- Contributed byÌý
- Red-Rose
- People in story:Ìý
- Douglas Bowman
- Location of story:Ìý
- Mediterranean
- Background to story:Ìý
- Royal Navy
- Article ID:Ìý
- A2797644
- Contributed on:Ìý
- 30 June 2004
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My grandad, Douglas Bowman, who I never knew, was a sailor in the second world war. He was born in 1919 in West Hartlepool. He became a barber when he left school, but he only ever wanted to join the navy. This he did in 1936, when he was old enough.
He travelled all over the world, to places like Trinidad in the Caribbean, Sierra Leone in Africa, and Nova-Scotia in Canada. In 1939 War broke out, and Able Seaman Bowman was one of the crew of a Royal Naval destroyer (a fighting ship), escorting larger ships across the Atlantic, and later the Mediterranean Sea. He was the ships barber, and also worked on the bow (so he did not get confused with the ‘bow-man’).
In 1941 Douglas Bowman was on board the destroyer ‘Hereward’ when it was bombed and sank in the Mediterranean. He had to swim for several hours, and swallowed a lot of water, before being picked up by an Italian torpedo boat. Many of the crew drowned because they gave up their places on the life-boats to wounded men.
Able Seaman Bowman spent the next year in an Italian Prisoner of war hospital near Sorrento, before being sent home in 1942, in exchange for several Italian prisoners.
He was discharged from the navy in 1942, and had an operation to remove a lung shortly after. He lived many years after the War, and was even the Caretaker at Cockermouth School for a while.
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