大象传媒

This isn't so much of a story, more of a desire to remember and honour a life lost at such a young age. My great uncle, Clifford Battersby was an Able Seaman (P/JX 154410 was his roll number)on board HMS Hood on the day it was sunk by the Bismark. Cliff was born on 11th June 1921 and joined the Royal Navy straight from school at the age of 14, it was all he'd ever wanted to do. He trained on HMS Ganges before joining HMS Hood as an armourer in the torpedo room. The ship was hit in the torpedo room where Cliff was working on May 24th 1941, thankfully he wouldn't have known much about it. Ironically he should have been on shore leave at the time but had agreed to take the place of a man who had fallen ill and was unable to sail. Cliff died just a few weeks before his 20th birthday, younger than I am now and with many others like him. He had hoped to leave the Hood to serve on submarines as the pay was a little better, instead he went down with the ship that left only 3 survivors and is commemmorated alongside all the other brave young men at the War Memorial in Portsmouth.

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