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This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from Reading on behalf of Les Goodenough and has been added to the site with his permission. Les Goodenough fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I joined the Royal Navy in February 1941, stationed on the HMS Collinwood at Fareham. Just as I got up, the fellas inside said, "You've got two minutes to change your mind." As soon as I got in the gates, the petty officer's attitude changed — it was suddenly all regulations. I’ll always remember my introduction to the navy as my first meal, which was grease, floating on top of stew.

We had 12 weeks training, which I enjoyed as I was a good footballer, and had played for Reading boys. When I joined the forces, I played for all the forces, and all the ships. When it was the last draught for Italy, I played for all services area teams. Through playing footie, I had a reasonably good life. After training, we joined the HMS Eagle at Liverpool, taking the Ark Royal's place in the Mediterranean at Gibraltar. Our job was to escort convoys on their way to Malta. This happened every 10 days, and we’d take the Spitfires so far, and then they'd go the rest of the way.

In the last convoy when Malta was running out of food, the assembled mass consisted of 14 ships that had capitulated, along with 4 aircraft carriers, 2 battleships, 8 cruisers, 46 destroyers, and 1 ocean going tug, which was for repairs. We were sunk 2 days out from Gibraltar. The boat that sunk us was a U73, and we were hit by four torpedoes at 1:15pm. At 1:21, the Eagle sunk 22500 tons, went down in 6 minutes. We lost 160 personnel. The water all came in as it hit the mess deck, and the ship went over on its side — it basically just capsized. We had to go, otherwise the envoy would've starved. We were picked up by a destroyer, the HMS Lookout, and went back to Gibraltar. At first we were told that nobody can go ashore because you've got no clothes to go ashore in, so we went ashore in old boots and so on. We came home on the air carrier HMS Victorious.

We went back to Rosyth in Scotland, boarded the train, which took us all the way into the barracks at Portsmouth. We were given a new uniform and oil skin, and a chip to go home for 14 days. When I got back to Reading, at St Mary's Butts, I went to get on the bus, but couldn't get on since it was munitions only and the conductor said no. However, I was lucky since the girls got me on.

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