Reginald Benge - His Majesty's Trawlers

Reginald Benge was in the Merchant Navy before the war. While he was on leave a policeman arrived at his mother's door and he was then (almost "press-ganged") forced into the Royal Naval Auxiliary. He did his training at Lowestoft with other people who were mainly trawlermen. The Royal Navy requisitioned over 200 commercial trawlers and the smaller ones were mainly used as mine sweepers. "They used trawlers with a sweep, to cut the mines and then had to sink them with rifle fire or blow them up with a rifle. "They all were trained to use rifles and they were trained to use everything. I mean, small ships, you had to do everything." This was obviously very dangerous work and many of the trawlers were blown up either by the mines or by German Luftwaffe bombing.

He was on the ship HMT (His Majesty's Trawler) Aston Villa which had been hit by German bombers and was then scuttled. They then came back on a Norwegian ship called the Ranen. "The story is they got dressed up as women.", "Some of them had head squares on", " and when the E-Boat came alongside they took the E-Boat over!". They also "had to wave to the German planes", presumably so they did not get bombed by them. A book called Trawlers Go to War also relates these stories.

Reginald was at D-Day alongside about 7,000 other ships. He started his career as a Steward but ended up as a Petty Officer

He married during the war: "My mother wrote him a letter, if you don't come back and marry me this time, I'm marrying somebody else." As his son remarked, "Stop the war please I want to get married." He never went back to sea after the war and he went into the shipyards as many ex-Royal Navy and Merchant Navy men did.

Audio and transcription are attached.