Oral History Gallery

Extract Text (Duration 1.13)

We seemed to have a lot of back problems, I used to have what I used to call ‘my chubby Chief section' which were usually some rather overweight Senior Rates with quite severe back problems.  In fact several of them went on and had to have fusions.  Knees were always a big problem, this of course I was told, although I didn't have any first hand experience of this, was due to the various ladders and that that they went up and down onboard the ships.  We also used to get in quite a lot of Royal Marine juniors who were musicians, because one of the things of the side drum of a Junior Musician is the fact that it knocks again the patella and quite a lot of them used to get problems with their patella's for this reason.  Other than that, they were nearly always things like motorbike accidents, car accidents, and on occasion boating accidents, particularly for chaps who'd been onboard ships abroad.  Hmmm, occasionally it was because they had had imbibed too much alcohol and they'd had an accident and of course always the risk of people falling down hatches onboard ships and submarines.