大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War Website by Linda Kaye of 大象传媒 GMR on behalf of Peter Body and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was in the navy from January 1942 to April 1946. For the first year I was on "The Queen Mary" carrying troops. I was a coder, part of the wireless staff. For the following year I was on "The Sunflower", which was a Corvette on the North Atlantic Convoys.

At the end of the war I was seconded to the Greek Navy. The ship was called "Lemnos", which was a landing ship for tanks. On VE day we were at sea between Ancona in Eastern Italy and Trieste in the north. We arrived in Trieste the day after VE day to find ourselves in another war situation, as there was a threatened conflict between the British and New Zealand forces and the Yugoslav partisans. This was luckily solved by the New Zealanders lining their tanks up on the partisans.

When we went ashore it was very nerve- wracking, the situation was menacing as the partisans were wandering about, some of them as young as 12, firing rifles at random.

We were there for about 2 weeks and then sailed off to Greece. We then stayed in Barracks in Malta for a few months and came back home for de-mob at the end of January 1946.

I have good and bad memories of the navy, but on the whole I think it did me good. I remember going ashore in New York and Sydney etc. having a riotous time with the lads (and the girls!). We were a bit of a novelty in New York, as there weren't many of us British sailors there, so we had our pick!

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