212627 Ord.Tel. Alan Charles Thomas Royal Navy HMS Manchester from:Coventry My dad, Alan Charles Thomas, served on HMS Manchester, as an Ordinary Telegrapher, from April 1942, until its torpedo damage, and resultant scuttling in Aug, later that year. His time on Manchester, of which, I can state he was extremely and enduringly proud, started with Arctic Convoy duties inculding Spitzbergen and the notorious convoy P17, and culminated in Op Pedestal, and his imprisonment in Laghout in Algeria. His description of that legendary swim to the Tunisan coast, fired my youthful imagination given its humorous detail, a ship-mate enduring the swim, with my dad's help as a very good swimmer, all the while clutching his knife and fork only to discovery that his POW diet was mostly a sand based soup! Typical British gallows humour, hiding from a small child the reality of his father being starved to half his body weight in just 3 months. Suffice to say that my mum refused ever to visit France because of the 'hospitality' of the Vichy French.
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