I slipped into diver training without really noticing it if I am really honest about things. I was going to be in Croatia for a long stretch and would get limited time to do anything remotely useful, unless it was outside the UN envelope, anyone who has served with the UN will likely agree, it is not the most joined-up of enterprises and struggles to do anything effective when the mandate is “intervention” rather than positive action. I had been given a break by my boss Chris, he recognised there wasn’t much to write home about and approved a diver training programme, it had Two pay-offs, firstly down time at Pleso, (the Zagreb airport we were stationed at whilst rotating around 4 outlying regions), could be used productively, not just sitting around drowning in Heineken at the Dutch bar (an impromptu bar in an ISO container where you could get hammered on Heineken if you were invited in by the Dutch Signals contingent), secondly it was a tick in the seniority ladder, organising a recreational programme in a UN deployment, with multi-national access and integration, could not go unnoticed when the promotion board sat…… The local liaison officer Nick Stansfield, a decent enough officer ( a Captain, or “Rupert” to those of us at lower altitude) came along to ensure his box was ticked, and that everything was set-up legitimately…… no one would appreciate a death on this tour, let alone one on R&R…….
So the scouting had already taken place (see the post in general diving on Pula), the contacts had been made to get us into the water, and now we had higher echelon approval! All that remained was to let each unit in Pleso know that there was scuba-diving on offer, and we could see if there was any take-up. I had the BSAC lesson plans from the manual and knocked up some support materials on cards, this was before significant technical slide sets were generally available, and we were stuck, incommunicado with the outside world pretty much. This was in order to limit the communications opportunities significantly bored squaddie’s often make use of, which invariably end up in negative publicity for such international enterprises….(pissing off the senior ranks, who then have to justify themselves in the broader limelight, and often to the world’s press….…) I decided on an advertising campaign and came up with “Try Diving…. you wear rubber and it’s warm, wet and smells of Fish!”.…..which was instantly banned (never understood why tbh…..)and changed to a bulletin, put out to each unit offering “R&R diving courses” to the Finns, the Dutch, the French and the Norwegians we had serving alongside us……..and they came…..
Our first course saw a small take-up from the Dutch Signals Battalion, and a couple of guys from my own 24 field Ambulance support group, including my room mate Phill Talbot, who appears in the Cyprus piece on Vera K elsewhere in this blog. It was a pain doing a day’s work and then delivering a couple of hours on Buoyancy, the laws of depth and pressure, or Dive kit and underwater signals, but it was a distraction from the Dutch bar, which helped keep the blood/alcohol within reasonable levels…..or so I told myself! I didn’t keep a score of how many we trained but it was a steady stream of all ranks, I had Majors down to Privates and everything in between, where there were language issues we asked the guys to bring along an English speaker, and then worked out translations on the technical stuff as we went along….and it worked, the guys passed the academic side before being allowed to book the weekend of practical open water diving in Pula
There was an amazing co-incidence that had taken place earlier in this tour which had passed me by completely…. I had been outside the paymasters office, about to get some local currency, (which we took as Deutschmarks as the taxi-drivers gave a far better rate for the German Mark than we got for local Croat Dinars….) and had overheard a heated exchange between the paymaster and the Officer Commanding (OC) a woman at that time, unusually. I can’t remember her name but the paymaster was a Captain, one Ned Middleton, who would become pretty famous for his Red Sea and Maltese wreck-diving books, and someone I got to know a little later on in life. Ned called me in to the office, looked at me and said, “…….and you heard…..Fcuk all….. right Son….” to which I answered, no idea what you mean Sir! which was obviously the right answer as I escaped with my Deutschmarks and, later in life, I got a couple of Ned’s books, autographed 1st editions, and a better explanation of the event (and a bit of background too) when I related the incident back to him. Ned’s a top bloke and I thoroughly enjoy his books, which can only be described as “un-paralleled” in terms of accuracy and research, I strongly recommend them, brilliant reading!
The skills tests went well, there wasn’t a single failure throughout the whole tour, which was a bit of a miracle to be honest as diving isn’t for everyone, but it seems to suit military personnel of all nations very well. The bay was a superb training area, with shallow beautifully clear water. A little further out there were rock outcrops with shoals of small fish everywhere and it got a little deeper too topping out around 15m to the extent we dived it. I regularly took part in the skills tests and was often used as a demonstration dummy too, I got wet, we had fun, there was even a bar on site which opened conveniently enough in the evenings, and served from mid-morning at weekends. The place was perfect for what we wanted and after an afternoon intro on arrival, and a day of training and skills tests we followed up with a couple of Rib dives a little further out from the bay on day Two of each weekend course, the guys loved it…..and so did I!
There were various dives to complete out from the Dive Centre off the quay-side, we even found a Brass Shell timer from an old WWII bomb intended for the Pula port, the casing itself sat off to one side 5 or 6m or so, probably still full of the high explosive packed inside it after decades underwater…. I logged 11 dives out of Punta Verudella, several shore dives, and 6 RIB dives in all, the majority being 10-20m with 2 over 25m and a couple into the “washing Machine” mentioned in the caves and cavern section of this blog. Every dive was great fun, the headland is rocky outcrops, with pine trees all the way to the sea, giving a most picturesque view from any location around the Murgon’s bay and offering plenty of tunnels and swim-through’s which are always enjoyable. Although the fish-life was there, it was generally smaller, pretty coloured fish, I saw my first John Dory and my first Spanish Dancer in the bay and always loved the myriad tiny fish darting away from us as we approached, I was lucky to have fallen on the right place at the right time and Croatia endeared itself to me through my diving there, in Punta Verudella
A little later in the year I took a couple of second time divers down the peninsula a little, a couple of kilometers or so, just to try a shore dive, November of 1992. The viz was a little less than usual, we were in off the shore and round the headland a little, so as the light dimmed in late afternoon things were just a little gloomier. It was a good dive, we swam around the rocky headland and down to 8 or 9m just enjoying the fading light, and the independence of a different location, a bit of a minor adventure given we didn’t take torches. That was a mistake really as we nearly got run over by a returning fisherman in his small skiff, luckily he saw us waving our arms before things got too close, but it served as a reminder not to take anything, including daylight for granted!
All in all we ran 7 weekends over the 7 months we were in Croatia and I reckon we trained 20 or so multi-national soldiers from at least 5 different countries, not a bad start to a career in diver training, and not one I had ever intended embarking upon. I said at the beginning of this piece that I slipped into training, that is true, but I actively sought out the next steps, I enjoyed being part of the training programme I had set up in Croatia, I couldn’t sign off the divers myself though, that fell to Vlado. The qualifications the lads earned were CMAS rather than BSAC awards, equivalent and just as legitimate, some might say even more “international”, but on my return to the UK I asked my DO to let me join some of the training programmes there, something I would eventually take over and run myself………and it started in Croatia, in clear Blue warm waters….
