Jim Perks – How I learnt of my Commandership
You know what day it’s going to come. It used to be done by Signal.
It’s done by bloody email, online, it’s rubbish. I mean truly rubbish because the Seniors don’t get the opportunity to put everything in place because a bloody email gets sent to them. That is wrong.
Anyway, in my day it was done by Signal. The Signal was released to the general public or to the rest of the Navy at 10 o’clock. The Seniors got it at 9 o’clock. They usually got a nod the day before and the Admiral at the time, Kilgour, was FOSM, ‘Chuckles’ Kilgour, top bloke, was my Boss, was the Admiral, and my phone in my office which is quite a secure office went off at about 9 o’clock saying “Jim, can you get your arse up here. Bring the Classified Briefcase with you. Come up the back stairs, I need to have a chat with you.”
I thought, “Ah sh*t, I’m not on the Communications Signal.” I thought he was getting me out of the way so he could say congratulations to everyone else. I was wrong.
And the Case, I went to see my Boss and said, “Have you got the Suitcase, the Admiral wants it?” “You need to get up there now”. Oh, that’s heavy. So, it’s pretty heavy and I walked up and I walked into his office and it was quite similar to Perisher. I walked in and there’s a load of champagne glasses out. He’s on the phone.
”I’ve got the Briefcase for the Admiral” And the Captain was there, DACOS Ops was there and he went, “Give me the Briefcase” and he put the passcodes in, click, click opened up and 2 bottles of champagne.
He couldn’t be arsed to bring them up himself, so I brought my own champagne and then the guy that worked next to me, he was on the same Signal, he was the next one in and then another guy and five of us were Submariners so … I mean what a lovely way to do it. Again, you just don’t forget those moments.
And then you’ve got to wait a week or two to find … so you know you’re going to be a Commander; you don’t know if you’re going to be in command. As Submariners you kind of do ‘cos we need all of them, but you’ve still got to wait, and you’ve got to wait to find out what you’ve got.
So, a couple of weeks later I got told what I was getting, it was Sceptre. It’s the boat I wanted. I knew what it was going to go and do, which I really wanted to go and do and I went there and had 3 years there.
