"A Sailor's Return"

[gray_marian]

A Sailor's return by P065998
Archive List > Merchant Navy
Archive List > Civilian Internment

Joseph Charles Gorman, London, Civilian Force, Article ID: A3274337 Contributed on: 14 November 2004

"Before the war my father served in the Merchant Navy but in 1939 when war broke out he was called up to join the army. He explained to the recruiting officer of his past naval service and that he was a qualified stoker and would rather serve in the Royal Navy where his skills would be better used. Nothwithstanding this he was sent for army training. At the time no one really knew how long this war would last but my father realised that he was in the wrong service. Having failed many times to get a transfer to the Royal Navy he decided to take things into his own hands and so deserted and rejoined the Merchant Navy.
He served at sea, mainly on the North Atlantic convoy routes, throughout the war, even being torpedoed and having to be rescued by the Royal Navy. After the war he return home to what he thought was a much earned rest. Not so. One evening the Military Police called at his house and he was arrested for desertion and afterwards spent nearly two years in a Military prison.
The fact that he had just spent five years serving his country in the Merchant Service appeared to mean nothing. They even refused to award him his rightly deserved war medals. He was not bitter and accepted this as a consequence of his action. My family had been without their father for five years and when they finally got him back he was taken aware, leaving my mother and five children to fend for themselves, without any income. Only the kindness of his friends and neighbours kept them from destitution."

Excerpt taken from
BBC Homepage
BBC History

WW2 People's War Homepage
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[Evan Lewis]

Absolutely disgusting treatment. Where were all the. Do Good'ers,and the Legion & Similar Organisations then?

[Ivan Cloherty]

Absolutely disgusting treatment. Where were all the. Do Good'ers,and the Legion & Similar Organisations then?

The 'Legion' helping MN personnel, dream on Evan, they don't even want to recognise our service to this day

[Richard Quartermaine]

There are some nasty mongrels out there Marian so pathetically engrossed in their insipid self importance that any decent human being wouldn't (and please excuse me) pi** on them if they were on fire.
Richard

[Des Taff Jenkins]

HI Marian.
I read that man's history many years ago. When we think that politicians and public servants were different in days gone by we really are just dreaming, what kudos that military man got when he signed the papers for his arrest and what about the brains of the Army captains who sentenced him, probably never saw a shot fired in anger.
Cheers Des

[j.sabourn]

A lot of us may have experienced unjust punishment in our eyes. From those who received loggings and forfeitures of wages may have been sometimes unavoidable, not very often I would suggest. My own memories are at school as being an innocent bystander just walking past a conflageration going on between a teacher and a group of boys. I was swooped up with the lot and received 6 of the best with the rest of them, it wasn't the pain that was annoying just the unjustness of it. Another lesson learned in life, keep clear of groups of people arguing. Cheers JS

[Ivan Cloherty]

Another lesson learned in life, keep clear of groups of people arguing. Cheers JS

So no more family Christmases then John!

[j.sabourn]

Remember one time in Dundee Ivan when forgot my good resolutions, when in the fish and chip shop before coming back to the ship. This bloke started hammering his wife so I stepped in between them, finished up they both started on me. PC Plod and the hurry up wagon arrives and they put me in the back of, before I managed to give them the proper story. By this time the pair of them had slipped off. Great detective work. Starsky and Hutch had nothing on them. Cheers JS. Did you enjoy your Bucks Fizz last night. JS