Colin Hamilton – Drafted to Barrow

Then I got a draft to Warspite in Barrow, which was … I’d done basic training for that, and I went up … ‘cos she was being built, I moved up to Leading Hand.

We got the late train up to Barrow, got in at 3 o’clock in the morning and I was the only person to get off the train, and I looked around and there was a Postman who was collecting the mail and he said, “I know you, you’re scouse Hamilton.”

He was on Chichester, he was a wartime Stoker who’d been on Chichester with me, and he was there to meet the train and he said, “Here’s a key to the Crown Inn, John Street. Go down the road, turn right, you’ll see the Pub. You room is the first one up on the left” and off I went.

He had a very attractive daughter, ginger haired girl, she was lovely. And he said, “Any of you lads ever go near my daughter …”

When I saw him again, he said, “Oh, when are you going to come round for lunch?” (laughs). When I got down to the Pub, at ten past three, it was in full swing.

Simon: AM?

Oh yeah. It was a little Pub since been pulled down now, a little Pub and there was a Policeman in there behind the Bar, helmet on the … serving drinks you know, and I thought, oh what have I let myself in for?

‘Cos I could never sneak out.  You had to go through the Bar to get out of this place. It was a lovely place; the couple were super. You had to sneak out, but you couldn’t because somebody would want to buy you a drink, and then somebody else would want to buy …

Simon: Right. It was always rocking there was it?

Yeah, but it was good fun.