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THE RIGHT AGE TO JOIN THE SERVICES

Just the right age to join the services, I was just 19 years old. I volunteered more or less right away. I received a broken nosed at rugby almost the day that war broke out, with the result that I had to have an operation, so there was a certain amount of delay, but yes I volunteered then for the R.A.F. What influenced me was the fact that when I was at school all my friends went into the R.A.F. and I didn’t want to be the one that didn’t go into the R.A.F., and it was the thing to do to be fighting the enemy in a very exciting way, so that’s the reason I went in.

I had a re-occurrence of my nose problem and had to have that redone. I was told that as a result I was unfit for flying duties, because my sinuses and whole breathing were severely affected, and it was obvious that I couldn’t continue in the flying services of the R.A.F.

I had to have an operation to clear the problem in my nose so it took a little time for me to find, or at least my parents to find the right surgeon, which they eventually did. He did a wonderful, but rather brutal job on my nose and cleared up the problem which has never bothered me since. So then I felt back to fitness and I volunteered for the Navy.

The first thing that happened, I went to HMS Collingwood in the Portsmouth area and it was a place you did initial training by listening to people talking about certain aspects of the Navy, and preparing yourself for ship-board duty. I was told I was likely to be a sailor with ordinary duties on board ship.

At that stage I hadn’t been to sea, so I didn’t know if I would be sea-sick, (and I was). Sickness is something that almost everyone who goes to sea suffers from, but what I learnt fairly early on was that you could be violently sick quite frequently, but as long as you were able to carry out your duty, it then became less of a problem.

The first ship I was appointed to was a hunt class destroyer called, I think HMS Hunt and they used to be on coastal duties, based at Sheerness. I was asked if I would like any particular part of ship and I said I would like to be a gunnery officer, or a gunnery type because at that time I was only an ordinary, seaman coming up to be an able seaman, and they duly decided I would go to Devonport dockyard for a gunnery course, so that’s what I did, and I was then as qualified gunnery rating.

This story was submitted to the People's War site by June Woodhouse (volunteer) of the CSV Action Desk at ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Hereford and Worcester on behalf of an anonymous author and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

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