大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War web site by Karen Elmes at the Building Exploratory on behalf of Lionel Straker and has been added to the site with his permission. He fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Lionel was in the Trinidad Royal Naval Volunteer reserves during 1942 鈥� 1944. The Fleet Air Arm from England were training in Trinidad, they had a lot of crashes and Lionel had to pick up the airmen who had crashed. He did one or two trips abroad; he went to South Africa and Canada to name just two.

The tugs that were built for the invasion had to sail to South Africa from Trinidad. It was very hard work because he was a stoker and had to keep the boilers going during the journey. Whilst on the way to South Africa, on the first night action stations were called - Lionel remembers it being so dark he couldn鈥檛 see his hand in front of his face. Although he wanted to see action, whilst he was stood there in the pitch black with a rifle in hand, just waiting for something to happen, he felt terrified.

Things were different in South Africa with the black and white problems:

鈥淲e had a little problem because some of the West Indian boys in Durban, they made a mess of the place. Going into the bars 鈥� if they wouldn鈥檛 serve us they would knock all the drinks off the counters鈥e went into one bar, we were served with a round of drinks and when we asked for a second round the man broke the glasses at the counter in front of us, he said he didn鈥檛 have any more glasses to serve us. We had a bloke by the name of John Carter, I can never forget him. So John tells the man, 鈥業f we can鈥檛 have glasses give us the bottles.鈥� He said we couldn鈥檛 do that so John, who was a very big bloke, pushed all the bottles off the shelf and broke up most of them. Then they called shore patrol and they took us back to the ships and stopped our leave for the day. But the next day it was in the South African papers that we were West Indians, we weren鈥檛 Africans and we were to have European facilities. So then we spent five days there, and it was alright after that.鈥�

Lionel remembers that in the forces there was discipline, he thinks the young men of today have no discipline in comparison to then. He learned a lot in the armed forces and liked it very much. At the end of war he was demobbed and joined the Harrison Line from Barbados and spent 11 years travelling the World in their ships.

After thinking things over for a long time Lionel decided to emigrate to England to join his wife who was a nurse. He remembers how tough it was for black people living in London in the 1950s, it was hard to get accommodation, they had to rent very small rooms and share everything 鈥� bathrooms, toilets, cookers. Things were expensive and pay low, and black people were exploited. He found that life in London was very dark 鈥淎t two o鈥檆lock in the afternoon it was like midnight in the West Indies!鈥� Lionel moved to Well Street in Hackney in the 1960s, and living conditions started to get better. He remembers that when he first came back to live in Hackney there were still gaslights and some shop fronts were still blacked out from the war.

This story was recorded by the Building Exploratory as part of a World War Two reminiscence project called Memory Blitz. To find out more please go to ^{About links}

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