大象传媒

This story has been submitted to The People's War website by Liz Andrew of the Lancshomeguard on behalf of William Barker and has been added to the site with his permission .

I was one of the Brylcreem boys - I was in the RAF. I was called up on 6th June 1942 when I was twenty. I was sent for six weeks to Blackpool where we did our square bashing and training. I was a driver and I always remember my instructor was a lady.

I was posted to a Nightfighter squadron at Woodvale, then down to Ford in Sussex and then to Wilmslow. I was attached to several different units and I kept getting different stretches of Embarkation Leave - and then never actally leaving the country!

On one of my Embarkation leaves, I said to Elsie, " We might as well get married." I wrote to her every single day but when eventually I was posted abroad, I wrote, "I don't know where we are going."

We set off for Panama, spent a week there and then headed off into the Pacific. They wouldn't tell us where we were going but there was a bunch of electricians on board and they worked out our positon by looking at the angle of the sun on the deck. They told the captain where they estimated we were - and they were only half a degree out.

We were near the Caroline Islands and heading for Japan. We were about a thousand miles from Hiroshima when the Americans dropped the Atomic bomb. We finished up being the first ship into Hong Kong and I stayed there for the next twelve months. We saw the troops who had just been released from the Japanese Prisoner of War camps - they were just skin and bone. A lot of Japanese were around in Hong Kong and the little Chinese kids would keep pointing them out to us and shouting "There's a Jap, There's a Jap."

My brother was in the Navy and I heard that his ship, The Glory, was about to dock in Hong Kong. On the morning the Glory arrived I took the mail boat over and was the first person on board. My brother was peeling potatoes and the Captain called him to his office. He was wondering, "Oh No What have I done now," and then he found me waiting for him! We spent two days together.

My cousin Robert was also in the Navy. He was on a minesweeper in the Channel. They had gone out without their net and turned back to look for it when they struck a mine. The captain should have known better than to turn and he chose to go down with his ship. But the rest of the crew were shipwrecked. Those who could swim, swam away and were drowned. Those who couldn't swim survived. Robert could not swim and he clung to a plank of wood. He was covered in oil but he was picked up by another ship.

I developed a sickness which was similar to amoebic dysentry and was in hospital for a spell, so I was late in coming home. I still wrote to Elsie every day and I would send her nylons - one in one letter, then the second in another! I numbered the letters - and not a single one ever got lost. Eventually I sailed on a troop ship and came home through Singapore, Bombay, Suez and Gibraltar, picking up soldiers all the way. So I saw the world and got paid for it - It cost me nowt!

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.