Ron Gordon – Submariners’ brotherhood

Simon: Can you describe that feeling of closeness, the brotherhood with the other submariners?    

It’s very hard to describe because you’re still … I left the submarine service in ’98, and I’m still part of it. I’m in the Submariners Association, we meet regular.

I’m always involved in something. We do Zoom meetings and then you do all the business and at the end of it somebody starts telling dits and you just remember it all. You know, you just have a great time and it’s the biggest family. A close-knit family, other than your own family, you’ll ever know.

It’s just brilliant and then what we find is that it’s that close that we’ve got … whenever any of our guys cross the bar, we do a proper funeral for them.

We’ve got the White Ensign on their coffin, we parade our standards, but also their widows, we keep in touch with them afterwards, and then every year, we give them a Christmas lunch.

There’s 33 of them and we give them a lunch at one of the local Pubs, just to keep in touch with them.

Simon: So, it’s even beyond them when they’re not around, still the closeness is there.

And they realise it as well. The ladies, they appreciate it ‘cos they know that submarines were all part of your life. It got into your blood really. And I saw that straight away when I first saw them at Faslane.

Didn’t realise then how good it was until I got into it.