I Think I Prefer the Tinned Variety

Saturday 1 st January 1944 " Rang in the New Year well and truly on the ship’s bell. Nearly all the officers and ratings were in various stages of inebriation. The first lieutenant vainly trying to drink someone’s health from a bottle with the top still on. Foul taste in mouth this morning due to excess of port wine ." That's what my dad (Norman Buckle) wrote in his diary on New Year's Day 1944. He was stationed at H.M.S. Spurwing, the Royal Navy Air Base at Hastings, near Freetown in Sierra Leone, West Africa. He was nineteen years old. This photo was in Norman's collection; he hasn't made clear whether or not it's the New Year's Eve celebrations. Looks like it was a fun night though. Considering that high temperatures and humidity made a posting to Freetown very unpopular with services personnel they look like they're making the best of it!  Freetown was surrounded by malarial mangrove swamps and the humidity was so

October 15th is the first anniversary of the publication of I Think I Prefer the Tinned Variety: The Diary of a Petty Officer in the Fleet Air Arm during World War II . I published the book exactly one year ago on the exact same date as my dad, Norman Buckle, joined the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy in 1942. Seventy one years ago, World War II uprooted my father from a coal mining village in South Yorkshire and transported him thousands of miles to Sierra Leone in West Africa and later to a tropical island in the Pacific Ocean via Sydney, Australia. I Think I Prefer the Tinned Variety: The Diary of a Petty Officer in the Fleet Air Arm during World War II is a short, annotated diary which records Norman's experiences and the on-going banalities of everyday life on a naval air-base far away from home. Since publication there have been over one thousand downloads of I Think I Prefer the Tinned Variety and I've been overwhelmed by the interest the book has generated am

I borrowed ‘Tracing Your Second World War Ancestors’ by Simon Fowler* from my local public library recently and found it to be a useful and informative guide. When I was researching my Second World War ancestor I found that it was quite straightforward to get hold of his records of service in the Fleet Air Arm from the Royal Navy Archives. There was a form and instructions that could be downloaded from the Internet and when completed sent off in the post with a cheque for £30 which seemed a bit steep but there you are. After a wait of several weeks the available information was returned and although incomplete still fascinating. In his book Simon Fowler guides you through a whole range of potential sources for all the UK services and even some of the civilian roles. For example, he gives information about researching ancestors who might have been Bevin Boys including some interesting weblinks. My grandfather was a coal miner and was required to continue in that occupa

I downloaded this book because I thought it was going to be reminiscences about the Fleet Air Arm in the post WWII era which it was; but it was so much more as well. After a detailed and fascinating account of the author’s service in the Fleet Air Arm, it recounts his subsequent career in the British state education system. Author Christopher Jarman, who is approaching his eightieth birthday by my calculation, has had an amazingly rich and seemingly fulfilling life. He was educated on a scholarship at a public school as part of a social experiment in egalitarianism; he wanted to be a pilot but became an observer and officer in the Fleet Air Arm travelling the world in the process; he became inspired by the thought of teaching primary age children and after teacher training had an inspirational career as a class teacher, head teacher, local authority adviser and college lecturer; he developed his artistic talents and became an expert in calligraphy and handwriting which he taught

I borrowed a wonderful book of photographs from my local public library and have enjoyed looking at it so much have renewed it three times. Fleet Air Arm in Camera 1912 – 1996 by Roger Hayward tells the story of the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy from its inception to the end of the twentieth century. It draws on a photographic record from both The Public Records Office and The Fleet Air Arm Museum. It’s a fantastic mix of photographs: close-ups; action photos; aerial views of shore bases and at sea; people, ships and planes. Each photograph is accompanied by an informative caption and occasional quirky details. I was particularly interested in the photograph on page 82 of a Leading Wren (Pat Lees) who was one of the first WRNS to fly as part of her regular duties. She was a radio mechanic too like my dad and it was interesting to see the size of the radios they had to handle. When I was researching the background to I Think I Prefer the Tinned Variety: The Diary of

When I was reading background for my annotations to  " I Think I Prefer the Tinned Variety" I tried to understand what preceded British involvement in the war in the Pacific. Although the British Pacific Fleet didn't commence operations until 1945, the preparations were evolving throughout 1944. I stumbled upon some new information recently while reading "Churchill and Sea  Power" by Christopher M. Bell.  Apparently Churchill himself was very keen on a British only initiative in S.E. Asia and was not at all in favour of sending the Royal Navy to join with the Americans. He was committed to Operation Culverin which was intended to establish a British presence in Malaya and Sumatra with the objective of ultimately re-taking Singapore. However, since November 1943, the Chiefs of Staff of the three armed forces had been in discussions with the Americans about a British presence in the Pacific using bases in Australia. Churchill managed to get confirmation fro

When my dad set off on his long journey to Sierra Leone in October 1943 he noted in his diary that he'd thrown a coin into the river for luck when crossing the Forth Bridge by railway on the way to Liverpool Docks for embarkation. Wednesday 13 th October 1943 "Left Dunfermline on the 4.45 for Glasgow . As we went over the Forth Bridge threw a halfpenny over for luck, although I reckon that won’t be much good if we get “tinfished” in the Bay." Tinfished meant being torpedoed. When I found the poem by Rudyard Kipling about "pack drill" which I referred to in a previous post I also found this poem entitled "Tinfish" written by Kipling during the First World War. "Tin Fish" The ships destroy us above   And ensnare us beneath. We arise, we lie down, and we move   In the belly of Death. The ships have a thousand eyes   To mark where we come . . . But the mirth of a seaport dies   When our blow gets hom

 Sidney Buckle, Norman Buckle, Elsie Buckle (nee Smith) This photo is Norman with his mum (Elsie) and dad (Sidney) and I think he looks about one year old. My guess is that they had this picture taken to celebrate his first birthday. They were quite old parents (especially for that era) as Elsie was 39 and Sidney was 43 when Norman was born. They'd already had a son (Vernon) in 1921 but he'd only lived for a few days before he died. Sidney was a coal miner in the South Yorkshire coal fields as were his father and grandfather before him. Norman had left school and gone to work in an office just before the outbreak of WW2. He signed up for the Fleet Air Arm in 1942 and after training as a radio mechanic for a year he was sent to the Royal Navy air-base at a village called Hastings, near Freetown the capital of Sierra Leone. 

Seventy years ago, World War II uprooted my father from a coal mining village in South Yorkshire and transported him thousands of miles to Sierra Leone in West Africa and later to a tropical island in the Pacific. I Think I Prefer the Tinned Variety: The Diary of a Petty Officer in the Fleet Air Arm during World War II is a short, annotated diary (approximately 22,000 words) which records his extraordinary experiences and the on-going banalities of everyday life on a naval air-base far away from home. This blog includes the collection of original photographs that go with my short e-book I Think I Prefer the Tinned Variety: The Diary of a Petty Officer in the Fleet Air Arm during World War II.  They are in the October 2012 folder of the Blog Archive. If you would like to read I Think I Prefer the Tinned Variety: The Diary of a Petty Officer in the Fleet Air Arm during World War II you can get a flavour of the book from the free sample on the Amazon site. Just follow one

I published I Think I Prefer the Tinned Variety: The Diary of a Petty Officer in the Fleet Air Arm during World War II as a download for Kindle in October 2012. At the start of the book I explain how I came to research my dad's war time diary and publish it with my annotations as a Kindle download. "After I retired I spent many a happy hour researching both my own and my husband's family histories. Eventually though, I came to a dead end after I had explored every aspect of the lives of even the most distant relatives. I had already sorted through a box of old photos that had been in the loft for years and had labelled as many of them as I could. Now I turned my attention to an old, homemade, hard backed notebook with the initials N.B. stencilled on the deteriorating hessian cover. I knew that this was a collection of photographs and postcards that my dad had stuck in the book accompanied by captions in his tiny, precise handwriting. Folded into the book were lots of

As I wrote in my previous post, my dad (Norman Buckle) had kept a copy of the first edition (Friday July 20th 1945) of  The Pacific Post: Daily Newspaper of the British Pacific Fleet with his photographs and diary. It's only a 4 sides of a folded sheet newspaper but it is crammed with interesting stories. It's fascinating to read what the authorities thought would interest the servicemen all those thousands of miles away from home. Here are the remainder of the cuttings from the front page:

In the introductory pages of I Think I Prefer the Tinned Variety: The Diary of a Petty Officer in the Fleet Air Arm during World War II I've written about my father's background: " Norman was a working class lad who was born in 1924 and brought up in the village of Royston , near Barnsley, in South Yorkshire . He was fortunate, having passed his eleven plus, to have enough family support to go to the local grammar school at Normanton. He was studious, worked hard and passed his School Certificate. At the age of sixteen he was offered employment as a clerk at the salary of £1 - 0s - 0d per week (about £30 in to-day's money) in the Public Health Department of the West Riding County Council in Wakefield thus breaking three generations of the family's tradition of going down the pit." Norman in 1939 aged 15 years. Normanton Grammar School in 1920 Normanton Grammar School in 1925. Norman started there about ten years later. In August 1

When I was researching the background to I Think I Prefer the Tinned Variety: The Diary of a Petty Officer in the Fleet Air Arm during World War II I tried to find out about the development of the island of Ponam, near Manus, in the Admiralty Islands (part of present day Papua New Guinea) as the naval air base to which my dad was posted in 1945. I was delighted to find out more last week in Hansard (the record of Parliamentary debates). In The House of Lords on July 11th 1962 in a debate to do with Naval Estimates Lord Ashbourne reminisced about the base at Manus, in the Admiralty Islands of which he had had first-hand knowledge during the war. "Within about three months of capturing the Admiralty Islands from the Japanese the Americans had turned this almost desert island into a great fleet base, with alongside berths for unloading cargo, with floating docks, with a 10,000-feet airstrip, completed, they say, within fourteen days of the initial landings on the island. They bu

I wrote in I Think I Prefer the Tinned Variety: The Diary of a Petty Officer in the Fleet Air Arm during World War II that when my dad was de-mobilised from the Fleet Air Arm at the end of World War II he received a war gratuity properly known as a Certificate of Post War Credit. The actual document was preserved amongst his papers.

I wrote in I Think I Prefer the Tinned Variety: The Diary of a Petty Officer in the Fleet Air Arm during World War II about some of the abbreviation's my dad had used in his diary. The most difficult to interpret was P.D. (See previous post). More on the subject of "pack drill". A member of the WW2Talk forum pointed me in the direction of Hansard (the record of Parliamentary debates which is available on-line) where there are a couple of interesting references. In April 1943, Mr Walter Edwards (1900 - 1964), the M.P. for Stepney and Whitechapel, asked the First Lord of the Admiralty if pack drill was being used as a form of punishment in the Royal Navy. The First Lord of the Admiralty gave him a categorical assurance that it was not and had never been used as a form of punishment   in the Royal Navy. In July 1946, Mr Jack Lawson (1881 - 1965), M.P. for Chester-le-Street and briefly Secretary of State for War (1945 - 1946) assured the House of Commons tha

When I was researching the background to I Think I Prefer the Tinned Variety: The Diary of a Petty Officer in the Fleet Air Arm during World War II I joined a forum called World War Two Talk. I lurked around the site for several months before I signed up. It was here that I got my first clue as to why my dad had been sent to Freetown , Sierra Leone . Until I read about the convoy system on one of the WW2Talk threads I didn't have any idea about the strategic importance of the harbour at Freetown to the war effort. While exploring the site I realised that several members were asking for help with their enquiries into a wide range of topics. I had become stumped by several abbreviations that my dad had used in his diary and decided to see if any members of the site could help: so I signed up, introduced myself and posed my question. Within a couple of days most of my problem abbreviations were solved but one remained stubborn. "P.D." My dad had used the abbreviat

When I was researching the background to I Think I Prefer the Tinned Variety: The Diary of a Petty Officer in the Fleet Air Arm during World War II I became very interested in the history of the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm. Amongst my dad's papers was a page from the weekly edition of The Times newspaper which included these images of life on an aircraft carrier. I speculated that it was after seeing these photographs that he decided that he wanted to join the Fleet Air Arm.  On board an aircraft carrier, Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm December 1940  On board an aircraft carrier, Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm December 1940  On board an aircraft carrier, Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm December 1940  Links to Kindle Store on the Amazon site for the I Think I Prefer the Tinned Variety: The Diary of a Petty Officer in the Fleet Air Arm during World War II by N. Buckle & C. Murray book page. http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B009QXEUG2 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009QXEU

I wrote in I Think I Prefer the Tinned Variety: The Diary of a Petty Officer in the Fleet Air Arm during World War II about my dad's papers: "I knew that this was a collection of photographs and postcards that my dad had stuck in the book accompanied by captions in his tiny, precise handwriting. Folded into the book were lots of pages torn from an old diary for 1944 and several sheets of notepaper covered in that same spidery handwriting." To illustrate what his handwriting was like here's the page in his diary where he wrote about the fruits that had become available and includes the quote that gave rise to the title of the book. Sample of the diary pages that were part of Norman Buckle's record of his WWII experiences.

Name, Rank and Number Norman Buckle, Petty Officer, FX585169 This photograph was taken in May 1945 when Norman was based at H.M.S. Golden Hind (Sidney, Australia) before he went to join MONAB 4 at Ponam in the Admiralty Islands.

I am delighted that to-day exactly seventy years since my dad, Norman Buckle, joined the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm as a wartime volunteer I have published his annotated diary. Now available to download from the Kindle Store: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B009QXEUG2 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009QXEUG2