大象传媒

At the outbreak of war I was at school. I remember the Prime Ministers speech on the out break of war and I joined the Village firewatch group until I was 17 when I joined the Home Guard.
I joined the Army in 1943 and after 6 months intensive training I got my posting to HMS Dundonald which was a combined operations camp in Scotland.
After more training I was posted to HMS Largs in Birkenhead.
We went to Portsmouth for 5 weeks - fully operational, and sailed out of Portsmouth early afternoon 5th June 1944 into the Solent. We then sailed for Normandy at 2130hrs and were briefed on what was going to happen. At 5.30am the following morning we missed a torpedo by 10feet. The beaches were being shelled and the troops went in. Ours was the Headquarters ship controlling Sword beach - the most Easterly.
We were at Normandy for 3 weeks. From there we went to the Mediterranean were we controlled the invasion of the South of France on 15th August.
In early 1945 we sailed for the Far East to Ceylon then onto the Burmese coast where we took part in the invasion of Rangoon.
Following that we went to Malaya via Ceylon.
Eventually I left the ship at Bombay and joined the East India Command until the end of hostilities.
I was eventually demobbed in 1947.

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