- Contributed by听
- musormb
- People in story:听
- Musician Jerry Judge and Musnician John Adams RM BABND
- Location of story:听
- Portsmouth Harbour
- Background to story:听
- Royal Navy
- Article ID:听
- A6575484
- Contributed on:听
- 31 October 2005
It was August 1938 and I Jerry Judge was standing on the upper deck of HMS Royal Oak looking across te harbour at HMS Hood.
We had just returned to Portsmouth after conveying the coffin of her majesty the Queen Maud of Norway accopanied by King Haakon VII and members of the royal family to Oslo.
The Hood was due to proceedon on a commission to the Mediterraenean and we were a bit envious of them, especially with war being fairly emminent with Gerany. However this situation was due for a ghange as my Lords of the Admiralty had, in their wisdom ,decided that it would be far better to transfer our greatest battle cruiser, the Hood, to the hooe fleet to counter the great German battleship Bismark and for us to take her place in the Med.
This was great for the cello player on the Hood for he had been in touch with me to change ships with him as he wished to get married and now it would all be off.
Fate plays ironic tricks in our lives for in the susequent turn of events I survived the sinking of the ROYAL OAK in capa Flow ans he went down on the Hood the question remains in my mind if we had changed would the circumstances been the same would John Adams of survived the war and would I have been one of its casualties and did he manage to get married.
I wonder if you might assit in finding the answar to the latter question please
Again it was ironic that we were in Scapa at that particular time as if the exchangge of crews had not taken place we would prabably been gharged with operational duties with the Home Fleet as we were a fully trained ships company but as it was we had to go to Scapa for a working up period then as fate decreed whilst we were still invovlved in this operation, when war was declared, and when in October the fleet
proceeeded to sea to pursue the German battleships Gneisenau and Scharnorst we were to patrol a likely escape route between the Sheland and Faroe Islands
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