When I was based in Iceland I had the advantage of getting a preferential choice on my next duty station. This was because of the fact that Iceland is considered a remote duty station. What the criteria is, I'm not sure but I can certainly attest that as a 20 year old Iceland was remote! Anyway, the time came for me to list my duty station preferences and I put London down as my first choice. I had a pretty good chance of getting it because there was a large contingent of fellow Cryptologic Technicians based there. The time came for my career counsellor in Iceland to call the detailer about my next assignment and they stated that I could go to London if I agreed to extend my time in Iceland by two months. 60 more days on this damned Island? Hell yes for London! I didn't even think about it and quickly jumped on the opportunity!
I was so excited, I had to wait on the official orders to come through, it was a matter of the detailer making the time to prepare them (keep in mind this is before the internet) which meant he had to type them up, put them into official US Navy Message format and then place them in a queue to be electronically delivered to me via standard message traffic at the lowest priority. This process normally took around 2-3 weeks to be finalized with a hardcopy of the orders in my hand. Because of the time zone difference, we spoke to the detailer on my last evening shift before my three day break and to my surprise, my orders were waiting for me when I returned for my next shift after the break! Once I had them I could get everything started, a passport, the move, my advance money for civilian clothes and a sponsor in London that could help show me the ropes my first few days in town. First things first, I had to get my passport and in Iceland that was no easy task. First of all I had to get a photo for the passport. On the base there was a person that took them as a side job and he was booked up for a few weeks. Once I had the picture it was a matter of the base officials sending the passport application package over to the US Embassy in Reykjavik to get it issued and then sent back to me via the base officials. The process took about a month in total. I got on it and once I had booked the photo I felt that I was getting somewhere! I had the picture taken and this is how it turned out....
My first passport photo, 1987
Since I flew up to Iceland on a military transport with a military ID and orders I wasn't required to travel on a passport but London was completely different. Because there was no direct military transport to my next duty station in London I flew commercial from the US to London so having a passport was the prudent thing to have when I arrived at the passport control in Heathrow. Additionally civilian clothes were worn at my duty station in London, the US Naval Forces Headquarters for Europe which at the time was located across the street from the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square. Because of this there were sensitivities to seeing a bunch of US military folks wandering around central London in uniform. So, in order to prepare for this, the US Navy gave me a clothing allowance of $800 to buy the appropriate attire to work in. The appropriate attire was business suit with tie which for a 21 year old was awesome. Living and working in London across the street from the US Embassy wearing a suit and tie? The gods were smiling on this Illinois farm boy!
Anyway the time came to leave Iceland and considering where I was going, I couldn't wait to get going but first, some well-earned leave after being there for 14 months! I went back to Illinois to visit family and friends and had a great two weeks before leaving. While I was up in Illinois, I visited my sister Georgann up in Peoria and this is where I bought my suits. They were without a doubt JC Penney specials because much to my chagrin I didn't realize how little $800 would buy me! Not only did I need to get suits but I also had to buy shirts, shoes, a belt and ties for this new wave Dave look that I wanted for London! Fortunately I had just enough fashion sense to at least not look like I suited up cheaply. Once I got to London top shop, tie rack and other Oxford street shops became my friends....fashionable clothing in London was so much cheaper and one of the things that my shipmates would laugh at was how American we all looked when we first got to London!
After two weeks of hanging out in Jacksonville and the rest of Central Illinois it was time to get on a plane and go to my next adventure. I left St. Louis but had a connection with a Pan Am flight out of JFK for an overnight flight to London Heathrow. I arrived in England the next day and once again I was fortunate enough to have my sponsor waiting for me. A really cool guy named Bobby. Bobby met me at the airport and we grabbed a cab to my hotel, the London Elizabeth which was near the Lancaster Gate Tube Station. The London Elizabeth Hotel (LEH) is a Vicorian-era hotel that has been relatively untouched by time. It is still in operation but in 1987 when I arrived, it was under contract with the US Navy to provide some of its rooms to Sailors that were either arriving in or leaving London. There were several hotels under contract but since I was a single Sailor it made more sense for me to start my adventure in Central London nearer to the duty station. I had a small room at the rear of the hotel below ground level, my window was at the top of the wall but I could see the building next to the LEH so it wasn't all that bad. Besides, I wasn't planning on being in the room that much anyway because I had things to do!
The London Elizabeth Hotel, Lancaster Gate W2
So my first few days were a blur but my priority was finding a place to live. The US Navy had a housing support office which was a one-stop shopping place for flats, houses and barracks assignment. Since I was a Petty Officer, I had the choice of living in Barracks or in my own place. That was a "no-brainer". When I went to the housing office I first met a nice young lady named Rachel who pointed me in the right direction for the customer service representative that would help me out. Her name was Liz, Elizabeth Bartholomew to be exact. The Rachel I just mentioned was, you guessed it, my future wife Rachel Mooney. Anyway, I searched around several different locations and finally settled on a location near the Preston Road Tube Station.
My flat was on the 1st floor above the Indian Restaurant
This flat had a view of Wembley Stadium. Little did I realize at the time but my future sister-in-law's current boyfriend, Kingsley Black, would be on the winning side of the 1988 League Cup final with his team, Luton Town. I was most likely at my flat during this time....small world!
My life was really looking up, it was 1987, I was in the heart of the 1980's music scene, I was commuting via the tube and I was working a schedule that allowed me to work 4 days on followed by 4 days off. Life was good!
About a month into my time in London I had an opportunity to buy a car from a departing shipmate so I jumped on it and gained more freedom. The car was a 1977 Ford Capri. It was a British spec car, complete with a right-hand steering wheel. When I bought it, I took ownership at the Navy building in central London and I had to figure out how to get to Preston Lane on my own. This was a terrifying ordeal. However I did discover the trick to driving in London really quickly because it allowed me to really understand the city and actively participate in the bustling party scene that my shipmates were all engaged in. The trick to driving in London (in 1987) was to keep track of the road signs and understand the different "cities" that make up the boroughs of London. For those of you who have never been there The City of London is literally a 1 square mile borough in the center of London. Over the centuries, other neighboring cities grew into and connected with the City of London and were eventually annexed into the greater London that we know today. Therefore, in 1987 if you knew how they all connected and where they are roughly located next to each other, you could get around quite easily. Another trick was knowing inside and out the tube map schematic and how all the stations interconnected. Usually the tube station would also have a corresponding road sign associated with it so conceptually I learned how to get around London and still have no issues driving in the city now.
Same color and year as my 1977 Ford Capri
So now with all of this amazing freedom I was really getting around and enjoying my life to the fullest. I arrived in London in April of 1987 and this was probably one of my favorite years of my life. I was living in a major city, with an awesome job, freedom galore and meeting new friends and really enjoying everything the english culture had to offer. My friends and I had a great party scene which usually started out the Navy club on RAF West Ruislip. This club was called the "Flagship". It was a converted storage building but on Friday and Saturday nights it was packed with Sailors and the locals all out to have a great time. We would all congregate there and then decide where the party was after we had our cheap drinks. Since I had a car, I would usually have a few folks come with me as we would all leave the club for our next adventure.
Kids - this is how I met your mother........
One particular night. November 6th, 1987 to be exact was the night that we all met at the Flagship as usual and as I already mentioned it was time to go to the next party which was in central London. My friend Bill was with me and he met up with two girls at the Flagship and they decided to come with Bill and I to this next party. The two girls were Jackie, who was a Sailor and her friend Rachel who worked at the housing office. Rachel was an English girl and I remembered her from my early days of going into the housing office. Anyway, that night they got into my car and we went to the party in central London. It was a bust so Bill decided to host a party at his house in North Wembley. I was all in for this because it was a lot closer to my house over at Preston Road. Somehow during the course of the night Rachel began to flirt with me. It must've been my personality because she was drop dead gorgeous and I couldn't believe that she would pay attention to a guy like me! I started to flirt back to make sure that I wasn't reading the situation wrong and when she responded inside I got very excited because I felt that I wanted to go for it and ask her out on a date. Something inside me told me to go for it because if I didn't I would regret it for the rest of my life. Boy am I glad I did that. We have been together for 32 years and it gets better every day!
We exchanged addresses and phone numbers and the very next day in the early afternoon before our date she dropped by my house with a bottle of Mateus wine. I felt really privileged to have caught the attention of such a divine creature!
Oh yea, my pickup line the night I met her...."would you like to go see Creepshow"? Who the hell would say that for a pickup line? I must've been throwing out some hormones that had her name on them because looking back.....what the hell was I thinking?
After that almost every waking moment not dedicated to work I was with Rachel. By Christmas we were a hit and I was invited over to her house in West Ruislip for Christmas Dinner. I was nervous because her whole family was there. I had the most amazing time and felt at home for the first time since I joined the Navy. I was head over heels in love with this woman and was scared to death of what would come next! 1988 was just around the corner and with that the end of my tour in London would be over in early 1989 at the latest.
Let me go back to my Ford Capri. Thank you for everything you did for me. Without you I wouldn't have met the woman of my dreams, my soulmate! I'm sorry I had to leave you behind when we moved to California. I hope that your final days were filled with great oil in your engine and an easy-shifting driver who took care of you!
