Taking on two destroyers ( Part 2 of 2)

Now you know when I look back on it, it scares the hell out of me. But at the time you're young, you go home and you have a beer and talk about it. And you think you put it in storage, and that you've handled it, and that isn't the way it worked out. We were so close, and yet we didn't maintain that closeness or anywhere near it when we were taken off Ops and all went on our way to go home. Now we stayed in contact a bit, but I often wondered why that was, and I think it was because we were so close, that you sort of don't want to spoil it. But I noticed, you know, going back to when we knew that the end of a crew was coming, that uh, we never talked about it. We were in this room that I told you about, up at the Guinness Castle, and uh, our batman, I had a batman, so he batmanned the whole works of us. He worked in a brewery and he used to bring some neat scotch over and the crew would lay up there night after night and we had a good Scotchman who knew Robbie Burns better than Robbie Burns did I think. And uh, that's, and then all of a sudden, wham, you've got your kitbag going this way and....... that's difficult.