Salty seadogs reunitedafter 70 years

Alexi Moore, from Woodburn, and Tom Burns, from Tirbracken Road, despite both living just a few miles apart, had no idea that the other was still alive when they were demobbed and came home to Londonderry.

Both men served in the Royal Navy and spent much time in foreign waters serving Queen and country.

“I was just an ordinary sailor on board a ship in the war. I was in a special landing party when I arrived in Bombay in the early 1940s en route to Burma. There was 12 of us in the advance party and I met Tommy that night in the camp, I’m trying to remember the name of it...but I can’t. I was going on to Yangon (Rangoon) in Burma. A mere teenager when he signed up, Alexi was the youngest of six boys all of whom signed up for active duty. He was still just a young whip when he encountered Tommy in the camp...

“That night Tommy was coming home because his ship had went down,” said Alexi.

Describing himself as a “survivor from the Repulse” Tommy and his fellow Navy men were involved in a Second World War naval engagement that took place north of Singapore, off the east coast of Malaya, near Kuantan, Pahang. Both British Royal Navy battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser HMS Repulse were sunk by land-based bombers and torpedo bombers of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

“I was a petty officer on board, and worked down in the wireless office. There were four different watches with a Petty Officer in charge of the watches. In fact, I was up the mast sending the message out that we were sinking, but I cannot remember the half of it,” he said, adding that it was not the first time he had been on a vessel that was sunk.

“You got used to it,” he laughed.

Back at camp the service men decided to go to a dance hall and enjoy their downtime, and so it was that Tommy and Alexi found themselves in the same company.

Alexi recalled: “He took me to this dance hall and I will never forget it. There was a wee triangle of a shelf in one corner, made with a bit of wood, and he grabbed me and just put me up there , he just lifted me right up and then a fight started. As the fight started,” he mimes a punch being struck by Tommy, adding: “He looked up at me and shouted ‘Are you alright man?’ after he had flogged someone. I will be quite truthful, I was so sacred I did not not know where I was going. At that time I was just about 18.”

Tommy joins the affray: “I was a boxer in the Navy and I boxed in different places. We went out for a dance...”

ASked how come he got into a fight with the American service men, the two men dissolve into giggles, before Alexi pipes up: “You couldn’t help it”.

More giggles ensue before Tommy’s brother, Herbie, produces some old photographs and the two Salty Seadogs reminisce about their service years.

Asked how the pair felt at being reunited after so many years, Alexi said it was “a great experience”.

The sailors finished their day of memories over dinner with friends from the services, where more tall tales were undoubtedly told.