大象传媒

This is one of the stories collected on the 25th October 2003 at the CSV's Make a Difference Day held at 大象传媒 Manchester. The story was typed and entered on to the site by a CSV volunteer with kind permission of Fred Bailey.

From Teacher to Mine Sweeper.

I was a teacher in London when war broke out. Little did I know that by the age of twenty three I would be in the navy as a Signalman. My wife and I were evacuated to the Forest of Dean before I was conscripted, but from that moment on my life changed.
First of all I was in Edinburgh on the East Coast for six months and then in Holyhead on the King Alfred for another six month period. As my training intensified I became a mine sweeper on the HMS Ross in Swansea. My wife visited by train as much as possible while I was still in the British Isles, but then the real work began as we escorted ships from New York!
Back in Britain I was on the Pyladies as during the day we mine swept from Southampton to Mullady Bay. Then in the evening we would protect the Air Force by being in charge of the Anti Aircraft guns.
On one attack near Cannes in France my ship was torpedoed. We lost eleven men and I had to jump into the water. For two hours I stayed in the sea waiting to be picked up, but would it be friend or enemy? As you can imagine it was an intense few hours. Thank God one of our ships arrived first and picked me and the other survivors up!
This was one of my most frightening moments. Another occurred on the East Coast. We were taking a group of ships to London when we came under attack from German E-Boats. One ship was blown up, it looked like a sheet. Bonfire night had nothing on this! E-Boats would come up really close to the ship so we couldn鈥檛 shoot them. We had to change our designs after this attack.
The Germans were even clever enough to change their attack plans to the time when we would be changing watch. We would have to vary our watch times. We were always thinking on our feet. My wife would try to be by my side through all of this and we saw each other as much as possible. She was my rock during all these trials and tragedies.

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