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This story was submitted to the People's War website by Susie, on behalf of Robert. Roberty fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

After being involved in rescuing a damaged submarine (see ‘Submarine Rescue’), we had to return to Melbourne for repair to the damage we had sustained during this operation.

When in Melbourne the Australian people gave us a present of a new cold water system, as well as sending lots of food on board that we hadn’t seen for ages. As a thank you to the Australian people we got a hold of a hall in Williams Town, Melbourne and threw a big party and dance. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Prince Philip was second in command of The HMS Whelp, under Commander Norfolk. Both were present at the party and the mayor of the town, there to give a speech, didn’t know who to give precedence to as Prince Philip’s picture had been in the paper!

Shortly after this we were sent back to Sydney as the Battleship HMS Duke of York had arrived carrying Commander in Chief Lord Fraser and we were to escort him to the island of Guam.

This was a few days prior to Hiroshima and the Americans had gone daft as if the war was over already. From Guam we headed For Tokyo, HMSs Whelp and Wager escorting the Duke of York. The HMS King George V sailed to Tokyo Bay. We were the first British ships to arrive there.

The American battleship Missouri was where everything happened. The Whelp had Japanese emissaries on board to take over to the Missouri so there was no celebrating on board, all we could do was get the paper or listen to the celebrations on the radio. Great times were had elsewhere but not in Japan.

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