Description
Lewis Trinder volunteered on his eighteenth birthday September 13th 1942 and joined the Royal Navy.
He had seven weeks training and was deployed on the Atlantic Convoys to protect merchant ships from German submarines. Lewis qualified as a Seaman on HMS Collingwood, and then served on HMS Fleetwood.
During one patrol in February 1944 his ship sank six U boats. In his opinion, this was the turning part in the war. The tide had changed and it was down to Bletchley Park who had cracked the Enigma Code.
Lewis was transferred onto HMS Magpie and on the 4thof June 1944 he sailed out of the Solent, down the western side of the Isle of Wight on the way to Normandy for the D Day landings. The ship was reportedly the first British warship to sail into French territorial waters at 2.30am.
After the war Lewis married Vera and had three sons. He then went into the pub industry and took tenancy of the Castle Inn and then The Princess of Wales Pub in Aldershot.
Print taken from the book ‘A TIME TO FIGHT Living and Remembering WWII’
