VE Day in the Far East

This story is taken from an interview with George and Peggy Lapsley, and has been added to the site with their permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The interviewer was David Reid, and the transcription was by Bruce Logan.
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[On VE Day] She was enjoying herself in Trafalgar Sq, I was in Rangoon. And we got, when we heard about VE day the orders went out, each man must have one bottle of beer. The padre stood at the end of the table. And he opened each bottle and he passed it to the next sailor who came along, who said “Padre, have a beer.” The padre was drunk long before any of us were.

At that time I was in charge of the rum issue. The rum issue, which has gone, was a marvelous naval tradition. You get a big barrel with brass lettering on it, highly polished, “the King, god bless him”. And into that you pour the number who drink. Because there were some TT men. You’d put in a tot, a small drink, for each man. And then you put in 2 of water because the men were only allowed grog. The officers didn’t get any, because they had gin and tonic. The Petty Officers and Senior Petty Officers they could get spo because they were supposed to have the sense to deal with it. She could tell a story about that. And anyway, they got neat rum but the men got grog, which was 2 in 1. So, you got that at midday. And sometimes, nothing happened. But I had to measure it out. The first time I did it, I noticed that there were an awful lot more people around there than was necessary. The people who would be there were the man who kept the score of the messes coming in, so they didn’t get 2 issues. And the Officer of the deck, and then a queue of messes. But there was an awful lot of other people, some of whom I knew and were mates of mine. Standing around. And what you do is you go in, take some, take a measure and you pour it into the mess tin. Which I duely did. Before I knew it I was headfirst into the grog. The fumes! I was drunk for 2 or 3 days, and I hadn’t touched a drop. And that’s why the people were there, laughing it up. “Paddy has fallen into the rum tub!”

If any of them had been good to me they’d have said “You’ll do it for half an hour and then get somebody else in.” But it was my job, so I did it. Head first in!

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