About the contributor

My father, known forever as HUTCH, joined the Navy in 1933. He served two tours on the China Station on HMS Kent. He was an Electrical AB and serviced the Depth Charges and Torpedoes. He was lucky enough to win a raffle onboard of one of two photo albums taken by the ships photographer covering the entire ships tour. A fabulous insight into the ships life including scenes of action and the ship at play like 'Crossing the Line', even the ships cats fast asleep in the end of the massive 12 inch guns. Also of local life in Indonesia, Japan, China, Borneo and all points East in-between 1933-1936.
He later served on HMS Southampton, HMS Kempenfelt and the 'J' Class destroyer HMS Jervis. My Dad was always an Able Seaman he never sought promotion. He once said whilst in the Mediterrean Sea he was fed up of people trying to Bomb him.Knowing now the navy lost upwards of 62 ships in the Med, especially between 1941-42 I can understand what he must have felt.
In 1944, just before D Day, he and a mate were testing the electical circuits on a Torpedo warhead and it blew him up. He ended up in a hospital in Scotland being called the 'Golden Boy' by the nurses for using up their precious supplies of antibiotics. The blast had blown the tops off his right hand and shrapnel left in him surfaced until the day he died on 13/11/1990 aged 75.