You Shouldn’t Join if You Can’t Take a Joke

What does a young lad of the tender age of fifteen want from life? In 1935, the author signed up for the Royal Navy and left his home in Hull for HMS Ganges, a training ship for ‘nozzers’ near Harwich. A picnic it wasn’t, and little did Ken Kent know what was in store for him when Hitler invaded Poland and plunged Europe into the turmoil of World War II. The author saw action against the Germans, the Italians and even the French, and sailed the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, as well as the cruel North Sea. He had the good luck to serve as a signalman on that indomitable warrior of the waves, HMS Warspite, and the bad luck to be on HMS Imogen when she was rammed and sunk off Norway by a sister ship, HMS Glasgow. But Ken was a survivor. This humorous and lively account of ten years in the Navy is a valuable record of everyday life in a service that has changed beyond belief. It is also a tribute to another survivor – HMS Warspite – never defeated in battle, and now at peace in Prussia Cove, Cornwall.