大象传媒

I was contacted by a gentleman writing a history of this Coastal Forces base. Here is the feedback I sent him:

My father says he went there for training (ship handling, firing the weapons etc ) immedialty after receiving his commission in 1941 as a very green rookie RNVR Sub-Lieutenant. They were allotted digs in private homes and he remembers being very pleasantly suspired when invited in by the landlady to 鈥榯ea鈥� - which turned out to be a huge meal of ham and eggs and other unaccustomed foodstuffs. He says rationing in this area had not yet made the inroads which it did in later years of the war.
My father, even though he had grown up in chapel-going community in Wales, was struck by the strictness with which the Sabbath was observed locally. Initially his landlady was scandalised to hear that the Navy was putting on picture shows on Sundays. However, she later got round to asking (excuse the attempted phonetics) 鈥溾�滽un ye naw get us a wee ticket for the filum?鈥�

He says the base was at the Highland Hotel and that one day he had the job of marching about a hundred ratings to Church Parade. Drill was not his strong point and he had a moment of panic when he forgot the rather unusual order to cause the column to wheel into the yard. Fortunately he had a Petty Officer with him who knew the order.

This triggered a related memory my father rhad of an anecdote when another officer hesitated over the necessary order while marching his men near a clifftop. Possibly this is apocryphal, but the story was that, as increasingly nervous the column got closer to the cliff edge, the NCO blurted out 鈥淲ell say something Sir 鈥� even if it only goodbye!)

The training which my father had at HMS Christopher stood in good stead as he later served as navigation officer on ML 197 which was one of the two 鈥淣avigational Leaders鈥� for Sword Beach on D-Day. Indeed, a few days after D Day, he took over command of ML197 when the CO of another vessel was killed. An expanded version my fathers account of the role Coastal Forces played in Normandy will be posted on the webiste in a few weeks.

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