Macro Mondays - Award
These are two of my grandfather's medals; on the left is his Long Service and Good Conduct medal, and on the right his campaign medal for the 1914 -18 war (WW1)
My grandfather joined the Royal Navy when he was 18, in 1916. He was based at the Royal Naval Hospital Haslar, Gosport, Hampshire, as a Sick-Berth Attendant. As an SBA he would still be sent to ships and serve onboard. He survived the torpedoing of HMS Britannia one of the last Royal Navy's ship to be sunk in WW1.
In 1919 he joined (HMS) M33, a monitor class river boat to patrol the River Dvina during the White Russian Alliance. The M33 was hit 4 times of which one came to rest amongst the ship's magazine's but thankfully failed to go off. (The M33 is the only monitor class to survive and has faithfully been restored and sits in the Royal Naval Dockyard at Portsmouth) In 2019 we as a family paid tribute to our grandfather's memory, 100 years later.
My grandfather served 20 years with the Royal Navy with a rank of Sick-Berth Chief Petty Officer, retiring in 1938. He continued to work for the Royal Naval Haslar Hospital as a civilian in the museum library.
Incidentally, during WW1 he had first hand experience of what was then known as the Spanish Flu ... some estimated 300-500 million people around the world were infected ... an estimated 30-50 million died.
A remarkable, unassuming man, to us he was just our grandfather who never spoke of his time in the navy.
Macro Mondays - Award
These are two of my grandfather's medals; on the left is his Long Service and Good Conduct medal, and on the right his campaign medal for the 1914 -18 war (WW1)
My grandfather joined the Royal Navy when he was 18, in 1916. He was based at the Royal Naval Hospital Haslar, Gosport, Hampshire, as a Sick-Berth Attendant. As an SBA he would still be sent to ships and serve onboard. He survived the torpedoing of HMS Britannia one of the last Royal Navy's ship to be sunk in WW1.
In 1919 he joined (HMS) M33, a monitor class river boat to patrol the River Dvina during the White Russian Alliance. The M33 was hit 4 times of which one came to rest amongst the ship's magazine's but thankfully failed to go off. (The M33 is the only monitor class to survive and has faithfully been restored and sits in the Royal Naval Dockyard at Portsmouth) In 2019 we as a family paid tribute to our grandfather's memory, 100 years later.
My grandfather served 20 years with the Royal Navy with a rank of Sick-Berth Chief Petty Officer, retiring in 1938. He continued to work for the Royal Naval Haslar Hospital as a civilian in the museum library.
Incidentally, during WW1 he had first hand experience of what was then known as the Spanish Flu ... some estimated 300-500 million people around the world were infected ... an estimated 30-50 million died.
A remarkable, unassuming man, to us he was just our grandfather who never spoke of his time in the navy.