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I was just 14 at the start of the war, and naturally it was a big thing, a great adventure. In our form at school we all tried hard to find ourselves little things to do to look important, but when we got fed up with fire watching, and nobody lit a fire, a load of us joined the civil Defence, or Air Raid Precautions as it was known then (ARP) so that we could have a nice silver badge, which I’ve still got. We became cycle messengers, to give a communication contact between the various warden posts around the town, in case the telephone system was bombed. We put up with this for a little while, hoping for an adventure, but didn’t get bombed. So having fallen out with my eldest brother, who was a Sergeant in the Home Guard, being in a reserved occupation, I found myself enrolled at his insistence in the Home Guard. They trained me to be a signaller, to use telephone, radio- and in those days we used to communicate using flags by day and lamps by night, very ancient, very pre-war, only that was all we’d got.

But I got fed up with this too, because the Germans never did land. We used to go regularly up to Arley on the Severn, where the main water supply for the Midlands was piped across from the Elan Valley. All the platoon went into Arley Woods trapping rabbits to add to the pot, and the two youngest members (of which I was one) were expected to parade up and down this aqueduct, right through the night, with a rifle and five rounds of ammunition, to fight off the German paratroops when they landed. Thank God, they didn’t! But the Home Guard, despite Dad’s Army and all that stuff, were in our own little way, quite professional. I won’t say we could’ve single-handed beaten the German horde- but we would’ve had a go (and probably got shot in the process!).

I was in a job which would’ve become a reserved occupation when I was 18- but that was no good, there was a war going on and we wanted to get in it. So a little while after this a couple of us disappeared under the guise of being sick, went to Worcester and promptly enrolled ourselves in the Navy, God help ‘em. We walked around with no clothes on, to get medicals from various medical officers, and walked into one booth for a hernia test and found it was being conducted by a Wren! Well, that didn’t go down with young lads in those days- nowadays we’d have loved it, but not in those days. And then I was told ‘You’re far too young, go home and we’ll send for you’. So I made an excuse of suddenly being better to my mother, who never knew I’d disappeared to Worcester anyway, and sat back.

When I was 17 the Navy suddenly sent me a letter to report to Butlin’s Holiday camp in Skegness and become a sailor. My poor old mother never knew till the day she died how I came to be a reserved occupation and called up for the Navy! From then on I went through the normal training things, learned not to be sick, and learned to appreciate the rum ration, and do what I was told (which didn’t help!) You get used to not being sick- either that or starve- but even now, if I go on a long cruise, in my first three days I’d be ill. But after that, you either want to die or get over it. So we got over it. And of course, if you were sick you didn’t eat, and that didn’t go down very well either. As we got longer and longer service, we were getting new recruits coming to us, and they were all sick, so we ate more! We lived in a mess of about 30 men, under a leading hand, and two of the mess were on duty every day to go to the galley, draw the food for the mess, and serve it up. So the first two cooks went off to the galley to get the food, while the other old hands started talking about the most unpleasant things they could think of- bacon on bits of string, and all sorts of disgusting things- and watched how many of the new young soldiers were disappearing! And then we divided food for 30 men into probably about 20! Which did help - I got quite fat then.

It is said that the Navy didn’t conscript during the war, they didn’t need to, but of course you had the benefit of a new uniform, which was tailored for you, very good, and the rum ration, and the tobacco ration, a pound a month, for a shilling. It was said of course, that the main recruitment aid in the Navy was the very nice blue collar. I don’t know who started it, it was a good idea- but this rumour spread around that young girls who touched this blue collar got lucky. But with hindsight, knowing a little bit more about life than I did then, I don’t know quite how lucky they were! As for any girls getting lucky by touching my collar- I didn’t stay long enough to find out. Suffice it to say that I do still go down to Portsmouth, and I have been to Malta and Cyprus and places like that without being accosted by an elderly person saying ‘I remember you’- so I think I must’ve kept my collar covered up! I certainly didn’t get lucky, so I assume they didn’t.

After training I was transferred into the Fleet Air Arm, as an aircraft mechanic, and promptly went to sea in carriers. The big fleet carriers were far too fast for convoy work- they were there to sail with the fleets and provide air cover for the battleships and warships. Convoys were just trundling along with the old coal fired merchant ships which were just dug up from anywhere, at about 8-10 knots, if you were lucky. Because of the size of the Atlantic and the limited range of protecting aircraft, there was a great big gaping hole in the safety net, with the middle of the Atlantic not covered by air protection- and that’s where we were losing a lot of our ships. A terrific amount of our ships were going down. And the Americans had a bright idea- they always have bright ideas- and produced what they called ‘escort carriers’ which were really converted merchant ships. They’d trundle along quite happily at 8-10 knots and we could fly off a squadron of aircraft- rather than two squadrons on the bigger ones- and take our own air cover. This was of course the start of the failure of the U-boat war, because suddenly we got air cover 50 miles ahead of the convoy, and we didn’t get so much trouble with them. But it got a bit boring, travelling between Halifax at one end of the pond, and Liverpool at the other end of the pond, refuel, re-vittle, re-arm, and get out again, taking the empty ship back.

We didn’t see very much of the end of the war. With the Fleet Air Arm your squadrons go onto shore for training, and I did a spell on training squadrons, and then went briefly to Australia when the European war was less important. For our naval side a lot of the convoy work was easier — certainly the North Atlantic, the Arctic convoys were not funny- anyone who was on that I feel very sorry for. But the war in the Pacific was hotting up so they shipped a load of us out there and the Navy started producing a system similar to the American CBs, where you had naval personnel landing on a chain of islands in the Pacific, preparing a temporary aerodrome, flying the carrier aircraft off onto the ground, operating them from there and hedgehopping up the island. That was the American system, which was very good. And we started to do that, so a lot of Fleet Air Arm personnel were being shipped out there to form these mobile naval air bases. But by the time I got out there the Lords Commission for Admiralty said- in their wisdom- ‘We’ve got you here but we don’t really want you’. So I more or less turned round and came back!

Apart from a short time out there, it was mainly travel from a naval air base in the north of Scotland to one in West Wales: the pretty way. And West Wales is where I finished my service, in 1946. I did intend to stay on- but after a difference of opinion with a Royal Marine military policeman and a naval Master of Arms, I decided I would get out while I had the chance. And that’s exactly what I did. I came back home, picked up my old job as an engineer, and there I was. End of war, end of story. I vaguely remember the day it ended. When the news was out I was shore based at the time and leave was given to both watches. Don’t think we were alcoholic- we weren’t- but you either went dancing, went to the cinema, went for a drink or got yourselves organised, and I went for a drink. I don’t really remember too much about it. But I could always get my own clothes off and get in my hammock without falling out, which is something! You try getting out of one of those jumpsuits (nowadays they have a zip down the front, so it’s easy!). Naval ratings had an initial issue of clothing, and then a little matter of threepence a day kit upkeep allowance. So if you wore your trousers out you bought a new pair of trousers out of your own pocket- you were paid for that. You could go to the stores- what we call the slops- and get uniform, which was not very nice, it didn’t fit. So the alternatives were either to buy a bolt of cloth and get it made up by a tailor, or go to Jeeves, as most of us did, and have it made to fit. It was said that if you could take your own jumper off it was too loose! That’s another reason for not eating too much food of course- it was too expensive! But I don’t think I ever slept in my jumper- there were always a couple of friends who were prepared to help you off with it. It was a bit like peeling a banana the wrong way round! I’ve had a hum drum life, but it was just as humdrum in the Navy, it wasn’t at all exciting, which we thought it would be. I came in at 17, went out at just over 21, a much wiser man.

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