大象传媒

My Dad was a 19 year old rating on board HMS Holcombe. He was involved in convoy duty escorting US supply ships across the Atlantic. He was part of the flotilla which guarded the Allies during their meetings off Cape Verde. He also took part in the Sicily landings of our Armed Forces. Whilst on duty in the Mediterranean the ship was torpedoed by a German U boat. As a result the depth chargers exploded and the ship caught fire and began to sink. The order to abandon ship was given and my Dad recalls graphically the horror of trying to swim away from the sinking vessel. He was in the Med for several hours clinging to a life raft before being picked up by a US White Cross ship. He was one of a minority of survivors. He was operated on on board before being landed in N Africa from where he was taken by hospital train to Alexandria. Eventually he returned home and worked as a coder based in Portsmouth. He kept exrensive diaries of the events of the time, and indeed throughout his life, a real chronicle of life in the 20th century. He still has his naval uniform. He also devised a system based on Shakespeare's plays so that he could let my gran, his Mum, know where he was without this information being censored. He has been very ill recently and relived many of his wartime experiences during this illness, imagining himself back on the sinking vessel. He is recovering now. I feel that he has such a story to tell that it would be a pity if his experiences were not recorded in some way for posterity.

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