1. The early days.

I was born on March 3rd 1926 in the town of March, which is situated in the Isle of Ely in the county of Cambridgeshire in England. March is about equidistant from Ely, Peterborough and Cambridge and for most of my life the major working group in the town were railwaymen. The rail system was part of the LNER line (London & North Eastern Railway) and the installation was a huge marshalling yard for rail freight movements and a combined locomotive repair depot. It was in the latter area that my Father worked as a Fitter & Turner.

We lived in a ‘council’ house which was one of a terrace of 2 story houses near the outskirts of the town, which probably had a population figure of about 5000 at that time. I can remember the house in some detail, it formed part of a semi-circle of such houses and had a playing field contained in the arc they formed. There was a walkway along the back of the houses which passed close to each house’s outside toilet, none of them had inside toilets! I can remember my Mother sitting in the front room of the house feeding my younger brother so that would have been towards the end of 1930, I would have been approx. four and a half years old. Another memory I have of that house is standing at the open front door and watching what I later realized was a huge airship gliding past. Which one it was I have never been interested enough to try to find out, and probably couldn’t anyway. The address of that house was 158 Wisbech Road.

About 1931 or 32 we moved into another house a little closer to the center of town that had only recently been built. It was again a two story house in Elliott Road, with fields opposite and ‘allotments’ further along where the road degenerated into an unmade lane. It was while living in this house that I have two most painful memories. The first before I started school when I wandered down the lane and came across a donkey tethered to a stake. There was another boy there and he had a stick in his hand which he used to poke the donkey in the stomach just as I walked behind it. The beast stood on its front legs and lashed out with its hind legs, one hoof catching me a nasty blow just between the eyes. I have carried the scar to this day, but at the time with blood streaming down my face I crawled home, knocked on the back door and my Mother came out, screamed at the look of me and then wanted to know what had happened. My answer was that "I had been donked by a kinky". It just wouldn’t come out that I had been "kicked by a donkey", one of my Uncles called me the ’Kinky Donk’ for years. The other memory I have occurred after I started school which would have been about 1932. I had to walk to school and one day wandered into Woolworth’s which I soon realized was a wonderland of toys and other ‘goodies’ all laid out on display. In those days Woolworth’s had most things for sale at either 3 pence or 6 pence. I was attracted to a counter where mouthorgans took pride of place. Not having any money I decided to help myself to a couple of them. I was not able to play them very well but realized I had a problem when I went home from school, how would I explain to my Mother and Father how I came by them? I solved the problem by hiding them in a hedgerow along the lane, and got them out again next morning on my way to school. This went so well that I got overconfident and one day decided to take them into the house. There was no trouble until I was sent upstairs to bed where I thought it would be OK if I got in a little practice by getting down under the bedclothes and playing very softly. Obviously I didn’t play softly enough as my parents heard me and of course I had to tearfully admit to stealing them. My Mother went to visit the lady who lived next door while my Father administered the biggest thrashing I had ever had. I literally couldn’t sit down for a week!!

My Father later took me to Woolworth’s where we fronted the Manager and I got another lecture while Dad paid for them. Then he took me to the school and spoke to the headmaster telling him what I had done. I thought my shame would never end, but of course, it taught me a big lesson.

About the middle of the 1930’s we moved into another house that my Father had designed and had built for him. It stood on its own block of ground and was situated in one of the newer areas just being opened up right on the edge of town, at 158 Elm Road and my parents called the house “Allways”. It was a two story house with 3 bedrooms and a big bathroom upstairs and was luxury compared to the other houses. My Father worked very hard getting the house and garden in shape and I was always amazed at the things he could do. He built a big workshed to start with, then added a back patio to the house, doing brickwork, woodwork, concreting and glazing all by himself. He built an enclosed lawn area complete with fish pond with its own pedestal and basin in the center. I was always amazed that the pond would freeze over in winter but the goldfish were still ok when summer came and the ice thawed. My Father had his own lathe set up in the workshed and I used to watch him making things on it. As mentioned earlier he was a Fitter and Turner on the railways which was the big industry of the town. He would go off to work and spend all day repairing steam engines then come home at night and take his pocket watch to pieces, clean it and put it back together again. He was a very clever man!

One thing I have always been grateful for was that Father taught my two brothers and I to play cards. He rightly believed that this was a good way for us to learn to count and to think. He taught us to play Whist ( the basis of lots of card games ) Crib and Solo that I can remember. He also taught us to play Chess. My schooling continued but I was not very interested in doing homework, I was put off by my elder brother who went to the Grammar School and always had lots of homework to do, while I was out playing. When it came time for me to sit my 11+ exams to decide if I was clever enough to go to the Grammar School I have to admit that I didn’t really try, I didn’t want all that homework! So I went instead to the ordinary high school but left at the age of 14, without ever doing things like Algebra or Geometry.

By the time I left school the Second World War had started. My Father had joined the Home Guard and probably since he was a WW1 veteran he was given a commission and was rated as Lieutenant. To start with they used to go to drills with sticks but some of the farmers had shotguns. However, as time went on modern arms became more plentiful and it wasn’t long before we had a Sten gun hanging up in the hall closet, much to my Mother's consternation. My elder brother had joined the Fleet Air Arm and trained as an Observer, doing some of his training in Canada along with others from Australia and New Zealand. On completing his training, he was flying Swordfish and Walrus type planes. In the meantime, I had got work as a Laboratory Assistant at the Grammar School but actually employed by the Tottenham (London) High School who had been evacuated from London to March for the duration of the bombing of London. After about 18 months of this I got work on one of the Electricity Boards; we were engaged mainly in power line construction, and sometimes pulling them down when they were close to one of the many airfields in that area.

Eventually 1943 came around and at the age of 17 and nine months, I was scheduled to register for national service. So around August 1943 I volunteered for service in the Royal Navy. This was about 3 months before my registration date, and I volunteered in the way I did because when in receipt of a registration number, if it ended in a 9 or a 0 one was called up for service in the mines rather than service in the armed forces. By volunteering and being accepted for the Navy meant that I wouldn’t become a coal miner, which I considered a worse fate than the Navy. The only thing wrong with being in the navy was that when my elder brother and myself were home on leave at the same time, I had to salute when I passed him in the street!! I had volunteered for signals branch as I knew Morse Code and had a signallers badge from the Boys Brigade which I had joined some time previously.

2. 1943 - 1946.

My training was completed at a ‘Butlins’ Camp at Skegness, taken over by the navy and named H.M.S. Port Arthur. I completed training during May of 1944 and was firstly posted to my home base which was at Chatham, in London. We were soon organized into a large group consisting of all the categories required to man a fairly large ship and on the 2nd June 1944 we were trucked to one of the railway stations and put aboard a train for somewhere. We were not told where we were going; loose talk cost lives in those days. Eventually we reached our destination which was Newcastle-on-Tyne, where we were marched down to the docks and our new ship. Called HMS Swiftsure, it was a cruiser of about 8000 tons displacement, and was to be the first of a new class. It was an experimental RADAR ship but armed with 9 six inch guns in three turrets, 10 four inch AA guns in 5 turrets, 3 quad Pom Poms and a number of Oerlikon AA gums, 6 torpedo tubes and 2 depth charge rails. The total crew numbered about 900, which included a Marine unit.

Our first job was to get the ship ready to put to sea to do trials and at this stage there were a lot of technicians on board from the builders who had to oversee the trials and finalise the takeover by the navy. The timing of all of this meant that we were never involved in the Normandy landings, which took place four days later, on the 6th June. The next two months were taken up with all sorts of sea trials and exercises to make the Swiftsure into an efficient fighting ship. Most of this time we were based at Rosyth, on the east coast of Scotland.

After some cleaning up around the ship we were ordered to sail round the top of Scotland, down the west coast of England and made harbour at Plymouth. After a few days there we took aboard a VIP who happened to be the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Right Honorable A.V. Alexander accompanied by Rear Admiral Harcourt and his staff. Soon after they came aboard we left harbour and turned west, which came as a surprise to most of the crew. The Captain then came on the PA system and informed the ships company that we were taking the First Lord on a cruise of the Med. Our first stop being Algiers. So began the first time that I had been out of England and able to go ashore in a different country, it was quite an experience!! After a very short stay there, we left and steamed towards Alexandria, where the First Lord immediately left for Cairo and more conferences. We got ashore here as well and were soon into buying fruit like watermelons and bananas. After a few days there we found we were on our way to Malta. The entrance into Valetta harbour is still in my memory as one of the most unusual harbours we ever visited. A day later and we were on our way to Gibraltar, where, although it was a very short stay, both watches of the ships company were allowed to go ashore for a brief visit. Most of us bought bananas to take back to England as we had been told that the ships company was to be granted leave to enable some defects in the ship to be rectified. In fact, the defects were in the area of almost nil air conditioning, and some of the engine room staff had turned them right down in order to make the ship very stuffy etc in order to convince the First Lord that the air conditioning needed improving.

Our hopes of leave were soon dashed however as we were ordered to go up to Scapa Flow where we went off on our first strike. In company with the fleet carrier Indefatigable, a light carrier and 4 destroyers we left Scapa Flow in the Shetland Isles to attack the Lofoten Islands on the far north coast of Norway. The planes from the carrier were to attack an airfield and we were scheduled to bombard a RADAR station situated on the coast. Unfortunately, we ran into an Arctic storm and after the carrier lost some aircraft, which crashed while trying to land on the wildly heaving carrier deck, the whole strike was abandoned and we struggled back to Scapa Flow. Before the storm however, I had glimpsed some of the rugged coastline of Norway and hoped that one day I would be able to visit some of it. I did, but not until 1979! It may be of interest that during that storm the ship was plowing through waves 25 to 30 feet high and at one stage the ships inclinometer registered a list to one side of 38 degrees. However, we and the whole fleet made it back ok.

Towards the end of 1944 the Swiftsure was posted out to the Far East, which was only to be expected as the ship had been built for service in colder areas of the world and still did not have too much air conditioning capacity! We left England and travelled through the Mediterranean, Suez Canal, Red Sea and stopped at a Naval Base at Trincomalee in what was then Ceylon. We soon sailed on again and our first stop was at Fremantle in Western Australia. One of the highlights of this stop was that one of the ships crew won a raffle that had been conducted while crossing the Indian Ocean. He correctly guessed the time that the Captain would signal ‘stop engines’ after arriving in Fremantle and won something just over 400 Pounds. As there were horse races on in Perth, he decided to take his money and put it all on a horse at a goodly shade of odds. It won and he walked away with over 2000 pounds – a massive sum of money in those days.

After leaving Fremantle, we next made port in Hobart, the first British ship to do so since HMS Hood was there in 1939. We arrived there on Xmas eve 1944 to a most generous welcome by the townspeople who lined up in cars at the dockgates, taking sailors away to their homes for Xmas. All too soon we left Hobart for Sydney which was to be our ‘home’ base for the final push against the Japanese. After staying in Sydney for a few days we left to go north to Manus Island, in the Admiralty group, to set up the forward base of what was to become the British Pacific Fleet (BPF). After getting things set up there we went back to Sydney, and to an event that was to change the whole course of my future life, although I didn’t know it then!

As mentioned previously, I was a Visual Signalman; that is, one who uses signal lamps and flag signals in order to communicate with other ships and shore bases. As the Swiftsure was the Flagship of the 4^th cruiser squadron and carried an Admiral, part of the equipment of the signals branch on the ship was a Singer sewing machine to enable us to carry out flag repairs. It so happened that this machine required some attention and the Chief Yeoman rang Singer’s in Sydney and asked them to send a mechanic to the ship of see to it. So the mechanic duly arrived and did what was necessary. The following weekend was to be one of those days that the general public are invited to go aboard and have a look around. This mechanic asked the Chief Yeoman if he could bring his family for the visit, and I was detailed off the meet them and carry out this duty.

The man arrived on time and I met him at the gangplank, to find him and his wife and 3 daughters all ready to be shown over this big warship. After doing the rounds of the ship with them, we arrived back at the dockside where they invited me to visit them in their home. So commenced something that all sailors look forward to, being able to leave the ship when in port and spend some time in an ordinary home, with home cooked meals. These people became very good friends and looked after me like I was a son. It did not take me too long to become very fond of the middle daughter, Valda by name, who was a little bit younger than me but definitely in my age bracket. So every time the ship got back to Sydney my first thought was to ring these people who immediately invited me to go there and see them again.

1945 saw the completion of the war against the Japanese and during this period the Swiftsure saw action with the American Task Force 38, both against the island of Truk and also the Okinawa battle. The BPF consisted of 5 heavy fleet carriers, 2 light carriers, 5 battleships, 7 cruisers and 36 destroyers. The fleet was attacked many times by Japanese suicide bombers but fortunately the fleet as a whole did not suffer too much damage and the Swiftsure none at all. Periodically some ships would be sent back to Sydney for mechanical repairs or for re-assignment and it was after such a refit that on the 9^th August the Swiftsure went to the south coast of NSW to a place called Jervis Bay (little did I realise that later in life I would live in that beautiful bay!). We were there to do some exercises after the refit but on the 12^th August we got an immediate recall to Sydney. We took on a lot more stores and extra Royal Marines and then left Sydney on the 15^th August to make a mercy dash to Hong Kong to release the prisoners of war from Stanley P.O.W. camp.

The Swiftsure, carrying Admiral Harcourt, was led into Hong Kong by the destroyer HMS Kempenfelt on the 30^th August. We were followed by the aircraft carriers Indomitable and Venerable, with their attendant destroyers Ursa and Whirlwind. Most of the Japanese were ready to meet us and offered no resistance but some of them refused to accept defeat and fought right to the top of Mount Victoria. They were soon ‘dealt’ with however and the process of getting the prisoners out of Stanley Camp began. One British ‘tommy’ that was brought back to the Swiftsure was 6ft. tall and weighed 49 pounds !! He could only be fed one round of bread a day, soaked in milk, for almost two weeks. After a hospital ship arrived he was transferred to it and eventually reached England where we were told some six months later that he had survived ok. We spent about 4 weeks in HK and then left to go up to Tokyo.

The ship arrived in Tokyo Bay on the 23^rd Sept. and did not leave Japan until the 6^th Dec. heading south to Sydney. During the almost ten week period in Japanese waters we visited a number of places, the most memorable being Nagasaki where as guests of the American Marines we were taken around the city in trucks to witness the atomic devastation. I took numerous photographs copies of which I sent home to my parents. They were the cause of my Mother joining the Peace Movement in England. Another place we went to was called Kagoshima, and there was a mountain there that had I wisp of smoke coming out of the top. However, a party was made up to climb the mountain and I went along on it. It did not involve vertical climbs but was a very strenuous walk just the same. The view from the top was quite spectacular. We found out some time later that not long after we were there the mountain actually erupted.

However, soon we were on our way back to Sydney where Valda Hatton and I became more and more attracted to each other and I finally decided that I was not going to go back to England but to take my discharge from the navy in Australia. This was a very big decision to make since I was only 20 by then, more so as I had become engaged to a girl in England earlier in 1944, and it would mean deserting her and my own parents and brothers and starting a completely new life in a different country. Not only that, but I had no trade and did not know how I was to earn money etc. I’m sure my parents were devastated when I wrote a 36 page letter to them and told them what I was intending to do. My Mother more so probably as her younger brother had emigrated to Australia in the 1920’s and she had never seen him again! However, I was not to get out of the navy for another 12 months.

During 1946 the Swiftsure spent time in New Zealand, Hong Kong, Shanghai, up the China coast to Chinwangtao where I visited the Great Wall, Tokyo again, Hong Kong again then down to Singapore and finally a visit to Fremantle. As the ship was now to return to England, it was loaded up with as much food of all sorts as could be fitted in, the first port on the way back being Bombay. It was here that I left the Swiftsure in order to get passage back to Sydney

I took my discharge from the navy in Dec. 1946 at the naval station at Watsons Bay in Sydney harbour but being given 60 days ‘demob’ leave, so I was finally clear of the navy in Feb. 1947.

3 - 1947 -

Valda’s parents had made me welcome in their home in the Sydney suburb of Hurstville and treated me like the son they never had. The house was not overly large having only two bedrooms and a ‘sleepout' where Valda had been sleeping, so she kindly moved in with her two sisters which I’m sure must have been a squeeze, allowing me to use the sleepout. Having technically left the navy although still on ‘demob’ leave until sometime in Feb, I was free to seek employment and in this I was very fortunate. Valda’s elder sister Jean was friendly with the local Postmaster who agreed to take me on for 10 days work during the Xmas rush period. During that 10 days the PM asked me what my employment intentions were, my reply being that the navy had arranged a test for me with an Authority known as the Commonwealth Re-construction Training Scheme (CRTS). These tests were to evaluate where a persons best employment options lay. In my case, I was advised to take a course in some sort of manual labour, and I had chosen to do a course in carpentry and joinery and had been advised that it might be a few months before the course started. When I told this to the Postmaster he asked me if I would like to continue working for the Postmaster Generals Dept. as a Postman until such time as my course started. This suited me fine although the money was not all that good, it was certainly better than navy pay!

So I became a postman, and before I knew it 3 months had gone past with no sign of my course starting. After another couple of months I inquired again and was told that the Carpenters union was holding things up and to be patient. The Postmaster urged me to sit an examination to become a permanent PMG Dept. employee and I thought this would be a good idea. I passed the exam and became an appointed officer with an increase in salary but had to start paying into a superannuation fund. More months went by with more procrastination from the CRTS and I suddenly realised that I had been a postman for about 18 months! The structure of the PMG’s Dept. was that it consisted of two parts, Postal and Engineering, the latter being totally concerned with telecommunications. People that I had been introduced to by Val’s family were employed in the telephone side of the Dept. and they urged me to apply for a transfer and undertake a course in one of the PMG Training schools in order to become a telephone technician. This had obvious advantages over being a Postman any longer and I finally told the CRTS what they could do with their carpentry and joinery course and decided to be a technician instead.

One thing I must relate is that at the end of my first year as a postman I decided to use some of the holiday and some of the money I had saved to fly to Adelaide to visit my Uncle Fred, my Mother’s brother who had emigrated to Australia in the early 1920’s. This was to be quite an experience as I had never been in an aeroplane before but it was the only way for me to get to Adelaide. I flew from Sydney Mascot airport in a DC3 (Dakota) the workhorse of the U.S. armed forces during the war, the plane putting down in Melbourne. I had arranged to stay there for a few days with Keith Flynn who was engaged to Valda’s sister, Jean. Keith and I went to the Melbourne cricket ground to watch a days play in a test match against the old enemy, England. We picked a good day to go although we only saw two batsmen, they happened to be Don Bradman and Sid Barnes!! If memory serves me correctly they both finally scored 238!! Then on to Adelaide in another DC3 and was met at the airport by Uncle Fred. It was strange meeting an uncle that I had only ever heard about, but we got on very well. His wife was named Dorrie and they had two daughters, Joyce and Joan. They showed me around Adelaide a little although Fred did have to go to work. I returned to Sydney in a different plane, it was the 4 engine version of the DC3, known as DC4 later to be remodelled and renamed the super Constellation. I never met up with Fred and family again, Joan was killed in a level crossing smash shortly after my visit and Fred died some few years later. He had worked in a factory making headache powders and apparently became addicted to them.

So in November 1947 I was transferred to the Engineering Branch and told to report to the PMG Training School in order to undertake a 1 month’s course to become a Technicians Assistant.

UNFORTUNATELY, THIS WAS AS FAR AS DAD WENT IN WRITING HIS OWN STORY BEFORE HIS DEATH ON 18 FEBRUARY 1999. I CAME ON THE SCENE IN 1954, SO IT'S GOING TO DIFFICULT TO FILL IN THE GAPS… MAYBE A PROJECT I CAN TACKLE AT SOME LATER STAGE…. GREG ASH