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At the start of the war I was working on sailing barges, I had been on the coasters before and I’d been working on the water since I was 15 years old. We were going to work in a shipyard but I’d worked in a shipyard before and didn’t like it, and it was all tidework, an hour later everyday. So I threw it in and got a job at Marsham Forestry Commission in Norfolk. After a few weeks I came back to Ipswich to Barrack Corner and joined the Navy. The marine there said I was too young to join the navy as they were calling the 26’s up and it was going to be a long while before I was 26. As I was walking out I said I’d been working on the water for some time, and he said we’re looking for people like you for the Royal Navy Patrol service, based at HMS Europa in Lowestoft. I passed my medical and a week or so later I got a telegram telling me to report to HMS Europa and to take my ration cards and gas mask. I went to HMS Europa and fiddled about there for a week or so. I was supposed to go to Ardrossen in Scotland and I met a chap who was from there and he was supposed to report to Harwich. We spoke to our drafting officer and he agreed to swap us over. I was aboard a ship called HMS Neil McKey. When I got off the train I walked along Parkstone Quay looking for a lovely ship and I came across this ship painted black, green and red. It had a black funnel with 2 white rings around it. I thought that can’t be a navy ship but it had just been commissioned and was soon painted in the Navy colour grey. It was a submarine chaser and she had a big dome underneath her to detect anything under the water. You were allocated to different guns; I went to the point 5 machine gun. If a submarine was detected the alarm would be raised and I’d go on the 4.7 gun. The ship’s role was to go out and meet the convoy which was heading north. Sometimes we’d go up as far as Scarborough, sometimes we’d be out 3 days and nights. Between 10pm and 3am the German planes were coming over all the time, concentrating on the centre of the convoy where the oil tankers were. If we on guard duty they’d send us to guard a channel between 2 minefields, off Aldeburgh. We’d be met by 2 MTB’s and we’d drop anchor while they tied themselves on to the back of us. We’d put a star shell up the 4.7 and if we detected any surface action we’d fire the star shell and they’d let go and see if anyone was there.
On May the 5th 1941 at 10.30pm we were at the place we usually dropped anchor and we headed down the galley for a cup of cocoa and some toast. My bunk was more or less right up to the bulkhead. You never took your clothes off when you were on convoy and you never took your lifebelt off. But I took my lifebelt off, it was a big cork one and I settled on my bunk to drink my cocoa. It’s hard to say what happened but the whole ship seemed to go topsy turvey. We were only a small trawler. A bomb came through the port side, it was an aerial torpedo. We were holed 2 to 3 foot below the water line. Everyone was jumping out of their bunks when we were hit by another bomb. It was aft side of the bridge; it cut the galley floats and exploded near the lifeboat blowing it to smithereens. I was one of the last out, along with the sparky (the telegrapher). I wouldn’t leave without my little dog, Dot. She wasn’t really my dog, she was aboard the ship when I arrived. I got her out. We didn’t know if we were sinking or not and it was deadly quiet. We hadn’t got a lifeboat, I hadn’t got my lifebelt on. We didn’t know what was going to happen when 2 trawlers appeared and the skipper shouted over to them with a megaphone. They came along side and helped pump the water out, and helped us towards Harwich. We were sent home on survivors leave for 5 or 6 days. In those days you’d be doing your job when they’d suddenly say you’re going back to HMS Europa. My next ship was from Sunderland, called HMS Filla. She was built as an admiralty trawler, she was like a Corvette. We were named after Scottish islands. We were “oropesa” sweepers … we put out a big oropesa float, which looked a bit like a torpedo, with a big wire, and underneath there a kite and cutters. You’d go ahead of the convoy, all 4 of you, and you’d cut the mines up and fire at them and explode them before the convoy came along. We worked up on Scappa Flow, down at Portsmouth, and with the convoys in the North Sea.
After the Filla I went aboard a mickey mouse minesweeper, a MMS something, I can’t remember the number. They had different minesweeping equipment. It was a double L sweep. One gave out an electric current and the other took it in and any magnetic mines would automatically go up. We’d sweep from the Needles near Isle of Wight to St Alban’s Head and at night we’d go into Poole Harbour. Next day a seaplane would probably have laid another 12 mines or so and we’d start sweeping all over again.
I say I never fought for King and Country, because I was after adventure so I trained to be a special forces commando at Helston in Cornwall and then I was sent to the Mediterranean. I met a young sailor called Jocky Kerr and we became friends. Our officer was our age, 21 ish and was called Robbie Richards. We did our commando knife training, the guns were Colt 45’s, lots of rowing with various boats … dories, canoes, kayaks. There were lots of us but sometimes you’d wake up one morning and someone had gone, and you didn’t ask why or where they’d gone. Eventually the officer selected 7 of us and we went across to France once. In the harbour there was a little boat called the Wine Dot and there was an old Frenchman on there called Pierre. The ship I was on was called the Roger Juliet. She never lifted her anchor up, she just lay mid stream. We weren’t allowed to talk to Pierre, we weren’t allowed to go here, we weren’t allowed to go there, and we were watched every minute. If the telephone on the ship rang we could only answer it if it rang 3 times and sometimes they’d come aboard ship and interrogate people, but they’d be speaking in French.

One night we went off to France on the Spirit of Dover, a motor launch. We landed ashore and took orders via hand signals. We eventually came to a wood. The officers went into the wood, and they appeared with a woman and a girl. We found out later that they were old Pierre’s wife and daughter.

Soon after we were sent to the Mediterranean and first port of call was Sidi Ferruch, near Algiers and we did our training at night. We wanted to live on a schooner, so we went to Sicily in the invasion and got a schooner called the Gilfredo. The owner wouldn’t leave it but an officer came and told him the British Government would pay him for the boat. It was rat ridden, we couldn’t sleep down below, and we cooked on 2 primus stoves lashed to the mast. We ate irish stew, potatoes, hard biscuits, or whatever. We weren’t involved in the Sicily invasion, we were waiting to get into Italy. Round the heel of Italy was a place called Monopoli, and that was our base. This old schooner was rat ridden and we were trying to get another one, which we eventually did, a nice Yugoslav one.

Our training was aimed at blowing up railway lines and bridges and we’d do this when there was no moon, but if the moon was up rather than kick around, for a bit of fun, we’d go across the minefields from Mafredonia to Yugoslavia. We weren’t in uniform, and we’d go to this place under cover of darkness and cover ourselves with camouflage netting before it got light. Whenever we went over there they’d be 2 German planes circling up and down this lake or river and if they saw as much as a rowing boat they’d fire at it. When it was dark we’d let go and go alongside a quay which was cut out of the rock. From around the corner would come these Yugoslav people and we’d take exactly 90. They were wounded, some old women, and children. We’d put them down the hold and take them back to Mafredonia.
When there was no moon we’d use Italian torpedo boats. We’d go out to sea and head up north, we didn’t know where we landed but they said if you couldn’t get back to you boats you had to come back to this place every other night for 6 nights and wait to be picked up. If you hadn’t been picked up you had to make your own way across German lines. Next to our skin we had the equivalent of £75 in Lira, a flask of rum, a first aid kit, and you had your gun with 2 clips. The torpedo boats would take you in to say a quarter of mile from the shore and we’d launch our Dory’s which the equipment we needed in them. If we were doing a bridge we needed twelve 75 pound canisters of ammonal, the same explosive they use in a depth charge. For railway lines we’d use 808 plastic cutting charges and we’d cut the line in half either side of the fishplate where the railway lines were joined. Our officer would use a detonator called a pencil. It had acid inside it and you had different coloured pencils according to how long it would take to fire. The officer would press the pen and this would break a phial of acid inside, and holding back the striker on a spring was a wire, and the acid would eventually eat through the wire and the striker would make the spark. The first one we done we could hear the train in the distance, so we went back on the boats to the Mazby. We saw the train coming because of the firebox and I thought to myself “poor devil” as he didn’t know what we ahead of him. We saw the flames first and then heard the rumble. We heard later that the explosion had only derailed the train for 3 or 4 days.
We used to carry 3 x 25 pounds of ammonal on our backs when we did bridges. The RAF had told us the rivers were drying up but the first one we went to the water was up to our waist. We tried to toggle the explosives together under the bridge using our head and our shoulders but eventually the officer said it wouldn’t work. We were with the number 9 commandos, they worked in pairs and were dropped in by parachute, whereas we went in by boat. I guess we were the start of the Special Boat Services. We decided there was no point just derailing a train, so we’ll do 600 feet of track in one go. This train used to come down from Milano and it was packed with hundreds and hundreds of German troops headed for the front line. The line ran along the coast from Pescaro to Ortona so that was a bit of cake, better than walking miles over fields. I used to jump onto the railway line and run my finger along the track to find the join and that’s where I started. My opposite number would go up ahead of me and do the other side so it ended up like a zigzag and that’s how we used to carry on

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