As result of the History of Wargaming Project, I sometimes
hear some oral history. I thought I would share this one. If people like it, I
have another couple to share.
Teignmouth is a small tourist seaside resort in south Devon
with an active commercial harbour. It has a long association with piracy, for
example that led to the French burning down part of the town in 1690. The
smuggling tradition was equally strong and continued, apparently, in Cold War.
In 1974, the Russian submarine surfaced just off Teignmouth beach
of and armed short parties started to disembark into small boats. Despite being
early in the season, a few hardy tourists saw this' invasion' and called the
local police (in those days dialling 999 reached the local police station). The
police gave the cryptic response, 'The're not Russians, the're Poles' , as if
that changed the fact boats with armed foreign sailors were heading towards the
shore.
One of the boats went to the docks and unloaded a large
number of crates... of Polish vodka. In exchange they received foreign currency
and various bottles of spirits. (In those days, ships captains often gave gifts
to the Dockers. These were not bribes, but a way of saying thank you for
getting their ship unloaded or rapidly loaded. They went into the Dockers
Christmas party stock...) Other boat crews ran around the town buying up fresh
supplies, 2nd hand camera equipment, pasties and fresh cream cakes (it was
someone's birthday). It must have been a surprising sight for tourists to see
Polish naval ratings pushing to the front of shopping queues in their haste. The
locals were used to it.
While this was going on, one army officer, with more
inspiration than common sense, decided to take a boat load of army cadets from
St Brendan's College CCF out to the Warsaw Pact (enemy) submarine off shore.
One imagines a boat load of British soldiers heading towards the partially
manned submarine in British waters could have caused a major Cold War incident.
However, the crew were Poles, not Russians, and they recognised the soldiers were
just children and did they obvious; they invited them on board. The cadets has
a short look around the submarine control room. Then the cadets returned to
shore as the submarine crew came back from their smuggling operation. The
submarine then submerged and sailed back into international waters.
If the Polish navy wanted to shop and to drink a pub dry on
the occasional evening, no-one in Teignmouth minded. Many of the older people
had served with Poles in WWII or knew someone who had. In the days before
Twitter, YouTube and Facebook even a small town could keep secrets.
Some of the Cold War was grim, but some of it was just
funny.
