“We were just lying there thinking of going to sleep,” he says. But then the officer of the watch came round, with the petty officer, to do inspections ­– the former of whom Biddlecombe had previously had sex with. “He saw us and tried to shove the [petty] officer back out but [the petty officer] also had a torch and said ‘there’s something there’. On came the lights.”

In an instant, Biddlecombe knew what this meant. “I got up and said, 'Right, that’s it, we’re caught, get on with it.'”

But he did not know what the procedure was; that first they would be questioned separately by their superiors, or that it would not only be an interrogation. “They said, ‘We want the names of the people you’ve slept with.’”

Without supplying these names, Biddlecombe was told, he would be given five years in prison. But if he gave the names, the sentence would be reduced to 12 months. Initially, Biddlecombe refused, uncomfortable about incriminating anyone. But then, he says, “My divisional officer said, ‘It’s OK because all they’ve got to do is to deny anything happened.’”

There was an army officer who Biddlecombe had been with ashore, so, trusting the advice from his officer, he told them about this, although he did not know the officer’s name.

He also did not know that as part of the investigating procedure he and the man he was caught with would then be taken to the sick bay, and that the ship’s doctor, with officers present, would perform an examination on the 20-year-old so intrusive that he would begin to mentally disassociate from what was happening.

“It was a metal cone,” he says, blankly, as if trying to reject the memory, “which they put in." He looks away. “Then they pulled the handles apart.”

Biddlecombe does not elaborate at first. He starts to change the subject, reverting back to when they were caught, before eventually returning to what happened in the sick bay.

“I had to grit my teeth and close my mind down,” he says. “It was as painful as you can imagine. A gross violation of me.” After looking inside him, they took the metal cone out.

“They said there was bruising which could not have been caused by anything other than sex.”

He begins to describe the experience as humiliating but is frustrated at the inadequacy of the word and, unable to conjure a better one, gives up. With a look of detachment he adds, “I tried to cope.”

The other man, he says, came out screaming. He was shouting, too: “I’m not a fucking queer.”

The law did not care. The government, the judicial system, the navy, and society generally did not recognise sexual orientations or identities, only behaviour that transgressed the sexual norm.

Next was the court martial: Military law mirrored criminal law in this matter and so the following day, the two men stood trial in Fort St. Angelo, Malta.

Biddlecombe thinks he pleaded not guilty to the charges – gross indecency and buggery – but he cannot remember. He describes the process with such disconnection, in part because they were barely questioned at all (“you stand there, you’re charged”), it is as if he wasn’t even there.

“The lawyers were doing all the chatting,” he says. “It was very strange – I’d never been to court before.”

The charge of buggery was reduced in court to attempted buggery, through lack of evidence, but both men were found guilty of this and of gross indecency. As expected, they were given 12 months. Biddlecombe’s papers were docked, the corners cut, removing any references and in turn little hope of rehabilitating himself on the outside world.

The other man was immediately sent back to England to serve his sentence. But Biddlecombe was kept in a military prison in Malta – the jail with the sandstone walls. He was held there to await the trial of the army officer he had told his superior about. Even without a name supplied, the military authorities had deciphered who it was and captured him.

During that month, in a cell measuring 8 feet by 6, all Biddlecombe could hear at night were the guards – a tranquillity that was later not afforded him. In daytime he and the other inmates were set to work, making football nets. Sometimes they could stretch their legs in the courtyard.

But it was here in his cell in Malta, that after that first month, the warden unlocked his door one morning to deliver the news about the army officer that would stay with him forever.

“He said, ‘Pack your bags, you’re going home.’ And I said, ‘Well, what about the trial?’ And he said, ‘No trial. The man shot himself. Blew his brains out.’”

The news itself hit like a bullet.

“I sat down on my bunk in my cell and cried my eyes out,” he says. Although he tried to distract himself with packing, it could not stop the torrent of taunting thoughts.

“I thought, If I hadn’t said anything he would still be alive. It’s my fault. I never thought in my wildest dreams that someone would do that because of me, that a man would kill himself because he slept with me for one night.”

“It was all mixed up: I thought, Why would he do that? Life being gay is not that bad, you can cope – at least, I can cope, why couldn’t he?”

Biddlecombe tries to conjure an explanation.

“Being a military man, a military family, 60 odd years ago, if his family found out he was gay… It would be shame. He couldn’t hack it.”

He looks around the room, scanning back and forth as if still looking for reasons.

“I have tried hard not to think about it,” he says. “A lot of it is blocked out. It was my only way of coping.” But then he stops and looks straight ahead again.

“That man’s death I have carried with me for the last 61 years.”

Back in England, he was sent to Shepton Mallet prison in Somerset. Built in the 17th century, it was originally for civilian use, but from 1945 it became a military jail, housing nearly 300 inmates, some court-martialled for murder. It also contained an execution block.