"Ganges Is That Way"
The three buses stopped without ceremony somewhere near Freston, not far from where the River Orwell bends towards Ipswich. It was a cold day in late November 1971, the sort of East Anglian cold that seemed to settle into clothing rather than merely blow through it. Hawke Division had travelled there dressed in sports kit, expecting the usual physical training. Nobody expected what came next.
The order was simple.
"Ganges is that way."
The instructor pointed downriver in the general direction of Shotley before adding the part everyone remembered.
"You have two hours to get back under your own steam. We have spotters on the road. If you're late, you go hungry."
There was little point asking questions. Before anyone had properly absorbed what had just been said, the buses had already turned round and disappeared back towards HMS Ganges, leaving an entire division standing beside the Orwell in silence.
Five or six miles did not sound especially daunting. By that stage of training, most recruits were considerably fitter than they had been only a few weeks earlier. Running that sort of distance was perfectly achievable.
The distance, however, proved to be the least interesting part of the exercise.
The obvious route back lay along the road, but that had effectively been ruled out. Spotters, whether real or imagined, were enough to discourage anyone from taking what looked like the easy option. Instead, the division headed for the riverbank and the marshes that followed the Orwell towards Shotley.
On a summer evening the Orwell is one of England's most attractive estuaries. Its wooded banks, quiet inlets and broad stretches of water have long appealed to sailors and walkers alike.
Late in November, dressed in sports kit and racing the clock, it presented rather different attractions.
The first obstacle was mud.
Then more mud.
Where there was no mud there were cattle. Where there were cattle there were fields generously supplied with the sort of mud cattle produce. Beyond those lay snow-covered turnip fields, offering little improvement in either footing or comfort. The route became less a run than a continuous exercise in finding somewhere reasonably firm to place the next foot.
At one point even that became impossible. The only way forward was to crawl across a stretch of thick estuary mud in order to reach the next field. Whatever dignity Hawke Division had possessed when it stepped off the buses had long since disappeared into the Orwell marshes.
Somewhere behind the frustration there remained a certain grim determination. Nobody wanted to be the reason others arrived late. Everyone knew exactly what being late meant.
No evening meal.
The prospect of going hungry was a surprisingly effective source of motivation. HMS Ganges seldom needed elaborate punishments. Routine itself provided all the encouragement required. Recruits who failed to meet the expected standard generally understood the consequences long before anyone needed to remind them.
By the time the division reached Shotley, the two hours had long since slipped away. Whether anyone had genuinely expected the route to be completed within the allotted time remains open to question. If they had, they had certainly chosen an imaginative course.
Nobody made it back in time.
The promised consequence followed without drama. The evening meal had gone. By the time showers had been taken, the NAAFI had also closed, removing the last opportunity to find something to eat.
There remained one final task before the day could end.
The shower block looked as though a sizeable section of the Orwell estuary had been carried indoors on boots, socks and sports kit. Mud seemed to have found its way into every corner. The sports clothing itself was hardly in better condition, carrying generous evidence of the route back along the marshes.
No one needed to issue orders.
The showers were cleaned. The mud was scrubbed away. Sports kit was washed before it could attract unwelcome attention during Officer of the Day's rounds later that evening. Wet clothing found its way to the drying room. Every trace of the expedition that could be removed was removed.
Not because anyone had been told.
Because by then recruits understood how HMS Ganges worked.
The duty hand responsible for reporting the messdeck ready for rounds had enough to worry about without presenting an Officer of the Day with muddy showers, dirty clothing or obvious signs that standards had slipped. Collective responsibility had become second nature.
Looking back, it would be easy to dismiss the exercise as little more than an uncomfortable cross-country run. It was certainly uncomfortable enough, and those who took part remembered the mud, the cold and the hunger for many years afterwards.
Yet its lasting significance lay elsewhere.
HMS Ganges believed firmly in physical fitness, but it also understood something rather more practical. Exhausted recruits had little spare energy for mischief. They slept well, worked hard and approached the next day already conditioned to do it all again. Physical training therefore became more than exercise; it became one strand of the establishment's wider discipline.
One recruit later summed it up with characteristic economy:
"The Navy controlled you by exhausting you."
Whether or not that had been the conscious intention behind every endurance exercise scarcely mattered. It accurately described how training often felt from the inside.
The Orwell eventually returned to being simply a beautiful estuary. The mud washed off, the sports kit dried and the missed meal became just another story shared among those who had been there. The memory that endured was not of hardship for its own sake, but of a training establishment that rarely wasted an opportunity to make its recruits a little fitter, a little tougher and a little more accustomed to getting on with the job, however unpleasant the route happened to be.
Primary source: RN-005
RN-E-126
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