Fleet Air Arm

This is the story of my father, Alan, his dad, Thomas, and my maternal grandfather, Harry, who was the brother of my father's dad. In other words, my parents, Alan and Joan Rochester,were first cousins. They met as youngsters in Northumberland in the late 20's/early 30's. My father was an excellent football player, at the time at Hexham Grammar School, and was hired as a young prospect by Leicester City when he was 16 (i.e. 1938). Leicester City also had -- for those days -- a quite advanced management trainee program in the days when footballers didn't earn much. My dad, and his dad, Thomas, and his mother, Rebecca, moved to Leicester with my Dad's older sister, Molllie, who later became a nurse. Both men were employed by the then novel plastics firm Cascelloid which was linked to Leicester City. My father met his best man there, Albert (Bert) Sims, who went on to become one of the longest serving Lancaster bomber pilots of the 2nd WW (over 40 missions), and was later transferred to the USA to train other pilots. Bert stayed after the war and became a senior executive with the oil company, Conoco. My father, Alan, played in British war time football leagues with such luminaries as Billy Wright and Don Revie. My grandmother (my dad's mother, Rebecca -- Becca) once told me how she had put Don Revie to bed drunk one night because he and Billy Wright lodged with her when they were in Leicester). My dad volunteered for armed service when he was 17, lying about his age, and was allocated to the Fleet Air Arm. I remember his telling me that when war was declared on 3rd September 1939 his dad, Thomas, who had gone through the trenches of the First World War, sat on the back step of their terraced house in Leicester and bawled his eyes out at the thought his son might have to face what he gone through. Thomas, a Northumbrian miner, had been gassed in the trenches but had still gone on to become a Brevett Captain. My Dad, Alan, (because he was a good sportsman,) had a very finely tuned sense of balance, but service in the Fleet Air Arm induced vertigo, and he was permanently airsick. He several times told a lovely story of how he was once a gunner in training to Laurence Olivier, the actor, who was a Fleet Air Arm instructor during the war. Their biplane caught fire during a training exercise. Olivier, using the communication tube between the two cockpits, ordered my father to bale out. But my dad was so airsick he didn't hear the command. So Olivier had no choice but to land a burning aircraft on an aircraft carrier! My dad said he got a balling out for not baleing out, and a pat on the back for saving a valuable aircraft!! He was then transferred to radio repair duties on an aircraft carrier (initially the Arc Royal), and spent his entire 6 year war being seasick, especially at anchor !! He was on the Arc Royal when it went after the Bismarck, but as he said: he never came closer than a hundred miles to the Bismarck. He says he was on the Malta supply run, and saw torpedoes hit one of the ships he was on when he was stationed in Scapa Flow. My paternal grandad, Thomas, I never met. But as I said above he made it to Brevett Captain coming up from the ranks. There are various awards he achieved as well, but I have no details of those. My maternal grandfather (i.e. his brother, Harry) was too young for the 1st World War (born 1901)and too old for the Second. But he was an ARP warden along the St. Pancras line into London close to Apex Corner in North London. New houses were built there in the late thirties and my maternal grandparents, Harry and Mary, bought one in a development that was literally on the extreme northern edge of London. As a five year old (I was born in 1949, the year NATO was founded)I can still remember open country and red squirrels beyond their back fence. They also still had an undemolished Anderson air-raid shelter in their garden at that time. It was a great playground for me, my sister and other kids around. I also remember my maternal grandmother (Mary/Molly)telling me how she thoroughly expected German paratroopers to appear from the countryside behind her house when invasion was thought to be imminent, and how, later, her biggest fears came from the doodlebugs (the first flying bombs) because when the noise of their engines stopped, you didn't know where they would land. My mother, Joan, who worked in London as a secretary during the war, tells the tale of being blown down underground steps by a bomb at one point. But she says she was less concerned about whether she was injured, than that her nylons might have been laddered!! My dad was demobbed safely, he married my mother in 1946 and went on to be a successful Cascelloid manager. My paternal grandfather, Thomas, died the week before their wedding from the effects of First World War gassing,silicosis and other complications. His brother, Harry, resumed a successful career as a joiner, dieing peacefully in retirment in his mid seventies. His wife, Mary, rode her bike as a postwoman in north London until she retired (endlessly telling us how she delivered Bruce Forsyth's mail in Mill Hill while he still lived there.) She died at 95 in hospital. Thomas's wife, Rebecca, also died peacefully at 92 in a nursing home. Alan's wife Joan is still alive, as is his sister Mollie. And my 14 year old daughter, Alana, is named after my father. Cheers DR

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.