Bush was instantly the naval officer once again. “Thanks for the call. Now I want you to get the message out to the ship’s company. Initiate the emergency recall system and put out a warning order to the O Group, that’s all Heads of Departments. I want them all in the Ops Center at 0800 with a report on their preparations for departure for sea and where the problems are. Got that?”

“Aye aye, Sir,” responded the Duty Officer.

Bush put down the phone by his bedside and pulled on his working rig of dark-blue cotton, flame-retardant trousers, and shirt with the three gold rings of a commander on his epaulets. Kissing his still-drowsy wife farewell, with the promise that he’d be back to sort out his kit, he’d turned off the light and yet hesitated for a moment until he saw her roll over and, doubtless, go straight back to sleep—like him, she had long ago learned to put up with these late-night interruptions and frequent absences.

Thank God for Jacky, he thought to himself with a deep surge of love and affection. She had not volunteered for the Navy, but without her long-suffering selflessness and countless others like her, where would the Navy be? He let himself out of the front door of their small, three-bedroomed, semi-detached married quarter without disturbing the sleeping boys and got into the ancient VW Polo they were just able to afford as a second car, before driving the twenty minutes into Portsmouth Naval Base.

And now, as he surveyed the deck of Queen Elizabeth—“longer than the Houses of Parliament” as the official blurb liked to emphasize, and the pride of the Royal Navy—Bush was satisfied that preparations for putting to sea were under way as effectively as they could be. “Lucky we were preparing to deploy to sea next week anyway,” he muttered to himself, as he watched dockside cranes lifting palleted loads of supplies, ammunition and all the materiel of war onto trailers on the flight deck. From there they were pulled by small tractors onto the elevators and lowered to the hangar below to be stowed.

Quite where some of this war materiel should be stowed, and in what order it would be needed, would require guesswork, experience and common sense. However, Bush knew that nearly all the more senior officers, and certainly all the senior ratings, would have had some experience of war-fighting conditions in Britain’s many adventures in the Middle East, which meant there was no shortage of the latter two on board the vast ship.