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The war for us did not immediately end after the second atom bomb was dropped. Although the Japanese were suiing for peace, we could not relax because no-one knew how many Japanese units had been notified, and how many would continue to fight.

News filtered through to us in dribs and drabs. We heard that the Aussies had found a prison camp at Sumba Island full of women and children abandoned by their guards. The Japanese had left in a small merchantman which was eventually stopped in the Banda Sea by an American cruiser and escorted into Darwin.

Then we were ordered to proceed to the island of Hainan to pick up and Australian ‘coast watcher’. He had been in hiding on the island for two and a half years charting shipping and air traffic movement in and out of Hong Kong and the mainland. He was a remarkable and very brave man who did an incredibly dangerous job moving around the island to his different vantage points, avoiding Japanese troops in an effort to bring vital intelligence to the Allies.

We took him to Hong Kong, sailing into the harbour which was full of ships preparing for the Japanese surrender. We tied up alongside two other destroyers, one of them commanded by Philip Mountbatten, later to become Prince Philip.

The 9 destroyers in the harbour were given the job of touring the islands of the Far East to ensure that everyone was told that the war had ended. As a result we sailed to Fiji, Tonga and the Cook and Society Islands. This work and the novelty of peacetime duties kept us busy right up until November 1946, when we were finally ordered home.

From the Pacific we headed to Panama, through the canal into the Caribbean calling at Jamaica and the Bahamas. During this time the ship was at ‘cruise watches’, a pleasant change from the past few years.

We sailed the Atlantic the set course north-east for home, and arrived back in Plymouth on the 4th of January, 1947 with a large ‘paying-off’ pennant flying from the masthead. Most of the crew went ashore into barracks. We left the Wilton for the last time and walked into a week of medicals and paper checks, receiving ration books, 2 civvy suits, shoes, a hat and — inevitably — an umbrella, before being officially demobilised.

Demob was freedom! Now at last for us the war had finally ended and we boarded the navy transport which would take us to Plymouth station and a train home. I had a month’s pay plus leave, a gratuity cheque and prize money from the ship we captured. I headed back to Newcastle upon Tyne, to work, marriage and reality. It was February 1947. I was alive, and my sea travels had come to an end.

As related to Steve Lamb - Gateshead Council@Blaydon

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