大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the People's War website by Jean Holmes of the Lancshomeguard on behalf of Albert Haslam and added to the site with his permiossion.

At the age of 17 I joined 鈥淒ad鈥檚 Army鈥�, the Local Defence Volunteers, who were nicknamed 鈥淟ook, Duck and Vanish鈥�.

On my eighteenth birthday I was called up and sent to HMS Raleigh, Plymouth for 10 weeks鈥� training as a gunner, a sight-setter. Then back to barracks at Portsmouth. I was immediately sent to Scapa Flow where I joined a ferry ship to take me to join a brand new destroyer HMS Tuscan. We sailed to Gibraltar and escorted HMS Rodney back to Plymouth.

The next day at 2.08 am on 14 April 1943 we hit a mine near Lundy, off the Devon coast. There were no casualties and we didn鈥檛 sink. A Polish destroyer came to our assistance and towed us up to Milford Haven. There I joined a new ship at Birkenhead, HMS Scourge and we escorted Mr Churchill to the USA, carrying out u-boat sweeps. We also escorted Mr Churchill to the D-day beaches when it was safe, and later the King.

We escorted the merchant ships to Murmansk, Russia. They took tanks, guns, engines, and medical supplies. The round trip would take us 11 days but when we returned the stuff would still be on the jetty from our last trip. We would be frozen solid after our watch and curl up to sleep anywhere. We didn鈥檛 dare take our clothes off in case we were called up on deck. Our biggest enemy was the cold and ice.

I had respect for the German navy. Their ships were better than ours and we could have shared the same grave.

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