IMO, the least glamorous job a NavSig had was message handling. Any message leaving the ship had to go through the message center dayman. Some officer wants 100tonnes of food when we hit port, they scribbled on a piece of paper, handed it to the dayman and the dayman had to make it look pretty to give to the Commanding Officer (CO). If there was a spelling mistake, it had to be corrected before the CO saw it – this was in the days before personal computers so I became pretty efficient with white out and correction tape.
Once the message was all nice and pretty for the CO to look at and approve, there was always the possibility that he could say “NO, send it back and tell that officer to do it again”. The dayman could do a lot of walking around the ship getting one message actually signed and ready to be sent ashore.
The Basic Message Form (BMF) was a sheet that had all sorts of little boxes to fill in when you were making up a message. Some of the obvious ones were
Who was it going to?
Who is it coming from? a very important distinction when you had a senior officer aboard
How important is this message?
How classified is this message?
There were other little boxes that could be filled out and, as a signalman, I had to know what they were, how they were identified and what they all meant.
The message handling section of my course was the most difficult for me and when it came time for that particular test, I did a lot of sweating.
On the day of the test I sat at my desk and did the easy bits first. Then it was panic time, until I noticed a copy of the BMF, with all the boxes filled in, taped to the wall at my elbow.
I passed the test.
Two days later I was called into the office of the CHIEF.
You never want to be called into the office of the CHIEF.
The CHIEF spoke
“There was a copy of the BMF on the wall beside your desk during the test. Did you look at it during the test?”
“No CHIEF” I replied. Like what the heck else was I going to answer?
“Don’t make me have you brought in here again, Carry On”
The CHIEF said don’t do it, I obeyed.
I also passed that test
John Looks Out On Life 