A Morse code birthday blessing for John Daniel Clark – because the wartime Royal Navy signalman and telegraphist’s second language is Morse code. He still taps it, speaks it, thinks it – even 80 years after the war. And now, as he turns 100 on Anzac Day, April 25, the new centenarian is saluted with “dits and dahs”.
For three years aboard that beast of a heavy cruiser, the 10,000-ton, 70-gun HMS Suffolk during the dark days of Word War II, it was Clark’s duty to shadow Hitler – in a windowless radio cabin trawling for active Morse transmissions from enemy territory, and to transmit critical messages on enemy troop movements and positions, weather and tactical orders.
“Four hours on, eight off, round the clock. You started thinking in Morse,” said the Leading Signalman when The Weekend Sun visited last week. Probably dreaming, too, in Morse. Now it’s a party piece. The 100-year-old can still chatter in Morse, mimicking a Morse key by clicking his tongue and lips.
“Dit-dit-dit-dit dit dit-dah-dit-dit dit-da-dit-dit dah-dah-dah – hullo”
He likes that, thinks it’s funny.
Dreadful
But death was always near. Sometimes, as Clark indicates with his fingers, “just the half-inch thickness of the plate steel hull” away. The Suffolk was headed to Gibraltar when it came under attack. “Dreadful noise. You could hear and feel the German Dornier’s big bombs exploding right outside.” They missed, but the 10,000-ton ship heaved and tossed. “We were really rocking.”
When he picked up distress calls from stricken ships that had struck mines or were under attack, he would locate other vessels that could assist. It was demanding, exacting, crucial stuff. Lives depended on short and long beeps – dots and dashes.
Teenager at war – Royal Navy signalman and telegraphist John Clark off HMS Suffolk. Photo / Supplied
Today at Clark’s Arcadia Manor Care Home in Tauranga’s Edgecumbe Rd, the early sun was beaming through the lounge window, giving him an aura. Uncanny, but not inappropriate for a lifelong devout Christian who’d been blessed with a “beautiful and rich” high tenor voice, often heard singing sacred psalms in the Anglican churches of Essex.
Clark had watched his father’s struggles after being badly injured in the Battle of the Somme in World War I. “I’d seen enough suffering. I’d think of poor soldiers scrambling out of the trenches to meet the foe. I didn’t want any bayonetting.”
John Clark honed his morse skills as a sea cadet. Photo / Supplied
So a fresh-faced Clark volunteered for the Royal Navy, which seized on this sea cadet’s signalling skills. He was deployed to Iceland to join the Suffolk as it patrolled the fiords – a choirboy pitched into the murderous turmoil of Hitler’s war.
Sheet of flame
“I was walking messages on the deck when the Suffolk’s 8-inch guns went off right beside me. An enormous, deafening roar and I was swallowed up by this rolling sheet of flame.”
He was left blackened and choking. The memory’s vivid. But he insists he never worried or cared.” Never!” Even in the crazy cold of the North Atlantic Arctic Circle. “You never thawed. You just kept putting on more gear. The cold was ghastly, miserable.” He shivers at the thought.
The leading signalman’s medal haul. Photo / David Hall
“But if you keep on a good line with God, he will never leave or forsake you.” And in Clark’s case, He didn’t. In 1946, after the Axis powers capitulated, Clark’s faith delivered him safely home.
The “jack” would then swap his sailor’s Achilles cap for the policeman’s custodian helmet on London’s docks. Then he would swap one police force, and one country, for another.
In 1954 Clark, his wife and two daughters arrived in Auckland one day and the next he was patrolling notorious K Road. That was an eye-opener. “Rough. Lots of drunks.” Lots of soliciting too. He became the proselytising policeman – “assigned to look after the Sallies as they fought vice with hymns at one end of K Road”. He would then move into security work.
Enter Grace
Now he’s sitting here in Tauranga on the brink of 100. Steely blue eyes, an almost-flawless complexion, not so much as a wrinkle and white, wavy hair preened to a naval nicety. His chest is dripping with medals. But what’s telltale is the sparkly gold band on the fourth finger of his right hand.
He lost two wives before reconnecting with Grace, who he first met 60 or 70 years ago. Grace decided the 95-year-old was handsome enough to “go out” with and then marry. Grace’s son married them. It’s a lovely love story. Of course they hold hands, “have a good kiss” and a hug.
John and Grace will be at today’s Anzac Day service on his birthday. The following day there’s a family “fuss-making” for the centenarian.
