David Burdett on Wartime

It’s a fascinating group of people to mingle with and listen to stories. One lunchtime, whilst I was sitting next to one of our more elderly members, and I don’t know how we got onto it but we started talking about War experiences, but I was too young, I was only a boy during the War.

But this gentleman had actually worked at sea during the War and to get it from his mouth that he would go to bed with his life jacket on, really brought home the nervous tension that you would have lived with as soon as you left the coast.

And the other thought which is rarely commented on, is that you would survive a convoy journey across the North Atlantic, you would come home to your family in the knowledge that within two or three weeks you would have to go through the whole thing all over again, and if you were working on tankers, your life expectancy wasn’t that great, and to actually sit at one of their luncheons and get this experience was quite impressive.