- Contributed by听
- Harwich Society
- People in story:听
- Jim Howard
- Location of story:听
- Dovercourt, Essex
- Article ID:听
- A2836163
- Contributed on:听
- 14 July 2004
I was 15 when the war started. All my mates were evacuated, but I was a bit big headed, and stayed to fight them on the beaches! I got a job as a porter at Boots the Chemist.
There was a chap by the name of George Palmer who formed a band to entertain the troops at the local dances. He started at St Augustines, but moved to the Alexandra Hotel 鈥 which was also a theatre. I got a job in the balcony where the cloakroom was.
Harwich at that time had troops from all over the world. The French Submarines were here with their depot ship the Jules Verne, the British had the Cyclops, there were three Polish Destroyers, and minesweepers with crews from the Lowestoft fishing fleets, the Netherlands, Belgium and Norway. At one point we also had the 10th Battalion of the Cameronian Scottish Rifles. Interestingly, the Polish sailors were allowed ashore in their civvies.
The only entertainment for all these men were the events in the dance hall, and things tended to get exciting when there weren鈥檛 enough girls to go round! The problems really started when the foreign soldiers thought that every dance was an 鈥渆xcuse me鈥. They would wander on to the dance floor, tap on the shoulder of someone dancing, and invariably be told to 鈥済et off鈥. That was the cue for a mass brawl on the dance floor. I could see it all from the balcony of course. At the end of the evening, the local girls would often pop up to the balcony for a quick cuddle with their lad before he went and rejoined his ship.
George Palmer later opened another dance venue at the Phoenix hotel.
I can remember that there were a number of big ships in the harbour, and remember one, I think it was a Dutch passenger ship, being sunk. I know we used to pick up the bits and pieces that washed up ashore. Our air raid shelter even had mahogany shutter doors on!
I joined the Fleet Air Arm in 1941, and was sent to the States to form a Corsair fighter squadron. We served on HMS Illustrious in the Indian Ocean and then the Pacific. One of the other ships in the fleet was the Saratoga, known as the 鈥淔ighting Lady鈥, and we also had Dutch and French ships with us. We had several near misses with the Kamikaze pilots.
On VE Day we left the fleet while the rest invaded an island near Okinawa. By the time we got home though, we had missed the celebrations.
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