大象传媒

I volunteered for the Royal Navy aged 17. I trained in Gosport in the submarine barracks on HMS Dolphin. Everybody on a submarine had to be trained to cover for every other crew member.

In beginning of 1945 I was sent to Hong Kong via the Suez Canal. It felt like quite an adventure since I'd only been to the sea side twice in my life!

In Gibraltar I remember seeing bananas - growing on trees! We hadn't seen bananas for years let alone on stalks! Also pineapples and other exotic fruit.

We went to Hong Kong to join a depot ship . We did 30 day patrols which involved diving for 18 hours every day, surfacing for 6 hours to charge the main motors. We didn't see 'daylight' for 30 days.

All this happened in the south pacific - the only person who knew where we were was the skipper. During these 30 days we came across depth charges a few times.
Then the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan and it was all finished!

We went to Japan to Kure, which was the main naval base. We went in on the inland sea and realised afterwards that we were used as guinea pigs to test whether the Japanese midget subs had all been notified that the war was over. On the way we passed Hiroshima - I could see the devastation. This was approx 7 miles from Kure. We got on a local train, had a trip and a walk round at Hiroshima. The tallest thing standing was a church steeple - approx 10 feet high. At the time no-one knew about the danger of radio activity - not the governments or the scientists. We realised the danger we had been submitted to when I returned a few months later to find all the areas cordoned off

We also went to Nagasaki doing similar things - as we were quite nosey! Then we went to Australia to teach the Australian navy Asdic Running - (How they trace echo sounding gear).

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