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This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Deena Campbell from WM CSV Actiondesk on behalf of George Edmund Long and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Long fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

How and when my service in the Royal Navy began and ended.

Living in the centre of Birmingham, enduring continuous nights in the air raid shelter during the German raids on the town, going to work each morning seeing the fresh bomb damage and wondering if any of my work mates would not becoming to work again, I volunteered and joined the Royal Navy on the 18th November 1940, following a night spent in the air shelter. (The following night the city had its heaviest air raid of the war). Leaving home for the first time, it was not easy saying goodbye to my family, seeing my father with tears in his eyes for the first time, and waving to my mother as I disappeared round the corner of the street, will always remain in my memory.

At the recruiting centre, I was given four days advanced pay and sent with six other recruits told to go to New Street Station and get a train to Portsmouth. We found the station had been hit with bombs during the night air raid and so we were instructed to go to Snow Hill Station to get a train.

As the train pulled out from the well known platform 7 there on the platform to my great surprise, was my mother and young brother waving goodbye to me. I was not aware that that would be the last time I would see them, for three weeks later when I was in the Royal Navy Barracks I was ordered to go the guard room where I was handed a telegram telling me that my father, mother and three brothers had been killed in the air shelter during a bomb raid the previous night, December the 11th which had also destroyed my home. A number of neighbours and friends also died in the shelter with them. Their names are recorded in the Book of Remembrance in the Hall of Memory in Birmingham.

Initially I was given three days compassionate leave, which later was extended to ten days. But maybe due to the shock I was taken ill and did not return to the barracks until a month later with my future in doubt. To make matters worse while I was in Portsmouth, the city was bombed nightly and blitzed twice. My duty in between training was part of a crew on a trailer pump, manhandling the pump to the trouble spots in the barracks. On one occasion the pump was blown up in front of our very eyes, another time surviving a near miss, a bomb under the pump house when I was inside fire watching which fortunately did not explode a straggle of bombs across the parade ground under which were the barrack shelters, in which I was sheltering causing many casualties. In addition I was in a cinema where the military police made us evacuate the building which received a direct hit from a bomb ten minutes later. I watched the centre of the city destroyed by fire bombs until the flames engulfed the top of the dome of the city hall.

Because of the lack of sleep, and our training being interrupted due to the continuous bombings we were moved to another shore establishment HMS Collingwood outside Portsmouth to finish our training and watched in safety the air raids which continued on the city.

My first six months at sea was on board a small rescue tug H.M.R.T. Tenacity operating between Scotland and Iceland, rescuing ships that had broken down on the Atlantic Convoys. I spent the next three years, mostly at sea on board the fleet destroyer H.M.S Kelvin, seeing action in North Africa, Malta Convoys during the siege of the island, Normandy landings on D-Day, then back out again to the Eastern Mediterranean, into the Agean Sea to clear the Germans from the Dodecanese islands which they occupied and the end of the Greek Campaign.

I was then transferred to serve in the wireless office of the British Embassy in Cairo, until I returned to the UK in 1946 to be demobilised and to be a civilian once again.

I was then transferred to serve in the wireless office of the British Embassy in Cairo, until I returned to the UK in 1946 to be demobilized and to be a civilian once again.

Having vowed never to live in the city again, I settled and made my home in Rubery where I had spent much of my leisure time when a young boy and teenager before the war, when the area was surrounded by countryside and seemed like another world to us 鈥渢ownies.鈥�

It was hard to accept the lack of housing and good jobs which all seemed to have been taken before we came home and also the food rationing following the end of the war.

Unlike many of my age group I was lucky, thankful my life had been spared and considered myself as a survivor and not a veteran.

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