CPOCD 'Sandy' Brennan was one of the old originals of the diving branch and he was as comfortable in the water as a pod of dolphins. He was a wiry little bloke who could never sit still and no-one had ever known him when he hadn't had a crewcut. I don't think Sandy had an enemy in the world and he was well known throughout the Navy for his big shit grin, his very relaxed attitude towards Naval discipline and the fact that he hated to wear shoes. He was also probably the most popular Chief in the Diving Branch. Whereas most Chiefs and Petty Officers rarely got their head wet, Sandy would always take along an extra supervisor on diving jobs so that he could get into the water at every opportunity, often telling the younger divers that they had to wait their turn as he wanted the first dip. I'll never forget the day he surfaced after a 60 foot dive on the clump of a mooring buoy in Sydney Harbour. As his head broke the surface, he let his demand valve drop from his mouth and said with a big smile, “I've got morning tea for you boys”, and he held up his right hand to reveal a large fish that he had actually speared with his diving knife. In my 20 years in the Branch, I never saw that feat bettered by anyone. 'Stewy', or Noel Stewart was a wild and slightly crazy Leading Seaman who eventually went on to become a LCDR in command of a Minehunter. Had the Selection Board for officer candidates seen the side of Stewy that I had, it is unlikely that he would have gone past Leading Seaman. Another fellow diver on Team 2, with whom I was to become a life-long friend, was a young newly qualified CD by the name of Larry 'Digger' Digney, who went on to become the senior Warrant Officer of the CD branch before retiring from the Navy. In those days he was a wild young larrikin who had great difficulty staying out of trouble. The Team's responsibilities rotated through the mundane fleet maintenance diving tasks to the more interesting, although less common, sonar dome changes and Submarine propeller changes. These were done by CDs while the vessel remained in the water, thus saving the considerable time, cost and delays of dry-docking.

The Team had what we called a 'brass old box', and over the months we would collect all the non ferrous metals that we had managed to 'acquire' from our various expeditions around Sydney Harbour. When this collection became almost too heavy to lift, we would take it to a local scrap metal dealer and trade it for cash. This would then be deposited into a Team bank account ready to subsidize our regular social functions at the local pub. One unsuspecting source of brass was HMS Jaguar, a visiting Royal Navy frigate. During her most recent exercise she had lowered her long, slender and very heavy solid brass Pitometer Log and it had obviously impacted someting sufficiently large to bend it so that it could not be fully retracted back into the hull. Our job was to recover the probe after it was disconnected from inside the hull and allowed to drop free. Sandy was in charge and instead of securing the probe to the recovery line provided by the ship, we secured it to our own line which was hanging outboard of the diving boat. As the probe was released it very neatly swung down directly below the outboard side of our boat. The pair of divers then surfaced and explained that the probe had slipped through their knot and speared off into the muddy bottom. Sandy proceeded to dress down the two divers in a loud voice telling them that they weren't “seamen's assholes” and to get to the bottom and find it. After 10 or 15 minutes of fruitless searching, Sandy, with his usual shit grin, apologized to the Poms for his divers' incompetence by saying, “Bloody dickheads, I can't trust them to do anything right”. He then told the Poms there was nothing else we could do. I could see the look on the face of the Pommie Chief Bosun's Mate and I knew he was thinking, "You bastards; you're divers and I know what you're up to". With a friendly wave we flashed up the engine and idled around the corner until out of sight, all the while with the Brit Chief never taking his eyes off us. We couldn't go any faster than idle as we didn't want to lose the probe a 'second' time. Our substantial addition to the CDT2 slush fund was then hauled inboard and we departed for Penguin, quite pleased with our day's work.

I thoroughly enjoyed swimming on oxygen and practising the art of ship attack. There is an intense feeling of freedom swimming like a fish below the surface, with no telltale bubbles and no one above knowing where you are. Clearance Divers were trained to carry out a huge variety of tasks using a large inventory of equipment, but swimming on O2 at night while attacking a multi million dollar target was what I considered to be the core business of being a CD. It came down to the skills of you and your buddy, alone in the far from friendly depths, pitted against a ship or ships carrying hundreds of professional sailors, all intent on preventing us from reaching our objective. We realised during training, that detection meant no more than the end of the exercise, however if we ever became involved in the real thing, it would result in something much more permanent. With this in mind we took our profession very seriously. I believe that only other elite forces such as the Army's SAS develop a similar level of focus; as when you are trained to penetrate and operate in the opposition's 'territory' in very small numbers, it all comes down to just you and your buddy's ability to apply the well practiced skills acquired from constant and repetitious training. There is generally no backup or support available and in any difficult or deteriorating situation, you know it is just you and your buddy. This awareness made for a high level of camaraderie in small specialized units such as Clearance Diving Teams.

Most of our work-ups for ship attacks were done in Sydney Harbour with the bulk of the actual fleet exercises being conducted in Jervis Bay. We always enjoyed our trips to the Naval College in those days as Jervis Bay was alive with fish of all varieties, from Garfish to Grouper, and large patches of the seabed were literally covered with scallops. That was before the professional fishing trawlers systematically swept the bay clean of every last shell. We would take one of the College's 40 foot workboats out into the bay and using surface supplied breathing apparatus, or 'hookah' as it was then known, place two divers on the seabed while the boat drifted slowly across the bay. A 112 pound concrete 'shot' was lowered to the bottom with a wheat bag secured to the shot line. With the two divers holding onto the drifting shot with one hand they could easily fill the bag with the biggest scallops within 30 minutes. The scallop beds regularly migrated across the bay but we always seemed to find them in about 60 feet of water. While in Jervis Bay, we occasionally camped in a large timber cottage which was not too far from the Captain's house. It was fully self contained and included a gas oven which was the perfect size for a few dozen scallops. We would place these in the hot oven until the shells opened, and then a dollop of garlic butter and a squeeze of lemon juice would be added to each one before another few sizzling minutes back in the hot oven. Along with a good cask of Coolibah red wine or a few beers, it was a meal fit for a King.

When it came time for the more serious business of conducting the actual ship attacks, the mood amongst the team changed to one of professional concentration. Once the attack swimmers had been designated and the entire team briefed on individual responsibilities, very little was said. Everyone settled down to the task of ensuring his own equipment was perfect and nothing was forgotten or overlooked. Clearance Divers are amongst the most team oriented men in the Military yet they are also total individuals, as their wives will certainly testify. Each man's equipment is his responsibility alone. His life will depend on it. The ideal night to carry out an 'Operation Awkward' as it was officially known, was when the sky was under heavy overcast or even drizzling rain with a light chop on the water and a steady breeze blowing. Nothing dulls the alertness of a sentry more than gusting rain on a cold miserable night, and the last thing he wants to do is be exposed to the direction of the weather, and of course we always attacked from the weather side. Surprising as it may sound, on such nights it is very pleasant to be underwater. Just knowing it is cold and miserable on the surface adds to the enjoyment of being in the ocean's “dark embrace”. Under these conditions visibility can sometimes be quite exceptional below the surface. On our approaches from a mile or so away, it was normal for the 'driver' to just barely break the surface long enough to check his bearing to the target. This was done every fifteen minutes or so and was the only time an especially alert sentry had any chance of spotting the attackers. A properly weighted diver can surface so covertly that he would not be seen or heard from as little as five metres away. It is done in a similar fashion to the way a crocodile breaks the surface. As we neared the target we could usually hear the clanking of the ship's anchor chain. It can be incredibly quiet at night with the only sound being the hiss of our set's reducing valve as it steadily supplied its life giving oxygen to the diver. The closer we approached, the louder the hum of the ship's machinery, the noise acting as a beacon in the night. Finally a huge dark outline of a 3,000 ton warship would appear menacingly out of the gloom. At that stage we would normally descend to make our final approach at a depth of about 30 feet, just to minimize the chances of an alert sentry spotting something. Some ship's rigged underwater lighting and at irregular intervals would switch it on, lighting up the hull like centre court at Wimbleton. This was a risk as there was the possibility that we could have already been in and laid charges with light sensitive initiation. Even though we carried dummy limpet mines, we often put small black powder charges in them just to remind the ship's divers that this was a serious business. Mostly they were basic pressure release devices which would activate when an attempt was made to remove them from the hull, but occasionally we made up time pencils with sufficient delays which we intended would go off just as the ship's diving team was making its regular sweeps of the hull.

On another occasion, just as we arrived at the keel of HMAS Stuart, we heard the overhead splash of the ship's diving team entering the water. We thought we might have some fun so we descended several metres and waited in the shadowy depths below the keel. As the 'half necklace' of divers passed above us we swam up and behind them and withdrew our diver's knives, which looked about the size of Bowie knives underwater. Just grabbing hold of one of the diver's fins would give them enough of a shock, but when they turned and saw our gloomy outline their hearts were in their mouths. We knew that dressed in black wetsuits and hoods, with the matt black UBA and its single corrugated black rubber breathing hose disappearing into a black full facemask, gave us the appearance of a lifeform from another planet. The fact that our sets gave off no bubbles at all made the sight even more eerie to a young shallow water diver who just wanted to get back to the warmth and comfort of his messdeck as quickly as possible. It was enough to completely ruin their already uncomfortable and miserable night.

During this period I was awarded my 1st good conduct badge for four years service and henceforth became a “badgeman”. This entitled me to wear a gold flat V shaped badge on the left arm of my dress uniform and with it came a certain increased level of respect from all ranks. The military quite wisely provides this visible display of status as it has serviceman always aspiring to the next level. This always visible display of position in the heirachy may partly explain the difference between the military and civvy street, where a lack of respect exists between different levels of management. To a large extent in the civilian world, people are advanced through who they know rather than actually earning advancement. Sailors are very proud of their rank and take it very seriously as each and every step takes a minimum time and numerous qualifications.