Defence Attaché as a Marine Engineer Officer.

Discover The Parallel Six series, Letters from Afghanistan and The Empty Return at https://timheale.uk.

Discover Tim Heale’s books—including The Parallel Six series, Letters from Afghanistan and The Empty Return—along with his films and broadcasts. Visit https://timheale.uk and join Tim’s Despatch to keep in touch.https://timheale.uk

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0 (1s):
The Tim Heale podcasts, ordinary people's extraordinary stories.

1 (18s):
Welcome to series three under Tim Heale podcasts in the last two shares, I've told you about my life. I've met many interesting people along the way who have become my friends and what they all have in common is they all have fascinating stories of their own, which they're happy to share with you now. Thank you for listening. Welcome to the Tim Heale podcast. In this episode, I'm talking with Ed.

2 (50s):
If you could tell us where and when you were born and if you can describe what it was like, where you grew up, the source of education that you received

3 (59s):
And the schools that you went out over to Ed. Thanks. Well, I was born in November, 1947 showing off and I was born in Plymouth in fact, but then my family originally, most of it comes from what we call ITSM, what the rest of the people call division on the river, dark, just above Dartmouth. And I grew up going to school mostly in Plymouth, originally to the prep school of Plymouth college, and then subsequently to the, the Plymouth college where I've stayed until I was 18 and went straight into the Navy from there.

3 (1m 47s):
And when I joined the Navy and I think there were five other members of my family, all serving, but I think I'm the last surviving one.

2 (1m 57s):
And did you go in as an officer, do you go to darkness or did you go into as a writing?

3 (2m 2s):
I went in on a scholarship as a cadet entry, so intelligence.

2 (2m 9s):
Excellent. So what was your time like a Dallas?

3 (2m 12s):
It was initially a bit tough. It was, it was different, different from being a public school, but with some similarities and you got used to it and it was, it was, it was a very busy year. It's been called by some people the golden year, 1965 entry. There, there were more admirals who came out of that year than any other year before or since. So it was quite a competitive, tough, tough time. Amazing.

2 (2m 44s):
And just going back to your school days, you said you had public school. Did you go into the combined cadet force during that time or to see cadets?

3 (2m 55s):
It was practically compulsory in those days, by the way it worked at that time was everybody started in the army section. And then after doing your basic DIA or so in the army section, you could then choose if you wanted to join the, the, the Naval station or if you were really stupid, the air force,

2 (3m 16s):
I guess. Yeah. I was just still in, is fairly infancy or audience quite highlight after that, after the second world war, I suppose, was everybody wanted to be a pilot. Yeah. So did you choose to go into an English section?

3 (3m 30s):
Yes. Is

2 (3m 32s):
That because you've got to have the family ties,

3 (3m 35s):
I guess so. And my father would have been pretty upset at how do I not. So yes, there was always a family influence on, on that side. And as I said, I had three cousins and two uncles serving in the Navy when I joined all officers. Yeah. They were all of, well, not all of them started as officers, but all of them ended up as well.

2 (3m 59s):
And what was the highest rank that they got in the family?

3 (4m 4s):
Well, I think, I think there have been two or three commanders and one other captain. I think that a lot. Not, yeah. Oh, so he didn't do too bad then

2 (4m 15s):
<inaudible> Okay. So you come into your time at Darla's. So you'd, you'd gone through the sea cadets and, and I guess that's where you got some sailing.

3 (4m 30s):
Yes, but the family is always, you know, cabanas in boats. So I mean, my father wasn't a sailor, but you know, we, there was always a boat around and, and he grew up with boats. So I guess I did too. Was that Danny diplomas or was that ran in darkness? That was, that was mostly done in Plymouth. My first ever sort of introduction to sailing was, was on a boat called Plymouth Drake, w w which is a sort of, it's like a Wayfarer really. And that was the first boat I ever sailed and, and zoned the sort of basics of sailing around the sound. Excellent. So your time at Dharma, then, how was

2 (5m 12s):
You say, you said it was a bit tough to start with, how was that? So

3 (5m 17s):
It was a different sort of environment. It was run very much like a sort of public school in some ways, but in other ways there was quite a heavy academic push as well, and it was quite physical intentionally. So in those days, you know, standard punishment was to, if you did something minor wrong was to run up and down to sand key a few times. And Sankey was 375 steps down to the river and 375 steps back up. So it had its moments.

2 (5m 51s):
Okay. So how did you progress through what was, what was your sort of second term like?

3 (5m 56s):
Oh, the second term was sent, spent at the dominant, but then Dartmouth training squadron, which was four frigates, which sales together, we went up, we did it, we did a sort of Scandinavian circuit, really went to most of the Scandinavian countries in, in that sort of 13 weeks year on board. And you work, you lived on what, just a sailor, you slept at a hammock and you did all the, all the standard jobs. You also got some experience in, you know, navigation and Morse code and Semafore and all these things which were used in those days, but now have rather distant.

2 (6m 40s):
Yeah. I suppose, with all the modern technology, it's not that required, I guess they still do more per say to communicate on a sort of a for Taylor.

3 (6m 52s):
Yeah. They, they do. And I certainly learned more because, I mean, you'd probably remember in those days, even the, the, the navigation depended quite a lot on being able to do malls and certainly on the early offshore races, I did, we used most code weather forecast, which you could get in those days and say, you had to download the Morse code weather forecast from canal and work out what it was going to give you.

2 (7m 24s):
Why would I know that station? And I don't think there's many people today they

3 (7m 28s):
Could do. No, not even a guy could go now.

2 (7m 32s):
So what was the last term like a darkness

3 (7m 35s):
The last time it started to become a bit of fun then. And I really enjoyed that because it was followed then by a measurement year. And I spent the first half of, of the measurements she had was as a navigator on a time class sweeper, which sailed around, it was part of the fish quadrant. It sailed around UK. You know, we fought in those days, they used to be a Naval ship with the herring fleet and it went all around UK and followed it round. It was a sort of support vessel for the herring fleet. And that was quite interesting because you were in charge of all as also the watch that 18 and a bit years old that night at sea in the north sea, surrounded by trawlers.

3 (8m 21s):
And, and that would, could be quite exciting. And that was the first half of the year. And the second half of the year I spent on HMS Hermes, then a fully operational carrier. And she went from Pitt. I think we joined her in Gibraltar with 10 of my terminates and we stayed on two, right? The way through, went through the service canal. We're stationed off Aiden during the Aden, you know, really rough time in eight. And we went, were sent to shore at, on patrols and all sorts of things that was quite an interesting experience. And then went from there across the Pacific, ended up in Singapore and we flew back from Singapore.

3 (9m 5s):
So that was our measurements. Yeah. That's pretty exciting. And I'm still in touch with interestingly in the period of the, there's a lot of drought and whatnot. People suddenly pop their heads up and I'm still in touch with, with almost all of the other midshipman who are on that trip then, and we've sent photographs to each other and whatever, and some of them certainly did better the, than I did cause one of them ended up as the second Sealord. So they,

2 (9m 40s):
So just going back slightly, your time down in Boston, Aiden, I guess that was what, 63 64

3 (9m 48s):
<inaudible> yeah, it was six. It w it would have been, it would have been 66 that we were in Aiden, cause we joined in 65 and this was 66, but it was a fairly hot time down there. And we certainly went to shore on blended in with the army on whatever. And so quite a lot of not actual Arbor off for that, they actually gave us a loaded reference, which is a very silly thing to do if you think about it. Yeah. It doesn't bear thinking about it really.

3 (10m 29s):
So

2 (10m 30s):
Yeah, because when did we get kicked out? It was about 67

3 (10m 32s):
Bucks. Yeah. Yeah. It was about 18 months later than that. But, but in those days, you know, that we flew well, Hermes was flying every day, putting aircraft over Aiden day and night, virtually

2 (10m 47s):
A pretty rough time down now. So you ended up in Singapore, did he get a run ashore before you're getting flown back or is it cut short?

3 (10m 55s):
We did. We did. I thought initially went on a, on, on a, on a ships Stivers course out there, which was quite interesting in itself. And then all of us that got pulled together to be part of a trial for was called. And we didn't even know what it was. It was wet winching, which was the first time that they'd try and putting people out of the water have helicopters whirlwinds in those days. And we were sent out in the, in, in the bay of Singapore in little rubber dinghies and they, they tried to do day and night wet winching us of, out of the water electricity, which is more akin to go water skiing

2 (11m 44s):
Case. Cause there's an awful lot of downfall, even from a small helicopter,

3 (11m 49s):
You know? And, and

2 (11m 50s):
Was that successful from your point of view or was just scary or put me off

3 (11m 55s):
Helicopters for quite a long time because the first helicopter I ever flew in was at Dartmouth, which was a whirlwind and that crashed while I was in it. And just to prove it wasn't just a coincidence while we were out in Singapore, I ditched in a wasp as well in very shallow water. Fortunately. So after that, I was very wary of helicopters for a long time. My

2 (12m 23s):
Turf, I saw, I had a great time in helicopters. I spent my last tour of Afghanistan just flying around the whole of helmet. And I'm a sister. I hate getting into

3 (12m 35s):
The chin-ups, they're just hot, noisy,

2 (12m 39s):
Dusty that boom you're flying a lot. And then I'll going to be with the links and we were flying around that lay area. And all of a sudden the pilot's gone into an east Friday sing all the way on a Skype. It turns out that we were being targeted by some sort of radar

3 (12m 60s):
Guided missile. Yeah. Fortunately it didn't go off and hit us, but yet put

2 (13m 6s):
Me offline for a long time. So it on then you came back from Singapore, what was your next draft after her mates

3 (13m 13s):
Straight to the Royal Naval engineering college, which was at mannered and in Plymouth in those days we did four years. That three is that the degree course, it was pat the first time they did a degree course and which was moderated from, from London instead of, you know, anything the Navy did. And then after that, we did what they call a year's application course, which was sort of specializing in whatever you were going to end up in and, and learning a bit about more practical engineering. So it was a four year stint, which was very good for other things. Cause you know, I love to ski, I love to say properly on a decent boats that they had some very nice yachts done that, but they also had had some the later dinghies and whatnot that we, we raised in that's when I first started racing or anything.

3 (14m 10s):
Okay.

2 (14m 10s):
So, so this was a four year course that they could have condensed down into two years. So you had two years of, of doing more adventurous training.

3 (14m 24s):
I dunno it, this, this was when the Navy decided that all engineers were gonna have to be educated to degree level on engineer officers. And it was moderated, as I said by London university, in fact. So that was a sort of set syllabus and you had to do that and it was only really the final year that you spent doing what you would call engineering. It was prior to that, it was an academic in my case, mechanical engineering

2 (14m 54s):
Degree. Okay. So wait, what did you specialize in? I always wanted

3 (14m 58s):
To be a mechanic, a mechanical role rather than an electrical engineer. And I was very keen to avoid the submarine service, which was recruiting heavily at that time. So I avoided that draft as well. So I ended up as a surface Emmy officer. Okay. He didn't fancy

2 (15m 18s):
Submarines at all. Did you end up in sufferings at all? No. He managed to avoid that. Totally never spent any time. So you're on slightly less money than, than the

3 (15m 27s):
South American. Yes. I heard a bit, but you know, there were compensations.

2 (15m 33s):
So after four years of adventurous training and a little bit of engineering, where did you get your next draft? What was your first draft after completing that course?

3 (15m 45s):
It was, each of us are Royal to the carrier. And I joined there as a unit officer, which, which was an interesting job because it's, they were big ships. And if you were running a unit as an engineer officer, you ran the same machinery as a complete frigate. You know, you had a boiler room and engine room and all the other bits and pieces that went ready evaporators. And that was it. And I was a Watchkeeper on the, for two best part of two years. And then I did a short stint at the end on the flight deck as a flight deck engineer officer, which was interesting and different, but not really my, my 14

2 (16m 32s):
Having had that little in with helicopters previous. Yeah. So where did you go onto on rock royalty?

3 (16m 39s):
We went, I went all over the place, but I entered the states on several occasions and down to the med, not to the far east on her, but w w she was that seen most of the time? Well, towards the end of my time there, she came back and we went into refit and that's when I left. Okay. Did you do the Caribbean with her at all or was that not on the cards? Not on her, but subsequently I went straight from her to another ship, which was based in the Caribbean. So what was that ship? That was new being one of the tribals. And in those days we used to keep a tribal cross frigate on station.

3 (17m 22s):
It was the weeks the Western India ship. And I did two nine month tours back to back, which was interesting. Having just got married, but spent 18 months in the Caribbean, on her as the deputy engineer also.

2 (17m 42s):
Oh, right. So did you get much time alongside or was it oh, yes. Yes.

3 (17m 48s):
Cocktail party. Every three days. The target,

2 (17m 52s):
It sounds like a lot of fun. So the old mess on dress, a bit of a hammering dinner. So I haven't spent all that time in the Caribbean having just been all right. So what,

3 (18m 6s):
What drew you back well and fortunately, or not Nubian became a Scottish space ship. And so we moved lock stock and barrel at our first home. It was a married quarter up in Recife. And that was our first time really the ship went up there and went into a short refit. So that was the end of my time

2 (18m 32s):
I've ever changed from the Caribbean Scotland. Yeah,

3 (18m 35s):
We, we w w we were very lucky because I actually left the ship in Trinidad in October. And when I rang up the appointor to find out what my next job was, these that I can go to send you on the left-handers course, but I can't get you in to the one that starts in January. And so I said, well, what do you want me to do? And he said, you can do what you like, as long as you turn off in January. And basically, Jenny, my wife flew out and we spent three months floating around the Caribbean and learned a lot about the Caribbean, waiting to come back to UK.

3 (19m 19s):
I want to say, well, you, you you've chartered a boat down in exiled, or no, we didn't. We spent a lot of times sitting on beaches, but we traveled around a lot of the islands, which actually came back, interestingly, because my very last job in the Navy was as the defense attached for the, that region, the Caribbean and Northern south America. And we went back to all those places again, but many years later, okay. Show you came back in

2 (19m 53s):
The January to, to Scotland and started what course he left 10 in schools

3 (19m 58s):
And there's tennis courts, which is based at granted. Shall we? We left all married quarter up there and came down here. Granted,

2 (20m 4s):
That was quite a long course at that time. Was it? No, it wasn't

3 (20m 7s):
Here. It was, I think it was, well, it started in the gender and I think it finished in the, in the beginning of June. It was, it was about four and a half months. Cool. All right. So you came off second,

2 (20m 17s):
Of course we've been flying colors and you promoted leftenant. Yes. So was your draft after being

3 (20m 25s):
And becoming a left tenant straight after? Well, I'd been left-handed in, in the, in the tribal. So really I was looking around, I didn't know where I was going to go after that. And eventually I went back to see in another carrier and this time in, in Borg as, as the deputy, what, what they call in in those days, the senior engineer, that second engineering officer. So went back to her and did three years in full walk. So I went all over the place in half. Okay. So bald was three aircraft

2 (21m 6s):
Carrier. Yep. That's <inaudible>

3 (21m 10s):
Yeah, helicopter carrier, but this one was a fixed wing one, although not very, very fixed wing. By the time I went to several and her, cause she had a major boiler and fire and she couldn't go fast enough to launch big aircraft. So basically she was a sort of helicopter carrier most of the time, but she was still operational did 18, 20 months on her fully operational. And then she came back and was eventually decommissioned, decommissioned. And I ended up as the last serving, you know, that always happens during generosity. So obviously the senior also, because you've lost one meth and

2 (21m 51s):
Last one turns the lights out before they cut, cover off a rice of ice tea. So it's on, on boardwalk. Where did you go? Did you have any memorable

3 (22m 3s):
Runs ashore at four? I don't really all ESL. I was gonna kind of say that, but the time times have gone past, we went to New York river and that was that. But I also went to New York and art coil, which was even more exciting and actually anchored in art, crawl in off Staten island as well, and famously broke off the moorings in the middle of the, the, the official cultural party with everybody virtually from the president done coming to the ship and we drifted down the river and they all came out and chasing us.

3 (22m 47s):
Did anybody realize why until the officer were to watch? They did realize, and fortunately we still had steam on. So we just actually ended up going out to sea. They never got their culture applauded, but it was, it was quite spectacular, but it didn't

2 (23m 7s):
As part of the, the entertainment.

3 (23m 9s):
No, no, I think disappointed. But we, we put back in again and I think we had a sort of second stab at it, but it was never quite the same.

2 (23m 22s):
Didn't have to lift the precedent often stuff on hours.

3 (23m 25s):
The famous thing that happened. Cause we had folk cast, which was the flag officer carriers in those days are full vice Admiral on board. And he'd come with all his w w traditional silver and what they get from the trophy store, you know, ready to be laid out for the cocktail party and everything that, so he had a whole bunch of it. Then during the minor panic of sliding out of the Harbor, not attached to anything with no tags, someone picked up all the gash bags full of silver and dumped them into the side

2 (24m 0s):
Outrageous, but he wasn't happy. Did they catch the GoPro?

3 (24m 6s):
But they don't always know after he wasn't a happy man. Anyway,

2 (24m 13s):
Every mother should run out to seat unexpectedly. Yeah, I can imagine. So where did we get to now? So, you know, a fully fledged

3 (24m 23s):
Leftenant, you've been on balk. Yeah. But work has permitted two and a half on balk. And then I came back into the shore job on gas turbines and whatnot on which was an interesting job looking after what, what was then the, the, the gas turbine team who went round because Gusto was, was still fairly new. When we went round doing the inspections on gas turbines for all the ships all around the world. And we flew around the world. But mostly my team did occasionally I went gas, turbine, life inspections, and changes of gas turbines on all the ships all over the world, including the Japanese ones, incidentally, because they bought their engines from Rolls-Royce as well.

3 (25m 9s):
Oh, blimey. So that was actually sort of working under the all subsidy, if well, rolls Royce road delivery at the end, basically.

2 (25m 16s):
So just working on all Naval vessels from, from different countries, I guess

3 (25m 21s):
It was mostly confined to us. And I think the Japanese were the only ones who were in this agreement at that time.

2 (25m 27s):
I must've been interested in John and sir, the Japanese shit.

3 (25m 30s):
I never did my team where I like just one of those things. I never got to go on one, but they told stories about it. You'll have to, I'll have to talk to them and to get their stories. So your next draft after that, and that was, that would have been after subjects. So I then went to, I taught at 42 Glasgow I've left something out, but it doesn't really matter. I mean, I mean, there was, there was a messy period of the fulcrums in there as well. I actually wish I did on it on a tight 21.

2 (26m 6s):
Let's go back into the Faulkner and says, so what, what year was this now then?

3 (26m 12s):
So I got those in the wrong order that not very clever under skied. I was in as the MEO in M escape for 18 months. And she, at the end of that, we, we did the, the sort of east Africa patrols then came back through that. But we then turned left at to, and told to go down to the Falkland islands where finally something was going to happen. And, and so we went down and joined in that. I'd spent that the whole of the, that the business. And at the end of that, I came back and went to on the staff at Portland as a sea rider

2 (26m 51s):
Down in a full cleanse, John, it was generally conflict. Yeah.

3 (26m 55s):
Yeah. She was one of the, one of the frigates yeah.

2 (26m 60s):
In the Stanley, by when the Sheffield Coptic,

3 (27m 3s):
We will not in the bay when Schaeffer, when Jeff will, that was before we got that, we were just to stern of Joe Morgan when Morgan was hit by an extra set later on, which was as near as we got to be the really hot end of the action,

2 (27m 24s):
If there's any, anything that sticks out in your mind at that time, when, when you were down

3 (27m 28s):
There that I didn't want to go back and learn the Falklands,

2 (27m 34s):
They don't call down like that. So moving on, then there's this, bring it back more up to date after the

3 (27m 41s):
Fall, after the fulcrums, I, I spent some time on the, as I said, as a C rider at Portland, which was basically bringing the people coming through up-to-date posts, the bottles conflict. And then that was only a fairly short period, because from then I went to the job within the, I got that out of sequence. I went to the job with the gas turbine team, which was different

2 (28m 8s):
Jobs. So after the gas turbine team, then

3 (28m 12s):
The gas turbine team I did, I did a bit of time in, around the sort of the engineering and training department, second seat roads department, and then went from there. I should have written all this down and relief from that. And then where did I go straight from there? I've been seeing clouds go. I went, oh, I went and did the staff course, which, which is, you know, a prerequisite more or less. I was selected for commander. And I went and did the staff course at Greenwich, which was interesting that it turned out and completed the staff course, and then went initially up to stand by building the new HMS Sheffield, which replaced the one that was sold as the senior officer.

3 (29m 4s):
And that was interesting, particularly for me, because this is a story that may, you may have to scrub it out later, but it's true that when we came to do sea trials at the end of commissioning, my stayed with her for two years up there in Newcastle spat, via health tears in Newcastle. And then at the end of that time, we were starting to do sea trials. And on the first morning of sea trials, we were due to go out and, and the proper captain was due to join and to take over for me as the senior, also having ownership to a captain and I got a phone call to help us seven in the morning from the Navy leaving at some point to, you know, fossil pointer.

3 (29m 55s):
And he said, how's things going? And I said, find out, you know, where you're going to cut into that sort of thing. And he said, he's not coming. Yeah. And it turned out that the, the designated captain that had a change of heart about what he wanted to do in life and resigned the day before. And, and so he said to me, you all right then? And I said, yes. Then he said, carry on. So I became the first engine, as far as I know, I became the first engineer officer to be the senior also Naval warship on trials. We had a trials master, which was, which was obviously from, from Swan hunters, theology that who actually did the, the ship handling end of it.

3 (30m 45s):
But the rest of it was mine. And I went right through St. Charles, which was a very interesting experience for an engineer basically as, as the ship CEO. And then eventually at the end of sea trials, the, the proper next captain, they traveled one turned up and took over and I left fairly shortly. Afterwards was young.

2 (31m 8s):
You didn't get promoted to captain and take it on. I don't think that was ever going to happen. So you left the brand spanking Sheffield.

3 (31m 21s):
Yeah. Brand new issue. And no, th th this was, this was, you know, the replacement for Sheffield. So she was, it was, it was a 22 new one, and I knew it was glass. This one was Glasgow, in fact. And she went, eventually, she still is in Romania. I went out some years later when she was decommissioned and sold to the Romanians, we all went out and since handed her over to the Romanians and she thinks she's called the king Frederick the third or something.

3 (32m 4s):
Right.

2 (32m 5s):
All right. So coming on then

3 (32m 8s):
Fi you've been right through that just about right through the career. I came back and did a, another staff job. And then in the middle of that, or towards the end of that, I gained one of these weird phone calls this time from, from Jeremy Black, who was the second Silor saying, we've got moving people around a bit, we need a commander at Greenwich. Do you fancy it? Cause you've got to go and live there. If you're going to do it. And I said, can I ask my wife first? And he said, yes, but I want to know today.

2 (32m 44s):
So why should, I didn't want to know? Well yesterday. So

3 (32m 47s):
That, that, and that, that was, that was a safer job. We, we, we, we lived in Greenwich in a grace and favor, massive grace and favor Royal apartment for three years. It was a busy job as the commander. And we had our neighbors for the second seal, all in one, one apartment and the chief of the defense staff in the other. So it, it, it was a nice time busy time obviously

2 (33m 14s):
Makes it in the right circles. Then you

3 (33m 16s):
Did get to meet quite a lot of interesting people

2 (33m 18s):
Your time there at Greenwich. So what w what is the actual job that you did?

3 (33m 23s):
I wonder the college, which meant that, that I'd sort of run around the college on a day-to-day basis. And there were other units within the college, you know, there was staff course and there was, there was a joint service staff coach, and there was the nuclear department, all of whom actually made up the college, but I ran the sort of support organization entirely and looked after all that sort of functions and whatnot, which we did a lot of, it was a requirement to do functions as part of cause it's a Royal palace as part of that, it's immediate all sorts of things. We did ones for <inaudible> fields, and we did dinners for all sorts of people.

3 (34m 5s):
All the prime ministers, most of the ministers came down at one time or another. So it was pretty busy because they've

2 (34m 12s):
Got that fabulous, fabulous dining hall that the painter tool that's the pay to call. Yeah. I believe that now the college is all closed down. My insight as part of the, I guess it's a museum now,

3 (34m 24s):
But it was partly taken over by the five, five, the maritime museum, and partly taken over. This is the college after my time and partly taken over by Greenwich university. And there's also the chapel, which is particularly attractive. We, we did quite a lot of while I was there, we made quite a lot of movies. It was one of the ways we raised a string income. We did a Patriot games, big chunk of Patriot games. We did four weddings at a funeral. One of the weddings in the funeral. If you look closely, we're in it. My wife and I are in the congregation,

2 (35m 2s):
Since you have mentioned in the credits,

3 (35m 5s):
But we did get to go to the, the premiere when, when he turned up with his girlfriend wearing the famous dress handled, held together by safety pins. You must've seen the pictures at one time or another gold safety pins.

2 (35m 22s):
Yes. Okay. So then come to the end of your time at the

3 (35m 25s):
College. Yes. When did you move on to, I'm going to have to Brussels, as on the NATO staff in Brussels, partly it's shape and part partly up in Brussels. And I went there on the NATO planning and politicals wing, which was another nice job because you traveled around all the NATO countries. Couple of years, I was sorry. Really? I got formation capturing pulled back, but I only did I'd have happily stayed. It was a really great job. So probably

2 (35m 57s):
Promoted captain at that's on what, what year

3 (35m 59s):
Was this? That would have been about 2000. No, not, not early, but 98, 19 98. I think I came thing came back, did my last job as a captain of the port. In fact, what they then called director infrastructure of the Naval yard here and captain the port. So that was interesting because I had the pilots and everything came under my sort of area of interest, which was a bit different for an engineer.

2 (36m 31s):
So if I had to flake was in charge of, there was a kid, I go

3 (36m 35s):
By that porcelain. No, no. There was a Naval base commander who, who was a Commodore, who had the whole thing. I had the, what they call the infrastructure side. So it resolved of the buildings and all that, those bits and pieces and some of the things like the police and the police and the health service and bits and pieces like that. So all that time. Oh, I see. So

2 (37m 4s):
He's effectively the state manager for that, for the whole set. That's a good way of describing it really. And that was your last job in the Navy. Yeah, really. So that brings you,

3 (37m 15s):
Sorry. It wasn't renewals that after that, that was when, ah, for my last job we went up to, well, firstly, the appointor said, do you want to go, you know, would you like to go abroad again? And I said, yes. We said yes. And he said, well, there's, you know, some attached jobs coming up, one of your fancy and a niche initially he suggested I might go to Greece, which I'm glad I didn't because they shot the one who went out there.

2 (37m 45s):
That's a band too, so short.

3 (37m 47s):
And, and then he, then I was going to go to Spain. And then we changed the format for that when I was halfway through learning Spanish at, at somewhat advanced age, Jenny and I did the year's worth of Spanish, met Ms. Hill more or less fluent. And then they opened up another job towards the end of that and said, we're not going to have a year in Spain. You can go to Venezuela and look after a patch of countries out there. So, which was basically all the Spanish speaking islands in the Caribbean. So back to Caribbean experience, plus Ecuador, Panama, Cuba, and sometime in Colombia.

3 (38m 33s):
And we lived in, in Venezuela. So that was fascinating. And we did four years of climbing and that

2 (38m 39s):
Takes you up to retirement. Okay. Yes, yes,

3 (38m 43s):
No, I, I always well over normal for retirement. I was 58, 59 when I retired. Probably.

2 (38m 48s):
So what we'll do is we'll, we'll call it a date at that one. And then what would, if you, if you're off, all right. We'll move on to your cycling

3 (38m 56s):
Career. Yeah. Yeah. So I thank

2 (38m 59s):
You very much. Thanks. I look forward to the next one.

1 (39m 7s):
Thank you for listening to my podcasts. If you have enjoyed them and your podcast app allows, please leave a comment and share it with your friends. The reason I got into this podcast malarkey is so I could leave a legacy for my children and my grandchildren in the years to come. So they will know what I did with my life. I wish my grandparents had done the same for me. Unfortunately they didn't in my latest series on giving people the opportunity to leave their own legacy for their children and families for the future. If you have any criticism, positive or negative, and you wish to get in touch with me direct, you can email me at timheale@hotmail.com.

1 (39m 59s):
That's timheale@hotmail.com. I thank you for your time and thank you for listening.