A NEW book recounting the incredible wartime experiences of remarkable Isle of Wight veteran Alec Penstone is packed with so many well told tales, the authors could easily have written a series.
The book, entitled My Ten and a Half Arctic Convoys and the Rest of My Life, is due for publication at the end of the month, with a DVD recounting his fascinating life, aligned to it.
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At the 75th anniversary in 2019, a man gently tapped Alec on the shoulder while he was there, asking to have his photo taken with him.
His eyesight is poor these days, but he was happy to oblige. Later, Alec asked who it was.
It was only pop superstar, Rod Stewart!
In the 200-page book, his wartime life began in the Blitz in London, as a fire watcher, and later ARP warden, from the age of 14.
On one occasion, bombs fell and caused a gas explosion and fire, which badly damaged an air raid shelter, with people trapped inside.
He managed, while breathing in thick smoke, to pull some people to safety, but also dead bodies.
There was also a time, during the Battle of Britain being fought overhead, when he helped in the capture of a German pilot who bailed out.
When he was 18, Alec joined the Royal Navy as an ASDIC/sonar operator, listening out for U-boats and launched torpedoes.
His first Arctic Convoy was aboard a British First World War submarine, brought back into service — but it kept starting to flood when submerged, so stayed on the surface.
Alec was then sent to Scotland to go on new British 'mini' aircraft carrier, HMS Campania.
On the morning of June 4, 1943, after coming off shift (he normally spent his time in the bowels of the ship with headphones on), he realised he was just off The Needles and was part of the massive D-Day fleet, surrounded by boats.
Campania had the vital job of keeping the German U-Boats penned in at the French port of Brest.
The Campania was then sent to guard the tug laying the famous PLUTO pipeline, between the Island and France.
The book then goes into great detail about the most harrowing — if it hadn't been harrowing enough already — the regular Arctic Convoys he sailed in, to the Russian ports of Murmansk and Archangel to deliver vital supplies to their Soviet allies.
The threat of U-Boats and heavyweight German battleships and destroyers was a constant, while the freezing conditions and stormy seas, with mountainous waves, an even bigger threat at times.
But the worst of those experiences for Alec was when two ocean liners, packed with Soviet POWs, sailed to Russia.
They were not treated as the heroes Alec imagined. They were executed or sent to gulags on Stalin's orders.
Alec was then sent to the Far East, but not before trying to marry his sweetheart Gladys in the short window of embarkation leave he was granted.
His parish priest was unable to do a church service at such short notice, but on his advice, Alec managed to get an audience with the Archbishop of Canterbury, who granted him a special licence to have a church service.
When based on board Campania on the Yangtze River, atomic bombs fell on Japan.
And Alec was in Hong Kong for the Japanese surrender, among the first to liberate POW camps with British prisoners.
What he witnessed was something he said was not for publication. Even the detail in the book was difficult for the authors and researchers to stomach when Alec told the story.
But Alec did talk about a small cave he and a shipmate discovered — full of human bones, of British servicemen.
He found dog tags for some of them and reported the grim discovery to the War Graves Commission.
- See the County Press in the run up to the book's publication, featuring some of his stories in greater detail.
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