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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by June Ogonovsky from Sidley UK On-line Centre a volunteer from ´óÏó´«Ã½ Southern Counties Radio
and has been added to the website on behalf of Leslie Amos with his permission and he fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

My name is Leslie George Amos, I was born in 1925.

I lived in Charlton, London, with my parents and sister and attended Westminster Technical Institute. A few days before WW2 I was evacuated with the school to Brighton. I went to live with a very nice family who really accepted me and took care of me. I was later moved to Beare Green, Surrey when the army retreated from Dunkirk it was thought the Germans would invade Britain. We boarded in a newly built school and I joined the local home guard. I was then fifteen and a half. I learned how to use a 303 rifle and a spigot mortar.

At 16 and a half my schooling was over and I had gained a First Class Certificate of Professional Cookery. I was employed as a chef at Claridges Hotel in London. Having returned to London I received papers for the Home Guard. I had to report to a Royal Artillery Depot on Blackheath SE3 where I became a gunner on the Rocket Guns. There were 64 of these guns set out in a huge square. The noise when they went off was unbelievable but they put up a formidable barrage of flak to the enemy bombers. At just over seventeen years of age I was transferred to Shrapnel Barracks, Woolwich where we took over two heavy anti aircraft guns, 3.7s. Each gun had a crew of eleven men. After training we became very good and were credited with two bombers shot down.

In December 1943 I joined the Navy and after six weeks initial training I was drafted to Plymouth Naval Depot. After further training I was sent to Greenock in Scotland. From there we were taken by fishing boat to what was to become my home for the next three years, HMS Implacable, a brand new Aircraft Carrier.

After a few weeks we went to Scapa Flow where a huge fleet of ships assembled, then on a dark stormy night the whole fleet set off. No one knew where we were going but once we got to sea the Captain made an announcement and told us we were going to the Arctic Circle to a place way up in the north of Norway called Tromso where the German battleship Tirpitz was lurking. This was on my 19th birthday.

During this operation there was a severe storm in the Arctic. It was so bad that some ships were lost and our ship sustained extensive damage. We returned to Scapa Flow on 27 November 1944 for repairs and our ship was in dry dock for about three months. On 10 March 1945 we departed to join the Pacific Fleet where we saw service attacking Truk and making strikes against Japan with the American 6th Fleet.

When the war finished Implacable became a temporary hospital ship and rescued several hundred of our prisoners of war who had been held by the Japanese. We returned to the UK in June 1946.

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