大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War Site by Rachael Champion for Three Counties Action, on behalf of Ronald Wright, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

World War II for me was tragic. During the first Luton air raid I was in an office with another young chap. It was a lovely day and we had the windows open and we could hear the roar of the planes overhead. I remember the chap saying, 鈥淚f they鈥檙e not Germans, I鈥檒l eat my hat!鈥� Then Vauxhall Motors got hit, and we knew they were Germans. One bomb hit the Wellington Public House in Windsor Street. I was a volunteer for the Auxiliary Fire Service and we went straight to the Vauxhall plant to help extinguish the fire. I was unaware that my wife was in the pub 鈥� The Wellington 鈥� and whilst I was fighting flames at Vauxhall she was covered in rubble, but thankfully she wasn鈥檛 killed.

I was called up in 1942, aged 19. I wanted to go into the Navy because my Father had served in the First World War. I was billeted in Skeggy (Skegness) where it was all snow and ice. We couldn鈥檛 train properly because of the weather. We spent the second day kitting out the hall and were suddenly told to get in as a bomb had dropped just 100 yards away. Eight people were killed. We had to fall in and check who was missing. I was a coder and was based on the Isle of Wight for a year on HMS Vectis which was the Roman name for the Isle of Wight.

I worked in the Combined Operations building at Cowes where the Dieppe raid was planned from. We spent a year doing nothing. We used to get sent WREN cipher officers who were housed in a new block of flats. Unfortunately one room had a stained floor which we spent much of our time polishing over and over again to try and remove the stain.

We had a cat called Tiddly P.

My fondest memory whilst at Cowes was when I went to the Baptist Church on Sundays. There was a friendly minister who moved to Portsmouth, which was Ron鈥檚 base. The minister had an open home to Royal Navy officers, so we could just turn up. This friendly minister eventually married Ron and his wife, Jean.

I met my wife at church in Luton in 1944. The Government at the time was trying to promote savings, so as a newly married couple we received ten shillings a week to start with.

After my time on the Isle of Wight I went on to HMS Leeds 鈥� one of the fifty destroyer ships from America. These destroyers were very unstable boats, and unfortunately HMS was no exception.

There were mines in the water. Thirty to fifty ships would make up a convoy and there would be 5-6 convoys a day. If the weather turned foggy we would have to set anchor but when it came to leaving the capstan couldn鈥檛 be raised.

Three days of drinking water could be stored in the boiler. Christmas 1944 was particularly foggy and there was a lot of anchoring and moving off. We started to run out of water at Flanborough Head and so were sent to Harwich. It was still foggy so we had to leave the convoy. We got to Harwich with only half an hour of water left. The steering gear would often break down if the weather was rough so two men had to steer by hand.

We had practise shoots with very old guns and the target was towed by a motor boat. One time when we had just started firing we got an urgent message saying 鈥渟top firing too close鈥�.

We were in the e-boat alley which provided outer screen protection of destroyers. We travelled at 7.5kph/20 knots. Our radar picked up that the boats were e-boats so we fired six star shells to a target. One didn鈥檛 reach and five didn鈥檛 explode.

It wasn鈥檛 a boat鈥t was a buoy!

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