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This story was submitted to the People’s War site b y Elaine Stewart of Uckfield Community Learning Centre, a volunteer from ´óÏó´«Ã½ Southern Counties Radio on behalf of Mr. Kenneth W. Eaves and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr. Kenneth W. Eaves fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I headed this ‘Trauma’ because no one can understand that at 18 years of age, and never having been out of my home town, to have a card through my door telling me to report to HMS Raleigh, in Torpoint, Cornwall was the equivalent of telling a young man today that he was going to the moon!!

I first served on HMS Badsworth, a hunt class destroyer. We were on the way to Australia, and we crawled our way into the island Azores which were allowed 24 hours to repair our vessel or be impounded. Three berths away was A German U-boat under repair! The U-boat left two hours before us and was waiting for us outside the harbor and a full blown battle took place but the sub eventually left.

I joined HMS Statice and spent the next two years in the Atlantic operating from Halifax, Nova Scotia escorting convoys from Nova Scotia to Bermuda.

I was on HMS Statice sailing from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Bermuda in 1943 and we were sailing into blue water with clear blue skies and within one hour the skies had turned black, the wind blew and the waves were reaching 30ft. High, I was on the wheel at the time. One minute I was sailing due south and the waves picking the ship up and turning it around due north. I can now fully understand why ships disappear in the Bermuda Triangle. After an hour or so it had turned back to beautiful weather and nobody could understand it,

When we arrived at our destination, the First Lieutenant on the ship said “As from today you are now ‘Able Seaman’ “ due to the way I had handled the ship during the storm.

We were then brought home to prepare for D Day and operated from Sheerness, again on escort duties until Thursday 6th, July 1944.

I was then posted back to barracks at HMS Nelson and a lot of men who were called up at the same time as me were being demobbed, but not me. I finished up on a minesweeper in Hong Kong harbour clearing the mines. That is a very long story but very very dangerous. I was de-mobbed on 12th. April l946

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