大象传媒

In early 1943 Tom was sent to Maristow, Lord Roborough house
Which the navy had taken over because there was no more room in the barracks.
Tom was seventeen and four months at this time. The job was carrying stretchers
Which came in single decker buses which were six at a time hung up on the ceiling.The stretchers went to the medical and surgical wards. When not doing this work, Tom was bumpering floors.
From there Tom went to the Mediteranean. Tom was on board the destroyer Eggesford, all these ships were named after different hunts. The ship was L15, no names for secrecy reasons. Theyb were escorting the Prince David and Prince Albert.They were around Italy, Naples, Brindizi, Taranto, Ancona. They were thenbombarded around Greece, on the coast, also Yugoslavia. They were the lead ship and found it was mined all the way up to Piarios which was the main port in Greece. They had to send for sweepers to do away with the mines. This more or less forced the convoy to stop. The next door ship with lorries on deck swung her stern and hit a mine. She went down in four minutes, stern first. People ran up the deck crying for help but there were no survivors.
Tom says the Canadians from the Prince Albert and Prince David were all in their kilts which was something of a surprise and he remembers them playing their bagpipes on their way to silence the German coastal guns.
After a while Tom came home.

Tom was escorting HMS Activity, called into Grennock which they were escorting to Plymouth. Off Lundy Island some JU 88s came which they started firing at. Chivenor sent up aircraft to intercept and drove them away. One of the shells which Tom had fused fell off the tray between Tom鈥檚 feet. The officer of the turrets ran round the front leaving Tom to get out. The officer shouted, Tom, throw the shell over the side. So that is what Tom did.
Tom then went to Portsmouth where both ships stopped and Tom got off at his home base. He was sent to Devonport on leave. When he came off leave he was sent to the Pacific. Here he joined HMS Undaunton, a fleet destroyer, where they did escort duties. In November they went into Yokahama where they spent Christmas 1945. They stored ship where four barrels of rum were brought aboard. One was pinched and put in the after torpedo turret where bottles were stored when empty from the ward room. At night during the middle watch members of the mess would drain so much off into bottles which Tom and his friends happily drunk. Then they heard a buzz that they had missed a barrel so the next night they filled all the bottles available and threw the barrel over the side. No mention of anything on board, nothing was said regarding the loss!

After Christmas Tom went back to Sydney on the Undaunton. Then he was sent aboard HMAS Launceston . Before this, Tom had two weeks leave in the Blue Mountains where he found his friends and they all stayed in one room in the same hotel. Tom says it was a really good leave.
Tom had only had 48 hours leave prior to this which was in Nicko, Japan . He andhis friends slept in their hammocks. They visited a temple . Not long ago, a film called Gingerbread Tree came on television. Tom says that in this film he saw again the same temple, remembering the gold monkey and gold duck at the corners. Tom had not seen this for fifty seven years.

One of the Japanese tutors in a school , teaching English , left the room and one of Tom鈥檚 ship mates put the name Birmingham on the blackboard . The tutor said who ever wrote that ! He spoke perfect English and had lived European style. He invited Tom and his friends back to his house. They gave him some food from their supply of tins. He gave each of them a kimono that you might get married in, special with silk and gold.

The Launceston was delivered to Turkey for the Turkish navy. They spent six weeks handing over and showing them how the ship worked. They gave Tom and friends a thousand fags each, money wasn鈥檛 worth much at the time. Thye took passage back to Malta where Tom joined HMS Vulcan to come back to England for demob. In the Bay of Biscay they broke down. The skipper made everyone blow up the life boat ready to abandon ship . The waves, when they went down in the trough, were thirty feet high. They managed to limp into Corrunna in Spain . They were there for a month while they repaired the engine. Then then sailed for Plymouth where Tom thought he would jump off and get demobbed. Instead of that the ship sailed and they went into Pembroke in Wales. They were there for four months. Tom had to take his hammock and sleep in the drill shed in between the guns!

Tom got his demob suit in Portsmouth and finally went home to Braunton where he still lives.

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