History on this day Jan 7 1942.
CHAPTER 13 My First Career On 5 January 1942, I went to Shotley Royal Naval Base for a medical examination, which I passed despite being under the height requirement of five feet. I was four feet ten and a half inches, six stone six lbs (42.3 kg), and fifteen years, five months and twenty days old. I was an under-sized, under-aged piece of ‘cannon fodder.’ The school received a twenty-five pound Sterling bounty payment upon my delivery to the Royal Navy. My body was sold for approximately 55p or Aus $1-15 a Kilo or 30 cents U/S per lb. After a gruelling train journey to Fleetwood (near Liverpool,) I embarked in the early morning on the Isle of Man steam packet, ‘Rushen Castle’. It took four hours to get to Douglas, the capital and main port on the Isle of Man. I hadn’t been at sea for four years. Looking piteously at the first-timers berleying on the boisterous Irish sea, I was reminded of my first experience of sea sickness on a Portsmo...