大象传媒

My father worked as an apprentice in Portsmouth Dockyard prior to WW2. He was training as a shipwright and I still have his tool box. These were the first projects that apprentices made. It looks like a large wooden linen box. Inside were carefully designed spaces for tools and I still have many of his box planes - also hand made. His name and address are beautifully inscribed on the lid, with his title (SW) after his name.

When war broke out my father was conscripted into the Navy - naturally enough for a Portsmouth lad. He rose to become a Chief Petty Officer and was subsequently posted to Alexandria and Iceland. While in Iceland he bought the material for my mother's wedding dress and sent it home for her, as rationing meant that wedding dresses were in short supply!

But the main point of this story is that my father died as a result of the war. Not during it, but 30 years later. Whilst waiting for his posting he was put to work in the dockyard. He spent six weeks on a production line, lining ammunition boxes with asbestos. As a direct result of this work he contracted asbestosis in 1969 and died in 1970, aged 50. Asbestos dust lies dormant in the lungs for many years before causing a condition similar to lung cancer.

I was 14 when he died and for a long time I did not realise that his death was a very real consequence of the war. I now consider that he gave his life for the freedoms we now enjoy, even though he had a much longer life than those who died on the battlefields. He was a gentle and shy man who would not consider himself a 'war hero', but he died because of the war and I think he counts as one.

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