大象传媒

Submitted by Marc Harding, CSV Media

From: Kenneth Coombs

I was at Emanuel School in Clapham (S London) as the War started. On 1st Sept. 1939 the whole school was evacuated to Petersfield in Hampshire. Battersea Grammar School for Girls was also evacuated to Petersfield and as you can imagine there was some 'unofficial' intermingling going on, being 50-odd miles from our parents!

I was billeted with Mrs. Shinn and her wonderful family, her husband was away in the Navy. I had very happy times there and I still keep in touch with the three surviving children, Patricia (now in Winnipeg), Peter (now in California) and Clive (living the Portsmouth area). Sadly, Cathy the eldest has died.

I left school in December 1941, returmed to London and worked in an estate agent's office.

When I was 17, I volunteered to join the Navy and actually joined on 13th April 1943 at HMS Collingwood, an initial training centre. This involved getting raw recruits 'fit for sea' in ten weeks!

I then did a gunnery course at HMS Excellent and my first ship was a newly-built corvette, HMS Banborough Castle, built in Aberdeen and based in the Clyde for nothern escort duties. We carried out six convoys to Russia, through some very cold and stormy seas!

One of our highest acheivements was sinking a U-Boat in the Arctic Circle, very near the scene of the 'Kursk' Russian submarine tragedy a few years ago. We were lucky in that we survived six convoys with no casualties.

After VE Day, I was posted to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), with the destroyer HMS Petard. I must have carried my lucky streak with me, as the war finished before we saw any action. But we helped quell any problems in Indonesia, as (just like the British!) the Netherlands wanted to to recover their colonies.

A person who was not so lucky is the man who went on to marry my cousin Jeanne, Eric Foulkes. He was held captive by the Japanese from Feb 1942 until Aug 1945, when the war was ended by the atomic bomb drops. However, we was lucky in that he survived the Japanese POW camps and returned to civilian life. Sadly, both Jeanne and Eric are now both deceased, but they had four sons who I still see from time to time.

I was demobbed in July 1946 and returned to London, became an architect and married an opera singer, Patricia. We have two daughters, one is an opera singer (Tamsin) as well and the other is a theatrical agent (Georgina).

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