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I joined the Navy on 07/04/1943, and started my training at Skegness which was an old Butlins Holiday camp. I then volunteered for the coastal forces and was sent to Fort William in Scotland for training in the lochs on Gun boats, and motor torpedo boats. After training I was transferred to Newhaven, then had to go back to Scotland and pick up ML (brand new) and went to Southampton.

On D-Day we went early with the Landing craft across the water, the one next one to us was blown up - it had American men on. We were there six weeks patrolling and after six weeks went back for a refit, and had petrol tanks put onto the upper deck. There had to be no smoking as we carried 100 octane petrol! This refit was carried out as we had to go to Burma which was a long trip.

Then we operated from Rangoon. As the three boats in our group took 20 Gurus, the Ghurkhas were dropped off on one side of the various islands and they had to push the Japs across the other side off the island - where we were waiting. These operations were carried out every 2 weeks. We went up the Chungs river which was a ‘y’ shape and very wide (1 mile across). We had a Burmese interpreter that was put ashore so he could tell us when they were coming. The Japanese had approximately 20-30 boats which had their army on. As we were a gun boat we had various guns (pompom) which I was on.

When we had the order, we opened fire. This started and all hell let loose. One of the pompom operators just by my side got killed. Then a burning boat came towards us, and one Japanese soldier had his hands over his ears and was on his knees at the front as it rammed us. Then the Skipper said ‘abandon ship’, so we swam a long way and I came to a flat part of land. As I emerged, the gun fire was across my head going into the trees. I kept down and found a small dip in the grass and lied there, after a while it eased up and I got up and ran through elephant grass (8 foot high), and ended up back onto the edge of the Chungs river. I saw boats burning and I was just going to shout as I thought it was our boats, but then realised that it was the Japanese and ran the opposite way. Further along I saw one of our boats but it was a long way away. I found a bunch of weed floating and used it to help cover me whilst I swam out to the boat. When I got near there was a call to pick up survivors and the skipper said make sure he doesn’t commit ‘hurry curry’ thinking I was a Japanese. They took me aboard and down to the wardrobe and dosed me up with brandy. My only injury was a piece of shrapnel in the back of my leg, for which I had three months in hospital for the shock and injury.

The war finished whilst I was in hospital and I thought I was going to be demobbed. But no. We had to go and pick up a mine sweeper from Madras by train. This tool 4 days to travel through India to Cochin, but when we got there the mine sweeper had just left. We had to wait two weeks for a boat back to Colombo. Once on the mine sweeper, we went up through Siam sweeping for magnetic mines which was very hard work as four of us had to wind in the mines for about 2 hours at a time.

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