A naval signals officer recalls D Day
My father James Michael Hill served in several ships during the Second World War. He didn't speak much of his experiences but they clearly haunted him all his life. As Parkinson's disease took hold of him in the latter part of his life my mother had to pacify him many times when he saw water all around the bed and relived the sinking of one ship, the Holcombe in 1943.
He had signed up in May 1942, he would have been almost 20 years old and was trained as a coder. He was not a great churchgoer but his service record notes his religion as Quaker. Family discussions at that time must have been intense - his father, my grandfather was a contientious objector working for the war effort as a chemist in the mines at home but refusing to bear arms.
Amongst the things my father held on to throughout his life was a diary that he wrote around D Day. He boarded the USS Augusta on Saturday 27th May 1944 remarking how fed up they all were with cramped conditions. The diary does convey the feeling that he knew something major was building. Top brass were coming and going; he mentions the King visiting, numerous admirals and captains and Eisenhower and Ramsey coming alongside at Utah on 7th June 1944.
