- Contributed by听
- Severn Valley Railway
- People in story:听
- JOHN JOHNSON
- Location of story:听
- Bridgenorth, North Sea, USA and Australia
- Background to story:听
- Royal Navy
- Article ID:听
- A4292552
- Contributed on:听
- 28 June 2005
My wife Barbara's cousin Harold Forbes joined the Royal Navy as a boy. At 16, he was sent out and he served all through the war years, braving the Germans in U-boats from Norway and the North Sea. His job was to remove ice from the war ships which would have caused the boats to have capsized.
He had to go to the USA at one point and, while his ship went to be refitted, he spent three months in New York, staying with an American family.
After that he went to Australia and located some of his relatives and stayed with them.
It was an anxious time for all of us. But he managed to get through the whole thing unscathed and was demobbed in 1945, having served for 11 years.
I have a scrapbook of all his naval records and photographs. He died at the age of 78 in January 2001. From the time he returned from war, up until the day he died, we saw him every single month.
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