大象传媒

This story is taken from an interview with George and Peggy Lapsley, and has been added to the site with their permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The interviewer was David Reid, and the transcription was by Bruce Logan.
====

I was called HO, which is Hostilities Only. You see, in NI there was no conscription. So when I joined up, I joined up as a volunteer and I became HO, Hostilities only. Once the war was over I was supposed to go back to my own home. But it took quite some time. I had a very interesting time on my way back, because that鈥檚 when I went to India. I sailed back from Bombay in a ship which we had requisitioned. But the Indians, the Indian navy, had had it before, and it was full of rats. We put a cat down and the arts ate the cat. We had great trouble getting rid of them.

We sailed home. On the way home we were in Malta, we had a great time at Malta. Then we went to Gibraltar, and we met Australians. I think it was HMAS Shropshire. And they were going home from Europe. One of them foolishly said, 鈥淭here鈥檚 the bloody Poms are going home. We鈥檝e been fighting their war for them鈥�.
Some of us had been 2 yrs in Burma. So one thing led to another, and there was about a thousand in jail. My daughter-in law is from Gibraltar. She heard about this from some of the Gibraltarians who remember this, the Australians and the British fighting hand to hand to see who was fighting which war.

I got home, and the first sign I saw of England was the white cliffs of Dover. You hear an awful lot of stories about the white cliffs of Dover, but my heart turned over when I saw them

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.