Tony Beasley - Beneath the Restless Wave: Memoirs of a Cold War Submariner

TONY BEASLEY

with EDWARD COUZENS-LAKE

Published in Great Britain and the United States of America in 2020 by

CASEMATE PUBLISHERS

The Old Music Hall, 106108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JE, UK

and

1950 Lawrence Road, Havertown, PA 19083, US

Copyright 2020 Tony Beasley and Edward Couzens-Lake

Hardcover Edition: ISBN 978-1-61200-840-0

Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-61200-841-7

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

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To Katie

Tony Beasley is a remarkable man.

Hes like a character from one of the classic old British or US comic books come to life: maybe one of Supermans best buddies, the straight-talking Navy man who always told Superman the truth, even if it wasnt what he wanted to hear. Im not sure that Tony would appreciate the comparison but at least I know that if he doesnt, hell soon let me know. The so-called golden era of childrens comics such as those, complete with their tough, lantern-jawed heroes like Union Jack Jackson, The Flash and Captain America, were fiction of course. Yet their heroes served as role models for a generation, revered because they were loyal, tough and unwavering in their duty. Each one a mans man, as the saying goes.

Tony didnt come out of the pages of a comic. But he is, for me, that kind of man who, when I was growing up, I would have wanted to be: someone to look up to, to respect and admire for what he did in life and the way he went about it. He really is the young boy who ran away from home to go to sea, a life in service that began when he walked up the gangplank to join his first ship as a boy telegraphist in 1950.

It was a time when both Great Britains Royal Navy and the nation itself were recovering and rebuilding, a mere five years after a hard-won peace in Japan had finally brought to an end the horrors and devastation of the Second World War. Little did Tony, or any of his contemporaries, know that they would soon be sailing into the teeth of another war, one that saw no fighting but which was still, nevertheless, as potentially deadly as those which had preceded it.

I am, of course, talking about the Cold War. Tony played his part in that clandestine duel between East and West in a way that he would never have expected or asked to do, an account of which he shares with the reader in the pages that follow.

The recollections and memories of his life, as both a boy and a man, are told with brutal honesty, as are his observations relating to the people, places and situations he has found himself in over the course of his life. Tony doesnt hold back: he tells things as he sees them, something he has never been afraid of doing, even if it gives someone a bloody nose in the process, his own included.

Its a remarkable story, one I feel immensely privileged to have shared with him.

I hope it is one that you enjoy reading as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

Edward Couzens-Lake

Im writing my story because it needs to be told.

Its honest and doesnt pull any punches. It wont be pretty in places whilst, in others, it may be decidedly uncomfortable. It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, meant to be politically correct and is riddled, throughout, with Royal Navy slang, joviality and innuendo. If the language and phrases used are sometimes harsh or even shocking to the reader, then I offer no apology.

Why am I writing it? Because I want to portray the struggle I encountered against the mighty weight of the establishment, one I fought despite all the odds being very heavily stacked against me. I have, throughout, endeavoured to stick with facts rather than hyperbole, facts that are backed, where appropriate, by documentary evidence.

The facts are that I was injured in an accident on a British submarine during a covert mission. As the years went on the injury continued to cause me severe pain, but my records did not detail the cause of the injury because my MoD records deliberately omitted the fact that I ever served in submarines. The official account of the injury, in other words, is designed to fit in with MoD requirements and to be recorded with their convenience in mind, rather than that of the affected party. The fight to get my injuries recognised and a suitable award took many years. Moreover, the treatment I received from Norcross NX, the branch of the MoD that processes injuries incurred whilst serving with the military, showed me that it has a very different attitude to officers and other ranks. I fought for a long time at significant personal cost to get justice.

Those of us who live a long life can look back and pick out the episodes that were pivotal in directing the course of our life story. From the wartime experiences of my boyhood to my escapades as a young seaman, then the activities I undertook voluntarily or not in service to the Royal Navy and my country as an adult, every chapter in this book takes the reader a step closer to understanding where I am today, and why I chose to fight against official indifference to my circumstances.

It is because of these circumstances that I want my story written, read and shared. I am, with it, now prepared to approach the media or anyone else interested in learning more about it and, crucially, on my terms, no one elses. The time is right. I am over eighty years old and living on borrowed time. Yet this incredible story, written over a long period of the time I have already had, will not die with me, that I promise you.

You can read on and come to your own conclusions now.

Tony Beasley

We must all have seen and heard it at the same time: a German fighter plane with black smoke belching from one of its engines plummeting down to the ground about three or four miles away from where we were and close to, as it turned out, the main Brighton to London railway line.

On Sunday September 3rd 1939 the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, made an announcement that would change the way of life for countless millions of people all over the world.

I am speaking to you from the cabinet room at 10 Downing Street. This morning the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by 11 oclock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.

Neville Chamberlain must have believed that he had done everything in his power to prevent the country being hurled into a potentially catastrophic global conflict, one that had erupted around him a little over two decades after another had drawn to its own bloody conclusion. The Great War had precipitated the solemnity of the Cenotaph; poppies; the well-worn phrase the war to end all wars and a common understanding amongst all of humanity that such a war could and should never happen again. For years Chamberlain had done what he must have thought was his best to halt a repeat war with Germany. This included a foreign policy that preached appeasement and which, ultimately, saw him concede the German-speaking Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Germany in 1938. That, Chamberlain must have thought, will be that. Hitler and his Nazi Germany will be content with their new empire and will have neither the heart nor the desire to fight another war. Yet, fuelling the resentment towards the rest of Europe that had been ignited by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, Hitlers annexation of the Sudetenland was just the start and, when his forces invaded Britains ally Poland, Chamberlain could no longer offer appeasement, talks and negotiation.