大象传媒

I joined the Royal Navy in 1941 and because I could spell Beautiful, Admiral and President I was considered suitable material for the Intelligence Branch (Signals)... I did 9 months training at HMS Impregnable in Devonport and then I got my first posting - to a remote headland on the Devonshire coast. There were 10 of us, under the command of a Lieutenant, and our job was to challenge unknown ships approaching Plymouth - with a 20" Aldis lamp. If they gave the wrong reply we called up reinforcements. Which was probably just as well as the only weapon we had was a revolver.
I'd only been there a week or so when I was sent off with it to patrol the coast in case the enemy had landed. I didn't see any Germans but I practised quick drawing and diving behind bushes and springing out in ambush, just in case. I was only 18 but I'd seen a lot of western movies.
The signals post was at Stoke Point, overlooking Plymouth Sound, about 4 miles from the village of Noss Mayo on the River Yealm where we went for supplies and 'Liberty'. Liberty, in this instance, meant a few pints in the local pub, the Ship Inn, with the girls from a mixed AA battery, based in the next field.
I think this was probably one of the best postings available in 1941.
The post had a small animal contingent of two dogs and a ferret. The ferret's name was Barney and he was in the care of Leading Signalman Barney, an old Navy hand who'd been recalled to service at the outbreak of hostilities. Which is his case meant rabitting. His hunting grounds along the cliff tops were owned by the Plymouth Co-op so technically this was poaching and he used to take me along to generally assist and keep watch for the enemy. Which in this case was the estate manager, who used to ride along the headlands on horseback, also looking for the enemy, which in his case was the two Barneys.
He had no chance.
The rabbits we caught we either ate ourselves or sold to the AA battery - and I used to send some of them home to my family in Liverpool on the train. I'd just hand them over to the station master with a label tied round the legs - and they always got there.
But it wasn't all rabbitting and going down the pub with the ATS. It wasn't long before I was involved in my first naval action of the war. I was on the midnight watch when I spotted a dark sinister shape lying low in the water and reported it to my senior who happened that night to be Barney - Leading Signalman Barney, that is - who immediately alerted naval command in Plymouth. They sent out a destroyer to investigate. We watched as the warship steamed up at high speed - and then steamed back again. It was a sandbank. Barney got the blame cos it was reckoned he should have known better. I was just the new boy from Liverpool.
But things were about to get a lot more lively. In early 42, just after Pearl Harbour, the US entered the war and I was drafted to America to join my first ship, then being built in Baltimore. I didn't know at the time but she was a new class of warship known as a Tank Landing Ship - LST 410 - and she was destined to be involved in every major landing in Africa and Europe over the next three years.

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