Whilst I was serving, matelot language and humour around homosexuality knew no bounds. There must have been dozens of derogative terms for homosexual men. It was all very amusing (if you weren’t gay), but as someone once observed to me – you develop a lot of language around things that you care about. So, maybe wasn’t not so funny after all.
When I was promoted to Lieutenant Commander, I found myself with a new suite of duties. The Duty Lieutenant Commander is the Commanding Officer’s representative outside of the working day. Before taking up this responsibility, one was required to read two Defence Council Instructions (DCIs) – the ‘Green DCI’, which gave you instructions about what to do if you came across drug-taking, and the ‘Pink DCI’, which included similar instructions about what to do if you came across two men engaged in homosexual activities (obviously, this was before the practice was legalised in the Service. It was said that if you ever had to refer to either of these publications, you were almost bound to end up being Court Martialled – it was almost impossible to get everything perfectly right. Luckily I never found out.