Join the Navy and See the World: 4. Belfast.

This story is submitted to the People's War Website by David Thacker, a volunteer from BBC Radio Northampton, on behalf of his Mother, Isabella, wife of the late Len Thacker, and has been added to the site with her permission. She fully understands and accepts the site's terms and conditions.
In 1943, Len returned to the UK from serving in HMS Bridgewater in South and West Africa, and joined his new ship HMS Thruster being built in the Harland and Wolff yard in Belfast.
At the ship's Commissioning Dance, at the British Legion Hall, he met a local girl: Isabella Burns, who had been persuaded to go to the dance by workmates, including Betty Bolton, from a laundry on the outskirts of Belfast. Isabella had been living in the Woodstock Road area near to the Albert Bridge. She thought the area to be a likely target during the bombing and for a time went during raids to her Uncle Ned's house in Bloomfield. There was a field opposite this house in Dunraven Gardens and a stick of incendiary bombs fell there. There was also a nearby plantation with AA gun emplacements which made it a noisy place and not necessarily safer, so Isabella moved out to the country and used to get a train in to work.
Isabella's elder brother Jim, had been a merchant Seaman, but joined the Royal Navy and was taken prisoner in Crete when his destroyer, Hereward, was lost. He was repatriated later in the war, and was posted to a role recovering aircraft crashed on the Isle of Arran. Elder sister Minnie had emigrated as a child to Australia. Younger brothers Billy and Robert also served in the Merchant Navy. Billy was lost in the Empire Attendant which was torpedoed by a U-Boat.
Len and Isabella were married in St Luke's Church, Belfast on 4.6.1943. After the Wedding, Len took Isabella to Northampton to live with his parents,along with his sister Elsie, whose husband John was a P.O. in HMS Sheffield, and later HMS Anson, and Elsie and John's son Michael. In Northampton, Isabella worked in a part of the Bective Shoe Factory that was given over to receiving, storing, selecting and re-distributing aero spares.
Len had to go straight back to Belfast to sail with Thruster for Greenock on 8.6.1943, and thence onward to the Sicily Invasion. It was to be two years before he returned home to his Wife.
Len used a W/T Operator's Log book to record some of his experiences serving in Thruster, and subsequent stories consist of transcripts of his notes.

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