# Where are you, John Leach?



## Cpt Dick Brooks (May 13, 2013)

We met on our first day at Luther Road Infants School, in Ipswich, in September, 1951, and our fat, elderly teacher was Mrs Pulham. We were born only a couple of weeks apart, and soon became best mates. Through the next six years, we progressed together through infants and junior school, ending up in the A class at our first year at secondary school. His dad was Irish, and worked at various labouring jobs, and my dad was a postman, at the general sorting office at the Old Cattle Market in Ipswich. Johnny had an older and a younger sister, while I had a younger brother and sister. We both stayed in the A classes throughout the four years at Tower Ramparts Secondary School, under the guidance of our headmaster, Mr Webber, both of us loving carpentry and metal work, and hating sport between us.
After leaving secondary school, I enrolled on the science course at the Civic College in town, with the intentions of gaining the required qualifications to train as a draughtsman, on my way to being an architect. Johnny decided that he wanted to see the world, and enrolled at the training school for deck crew in the British Merchant Navy. After passing out from his course, he ventured out to the Far East as a deckie-learner on a tramp steamer. 
September, 1961, rolled by into 1962. There was the Bay of Pigs to contend with, followed by the Cuban Missile crisis, where the world got to within 59 seconds of full-out nuclear war. We were even given four minute warning training in case of Armageddon... a lot of good that would have been on the seventh floor of the college, and Suffolk being the largest depository of nuclear weapons in Western Europe... like Kansas in the USA. With the four American air bases around Ipswich, East Anglia wouldn't have been the bunny's tail any more, but a thousand foot deep hole in the North Sea.
On Johnnie's first home leave, he took us all to the Lifeboat Public House in Wherstead Road, and shouted the rounds all night. We were only sixteen, but the elderly landlord was happy for us to use the back room, out of view of the other customers in the bar. I was only on five shillings pocket money a week to pay for my cups of tea at college, and most of our other mates earned little more than two pounds and ten shillings a week, so Johnnie's generosity was much appreciated. That was the first occasions that most of us had got drunk, drinking pint after pint of rough scrumpy. I measured my full length out on the pavement outside the bar, along with my mates, and eventually fell over the harbour wall on to the beach the other side... it was a good job that the tide was out.
Johnny went back to sea for another voyage around the South China Sea, and I got on with college. We would all gather each evening in the cabin of the raft that we'd built... the Wal-ken-dick, named after us and later shown on Pathe News... and listen to the fading tones from Radio Luxembourg. Each evening, those who'd ventured on a poaching expedition, would fix the tail feathers of the pheasants they had shot above the door. As I was only on pocket money, while the others worked, I'd tidy up the cabin each evening and take the empties to the Live and Let Live public house to buy my pint bottle of Cobnut Brown Ale for our evenings drinking.
When Johnnie returned home on his next leave, he'd had enough of deep-sea and wanted to try his luck at home-trade. He joined the survey ship, Surveyor, out of Lowestoft to survey the North Sea for oil and gas fields. They trailed hydrophones behind the ship, while lobbing cases of dynamite overboard. He had us in stitches on his home-leave run ashore, describing the crew of the replenishment vessel throwing the cases of dynamite across to them while out in a choppy sea. Many a case fell short, to be ground between the two ships, and they all gritted their teeth waiting for the bang.
After President Kennedy was assassinated in late 1963, I decide to go out and see the world before they blew it up, so left college and got myself a job as a saw-bench hand at William Brown's timber yard, down by the docks. With three of my friends, we bought the 42 foot Whitstable ouster smack, Blue Bell, and started making our plans while fitting her out. But in the end, they all wanted out to buy cars or chase after girls, so one by one I bought them out.
At the end of Johnnie's contract on board the Surveyor, he went on the Dole and built himself a Warram catermeran. Having to buy each piece of wood as he got the money together, it took him several years. I met my first wife, Kay, at the August dance of the Orwell Yacht Club regatta, and after joining the Ipswich police force, married her and bought a house at the new private Belstead Estate. Three years later, I bought the 72 foot French yawl, Biche, and was the first person to charter a tall ship out of Ipswich Wet Dock.
Johnnie set sail with his Danish girlfriend on his Warram catamaran on a voyage around the world, but got driven ashore on the coast of Morocco by the prevailing south-west trade wind. His little craft wasn't much good at going to windward, and he was unable to put her about, so ended up on the beach. Both him and his girlfriend were thrown into jail for unlawfully entering the country, and by the time they got out , nine days later, the only trace of his little ship were the two keel marks in the sand. The local Bedouin tribe had broken it up for firewood, using the sails and rigging for their tents.
Johnnie flew back to England with his girlfriend, and I met him by chance on the swing-bridge at the lock-gates. As we leant on the rail, looking across the wet-dock at Biche moored alongside Whitmore's Quay, he told me his amazing story. He later flew out to Australia on an assisted passage and was absorbed into the sub-continent. I haven't heard from him since, even though I spent five years in Australia myself. Get in touch, Johnnie, so we can catch up and talk about old times. All the best, Cpt Dick Brooks.


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