I graduated in 1934 with a good Physics degree. I went straight into teaching in a large mixed Grammar School, as during and after the great depression, it was very difficult to get any job.
My father had been in the First World War. During 1935 he said to me. "This new man in Germany [Hitler] looks like being a lot of trouble. If I were you, I would join a Volunteer Reserve and get in ahead of the inevitable rush."
He was a wise old bird, so I took myself off to a naval recruiting office where they interviewed me and gave me a thorough medical. They found out I was marginally colour blind, but my degree impressed them and so did my knowledge of radio, electronics, and messing about in boats. They asked me if I would be interested in joining a branch of the Navy that dealt with listening to foreign (enemy) traffic. This needed a good deal of technical knowledge, as electronics and communications were advancing rapidly.
I accepted their proposal and went off for training initially for a month, and then most weekends. Things carried on with a steadily rising tempo, and from mid-1937 onwards, I thought the country was getting ready for war. I was called up for indefinite duties in late June 1939. These turned into wartime duties in September, and they did not release me until well into 1946.
Just before the outbreak of war, they gave me my 'hostilities' job in a listening post on the coast in a remote area. A security fence surrounded it with a guard detachment. There was a complex of huts, and several long aerials.
The Commanding Officer was a much older Lieutenant Commander veteran of the First World War in his early fifties. He wasn't in the best of health and welcomed a fit young man as his second-in-command to do all the legwork. I got on very well with him. As soon as the war began, WRNS (female) personnel replaced the male ratings, who went for sea duties. I wondered how this would work, but they were keen, well-trained, and efficient. Life carried on more or less normally.
Our unit was on the coast, on the edge of marshland and tidal mud flats strewn with anti-glider devices. We ran a naval listening station, and we had unusual but informal disciplinary methods. I was in charge of a section, and if a girl committed a minor breach of regulations, she could choose her punishment within limits.
The punishment was, according to regulations, being denied leave, which in our isolated situation was very unpopular. The Commanding Officer had organised it so that the girl could choose to receive an unofficial corporal punishment. This was four, six, or eight cuts (strokes) of the cane across the seat of her naval boat rig trousers.
Many of the girls, in fact, the majority, chose the cane, as they didn't like losing leave. They were young and fit. A caning didn't bother them much, even though they were always very hard canings.
They rarely cried during punishment. The naval discipline had made them very tough. They took sports together, and afterwards in the showers; you could see the unmistakable and vivid results of the CO's ministrations on the girl's bottoms, so they said.
I knew from inspection of the punishment records that there was one girl in particular whom I believe got herself caned on purpose. Fresh cane marks, I was told, were often visible amongst the fading marks of earlier punishments. The girls took pride in their cane marks and used to show them off to each other!
Our Commanding Officer awarded the punishments and carried them out with full strength. I thought he enjoyed that part of his job.
The CO caned the ratings in front of the assembled section, but the caning of petty officers took place in a semi-private, in front of the CO and myself. He told me it would be good for discipline to cane defaulting junior officers. This had not happened since the outbreak of war.
I had asked him about these punishments, as they were not in the regulations. He said that early in the war he had been discussing punishments with a senior WRNS officer. She suggested these unofficial methods to him. They were effective, even popular, and possibly justified with younger recruited women.
The cane she advised him to use was a type of school cane. It was shorter and lighter than the regulation Navy cane, which was used on boy recruits, aged 18.
Our establishment grew and grew with more equipment and personnel arriving. Amongst these was a lovely young WRNS officer. This girl soon became the section officer for half of the ratings, this being necessary because of their increasing numbers. She could operate most of the equipment and shared responsibility with me for training and maintaining standards.
Shortly after her arrival during the freezing winter weather of 1941 at the bleakest time of the war, the Commanding Officer went down with pneumonia. Unfortunately, it killed him, leaving me temporarily in charge. With my pre-war service, I had been around for six years.
Our Rear Admiral arrived for the funeral, and afterwards, he said to me, "Carry on for now and we will see what comes of it."
I carried on and got an 'Acting' promotion to Lieutenant Commander. I also carried on with the caning disciplinary activities. A new CO never arrived, and to my delight, the Admiralty eventually confirmed my appointment as Commanding Officer and my full promotion.
One day, it was the turn of our WRNS officer to be in trouble. She missed the "shore boat" (navy bus!!) back one night from the nearby town as a connecting bus was late, and she had to report to me the next morning. She could have got away with it, but that would have been bad for discipline. The late bus excuse was unacceptable; an officer should not have left things to chance, and she should have planned to be there in good time.
I told my clerk to leave. As it was her first offence, it would be admonishment in front of the unit or four cuts (strokes, we called them 'cuts' in the navy) of the cane. Would an admonishment cause her to lose the respect of the ratings? I told her she could show them she wasn't frightened of the cane.
"Four cuts of the cane, please, sir."
"How about now?"
She was in the number two (skirt) uniform.
"Please let me change into my trousers, sir?"
"No. You can take it on your regulation knickers unless you strongly object."
She looked a little shocked, but at least it would be over with. I locked the door, pulled the curtain, got the cane out, and ordered her to bend over the back of a chair.
With her bent over the chair, as ordered, I lifted her skirt. Using most of my strength, and quickly, gave her four terrific cuts. With appearances and naval discipline in mind, she shut her eyes, and hung on to the chair, locking her fingers around the legs. She succeeded in not moving or making a sound. It was a brave performance. The cane whistled through the air and landed with a terrific 'CRACK' across her tight bottom.
The pain must have been agonising, and she cried at the end (the other ranks rarely cried). At the end, she stood up, saluted, and I said, "Dismiss."
She marched out to her private room and returned about twenty minutes later, red-eyed but composed. She winced as she sat at her desk, clearly trying not to move.
I had been very careful and correct towards this young lady, and the caning had done more than break the ice; it had thawed it completely. A couple of days later, I asked Jean (that was her name) out to supper for the first time and she accepted immediately. During the evening, I asked her if she was still in much discomfort. She said she could still feel it, but as long as she was careful; it was bearable. One thing led to another, and we became great friends.
Eventually Jean told me what had happened after her caning. She said she went to her room, stopped crying and removed her knickers to inspect four deep red swelling welts. They throbbed and stung like the devil, causing her acute pain for two days and quite a lot of pain for a week. She said she lay on her bunk and rubbed her very sore bum for five minutes, and the pain decreased.
The ratings knew what had happened when they saw her in the showers a few days later. There was a stunned silence followed by a lot of comforting and friendly (but slightly amused) remarks! "Did it hurt, Ma'am? Did he do it as hard as he does to us? Was it the same cane? Could you sit down afterwards?" It impressed the ratings when she told them I had caned her extra hard on her very thin knickers, not on her trousers!
Her marks were just as vivid as theirs, if not worse, and they all looked! All of this was excellent for discipline.
After about a year, I proposed to Jean, and she accepted. During our courtship, she confided in me that her father had brought her up strictly and caned her at home. Her father's canings were not as hard as she had received from me! Jean, like me, had been a teacher, but of French and German, and she had joined the Reserve in 1938 after the Czech crisis. She said she fully agreed with the caning punishments, and she told me her school caned the girls for the worst offences.
We got married late in 1942, thinking that after the El Alamein victory; perhaps it would soon all be over. Evacuation of the coastal area had taken place because of the risk of invasion, and there were a lot of houses for sale. We bought an end-terraced Victorian house in the town in which my former school was located, this being only about thirty miles away as luck would have it.
We could not spend much time together there. It turned out that Jean liked a bit of mild caning as a prelude to sex! She loved to put her bare bum in the air and take twelve hard cane strokes with a thin cane. I comforted her with oral attention, and then screwed her from behind, doggy fashion. She said that when I rubbed again her cane marks, the resulting orgasm was out of this world!
The war in Europe ended and Jean demobilised quite early, going back to her teaching job. She was assistant headteacher, complete with caning responsibilities at her school!
However, my demobilisation did not happen until a year after VJ day, as I was low on 'demob points.' I had spent my entire service ashore in England and near my hometown. I helped keep things running, partly because the Cold War started. Peacetime routine meant I could live with Jean at home but brought to an end to unofficial war-time canings. What a pity. But they ordered me to stay on in the Reserve. This was not bad, as it was a legal requirement to go on training courses and exercises for which you received pay. Gin cost only the reduced Naafi rate.
I was happy to leave although I had loved the life. It was time to be with Jean and I went back to my old teaching job to find things had changed. The war had taken a toll on the headteacher. The assistant head was in worse shape, having developed a heart condition. He was soon to retire on medical grounds. At the relatively young age of thirty-four in 1947, I got his job.
The headteacher had sent for me not long after I arrived back at the school and told me he no longer felt up to caning pupils. Would I be willing to do this for him? I accepted, knowing how much I had enjoyed doing just that in the Navy!
I discussed how he arrived at the decisions regarding caning defaulters, and he explained it to me.
"If it is a girl to be caned, you must always have a female member of staff present and get that person to sign the punishment book afterwards to say that she was there."
