Lewin of Greenwich Naval History & Forum

I couldn't find a suitable thread to post this little story, thought it might be a good idea to have a thread about general items not covered by existing threads. My little tale :- last year my son who has completed 38 years in the army was serving in the Provost Guard at Dartmouth College. A passing out day was considered a good time for presentation of bar & leaf to his long service medal. Prince Andrew was present for the passing out parade, afterwards he presented to my son his awards. After all the ceremony had been completed, my wife, son's wife & me were invited into the Captains house to meet the Prince. He spent maybe 45 secs to 1 minute with each person. I was wearing my Korean war medals. When it was my turn , Prince Andrew put on a "This is a serious question face" asking me what I thought about Korea , how he expected me to give an opinion on Korea, nuclear weapons etc. in the short time available, I know not. My answer was " It's very cold in winter & very hot in summer!". His face never changed, not recognising a bit of a matelots sense of humour. I thought , if I had said that to his father he would have had a chortle.

Nice little story Keith and pleased to see that his service was recognised by Royalty and his medals were not just posted to him.

Jim

You must have been very proud Barry , but don't be put off by his attitude I had a similar insipid response from him many years ago when he visited the Duxford museum with his then wife " Fergy" who was the complete opposite being very interested and kind natured towards all the work being done by the volunteers who worked there unpaid for the benefit of others and the preservation of yesterdays state of the art defence items .....

Why is everybody calling me Barry? I'm Keith.

So sorry Keith , I was having a senior moment , but alls well now ...I've put the cork back in ....again my apologies , but their again at least you are in the buddies list ......Barry lives in Hawaii a long way from here

ivorthediver wrote: ↑Wed Sep 05, 2018 4:39 pm So sorry Keith , I was having a senior moment , but alls well now ...I've put the cork back in ....again my apologies , but their again at least you are in the buddies list ......Barry lives in Hawaii a long way from here

I think Don was in Hawaii and Barry is in Florida.

Jim

This names thing can be catching Ivor ,,,,,,,, I'm Fred ..... Fred Bear aka Dave/DaveH/El Tel/Old Ch Tel ..... take yer pick

Ok but I'm quite happy to settle for friend me ole mate , enjoy your break and hurry back even if its just to decipher our comms

THE VOICE OF DESTROYERS;

when I was a small child we lived in Malta on Sliema Creek, the destroyer creek. My father was flotilla gunnery officer, Prince Philip was First Lt. and Mike Townsend was Captain D. Whenever the flotilla came home from exercising it did so with a chorus of whoops on their steam sirens, These were one of my earliest happy memories as that sound mean dad was back. Years later he took over as Captain F of the Dartmouth Squadron flying his pennant in HMS Urchin. One of the first actions he did was to send the buffer into the DY to rabbit a steam siren giving this old destroyer back her traditional voice. This was successfully done and Urchin could speak with pride again, installation by the stokers division.


What voice do modern destroyers have, does anyone remember when the whooper went out of RN favour?
tim

No Tim ........sadly I can't , but I can ASSURE you that MY Models contain these sounds on sound cards that are played on each models sound system when out on the lake in addition to the depth and echo sounders on the same system and are powered through 6amp amplifiers , and usually bring a crowd to the edge of the car park of the local post House adjacent