大象传媒

At the age of 18, I joined the Engine Room Branch of the Royal Navy on 9th June 1941. Four months later, in October 1941, I was drafted to a Bangor Class mine-sweeper, HMS Bude, 9th mine-sweeping flotilla. We operated from Portsmouth, Portland and Harwich. Our sweeping areas were the English Channel and the East Coast, which included 鈥淗ell鈥檚 Corner鈥� and 鈥淓-boat Alley鈥�.

Two outstanding incidents occurred during my time aboard HMS Bude. The first was on 11th/12th February 1942. We left Harwich on the 11th February, swept for mines across the Thames Estuary all of that day, and then headed for Portsmouth via the Straits of Dover. Normally, we go through the Straits as fast as we can, being within range of German shore batteries on the French coast, but on this occasion we just crawled along. The reason was that, according to the Communications Branch, there was a pack of German E-boats ahead of us. We saw no sign of them all night, but on the 0700 news next morning, we heard that the 鈥淧rinz Eugen鈥�, 鈥淪charnhorst鈥� and 鈥淕neisenau鈥� had left the French port of Brest and were heading for Germany! We must have passed them in the Channel during the night!!

The second incident occurred on the 18th/19th August 1942. We had put in to Newhaven for a few hours on the 18th August, but left the same evening and swept for mines all that night. We learned later that we had swept two German mine fields in preparation for the Dieppe Raid at dawn on the 19th August 1942!

I left HMS Bude just before Christmas 1942.

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