大象传媒

I joined the Royal Navy in 1940, aboard the HMS Scott, a surveyor come minesweeper. Apart from making charts for the mine laying fleet, we would sweep in front of convoys. The man in charge of the mine laying fleet was Captain Saunders. He was captain of HMS Venture a special ship made for mine laying.

The other ships were all converted merchant ships, based in Kyle of Lochalsh Scotland. The Scott would sail out of Kyle late at night and be at sea four or five weeks. U-boats were often in packs of five or more, and we had to be closed up on our guns most of our trip.

Then we were back in harbour for a week, while the charts were made up for the fleet,which was done by the Admiralty.
We did attack a U-Boat and held it on the sea bed, and dropped all our depth charges to make sure. Then made our way to base Kyle. We needed a boiler clean every three months, and got a weeks leave.

So I went back home to London where I was blitzed every night and one time had a 500lb bomb drop outside my house. Amazing it did not go off. It was removed by Lieutenant Davis and his bomb squad. This was the man that removed the bomb from St Pauls Cathredral.Thank God we got our home back!

I was getting fed up with too much sea time and so I volunteered for Combined Operations. However I found on returning from leave a note put on my bunk for me to report to the Foreign Drafting Office. I knew this would be far east drafting, so to dodge this I had to volunteer for hazardous work.

I soon found out what it was all about, and ended up in the Royal Navy Commandos. They took my uniform away and gave me a khaki battle dress. They taught me how to cut steel with plastic explosives, and use magnetic charges.

I also went to HMS Dolphin to learn how to use a Davis Escape Apparatus. Only we didn't use it for escaping, we were to dive with it. Fitness training consisted of blowing up hedgehogs and steel obstacles on the beach.

D-Day came along and before I knew it i was changing into a rubber diving suit, climbing down into a LCA (Landing Craft Assault) and heading for Sword Beach to clear a gap for the Royal Marines, Commandos and Canadian Commandos. It was all going well until aa German sniper staarted takng pot shots at us, but then the commandos came in. Before that shells were flying over our heads from warshiops and I prayed that none of them fell short.

We were glad to see the Royal Engineers come ashore with the bulldozer. All we had to do is remove the teller mine from the obstacles. By this time it took in the mines under water, and the bulldozer to pull them out as the tide was coming in.. We were getting very tired and were vey thankful the landings were going so well. After D-Day I was sent to the Far East.

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