Oral History Gallery

Extract Text (Duration01.41)

When you turn around and say, "Oh the Royal Naval Patrol Service", it's not a police force, it was on armed trawlers and minesweepers and you escorted Atlantic convoys and Iceland and all round them places. We were used for all sorts of things, towing ammunition barges and the Marlborough Harbour and the Pluto, all them things come under armed trawlers. They had the power to do it you see, and they were steam driven, they were coal burners and that's how it came about. And when you say, "I was in the Royal Naval Patrol Service," because the Navy itself was Royal Navy, well that was pusser, what we called pusser, you know. But we were Harry Tate's Navy, that's what they called us, Harry Tate's Navy.

Q: Why did they call you that?

Because that's what we were, we didn't care a damn for anything. The things we used to get up to, I mean... you lived, you had to live, you had to live, the things what we saw and what we did. It was no good hiding away in a corner and thinking it was going to get better 'cause it wasn't. I mean when we used to come through the Straights of Dover you was dive bombed by planes there, the Stuka dive-bombers used to come and you had nowhere to go, you had to stand there and take it. I mean you had two enemies, you had the Germans and you had the sea and I can assure you the sea is more powerful than anything.