A veteran who lived through the D-Day landings has urged people not to be shy and enjoy their lives, but pick their friends wisely, ahead of his 100th birthday.
George Spencer, who served around the globe with the Royal Navy and is looking forward to celebrating his landmark birthday with his family in Ballymena, Co Antrim, warned: “There are some nasty people around.”
But he noted there are also some “very good ones”, describing himself as being lucky.
“I’m very fortunate with my daughters. I’ve been very fortunate, they look after me well,” he told Press Association.
“Apart from that, I say enjoy all sorts of things.”
Mr Spencer served with the Royal Navy and described having a “bird’s eye view” of the D-Day landings, credited as the turning point in the Second World War, from the mast of the HMS Nelson.
“I was on board the Nelson, and when we got to the landings I was given a position on top of the mast, so I had a bird’s eye view of everything that went on,” he said.
“I had binoculars, Japanese I think, the lens was as big as a plate. I watched the landings going on. I remember the Nelson, the Rodney and an aircraft carrier.”
He said the trio were also involved in the Sicily landings in the Mediterranean the year before, which he said is not talked about as much.
Mr Spencer was born in Nottinghamshire, and recalled when he was at school thinking that mining was the “last place he wanted to go”, and instead went to the then naval academy the TS Mercury training ship.
This service was under the former record-breaking long jumper and cricketer CB Fry as the captain superintendent of the Mercury.
“There was also manufacturing but I didn’t want that either, so I went and saw the headmaster who was a bit surprised as no one had ever done this before, and he was delighted so I got full support from him and then I was called for an interview on the Mercury,” he said.
“The Mercury was a hulk of a ship, I remembered sleeping in hammocks and scrubbing the floor.
“People said they always knew the Mercury boys from the smell of the soap they gave us, it was pretty strong stuff.
“It somehow or other suits me quite well.”
Mr Spencer later settled in Northern Ireland following his Navy career with his wife who he had met after being sent to Londonderry, and their family.
He also served with the Australian Navy for a time, and one of his daughters was even born there while his family had travelled with him.
Mr Spencer’s daughter Sally Ann Johnston said her father spoke about his war time experiences “very little” as she grew up.
“We definitely heard a lot of stories recently,” she said.
“When things have come up, and they’ve been commemorations of D-Day, and sometimes when people have asked, because then it became known that dad had been at D-Day, there was more interest, and there were more questions asked.
“I suppose we’d heard a little bit, but generally, probably like most of the older generation, they didn’t talk a lot about it.
“I’d heard a little bit about the early days, because sometimes he’d talk about the training ship, Mercury, that he was on, and it always fascinated us.
“Also my sons were totally amazed by the fact he went away to the training ship at the age of 12, he got a scholarship which he’d done on his own initiative, so we always threatened, ‘Oh, we’ll send you away at 12’.
“It’s a very different life nowadays.”
She said she had been “amazed” when she first heard of her father’s experiences on D-Day, saying he had been so young.
“I got the impression then that everybody just got on with it, and they didn’t complain, they just did what was required, and probably didn’t think so much of the fact that they may have been in danger themselves,” she said.
“I remember more recently one of the stories he had said was about having to pull the ships back in his convoy to be further away because they were actually in range of the German guns.”
She said it was only through her own research that she found out the ship her father had been on had been hit by a mine, and had been damaged.
“I said to him, ‘Dad, you never told me about this, the ship being hit by a mine’, and he said: ‘Oh yes, we sat on a mine’, as if that was part of daily life.
“It blew my mind because he was so nonchalant, obviously we might not have been here if it had been a bit worse, but they managed to go back, get repaired and go on.”
She joked she was envious of her sister having been born in Australia, saying by the time she was born, her family were back in the UK, and her father had taken a land-based job in Scotland.
“I was actually born in Johnstone in Scotland, and was always very envious that my sister had been born somewhere exciting like Australia,” she said.
