The Beginning Of The War

My father at the age of 20 just before he joined the Armed Forces.

Fun times on bikes before the war. My father used to ride down on his motorbike from Pulborough to Selsey to meet old friends and have good clean fun!

More fun times!!

My father with his mother Dorothy and sister Peggie & Jeanne just before leaving for the war.

Liverpool To Greece

The Cunard Steamship The Scythia left Liverpool on the 1st November 1940 and took my father to Durban in South Africa on his way to Greece. My father only knew he was going two days before he left.

The Dunera took my father as far as Durban in South Africa and then the Dunera Steamship completed the journey to Port Said. He arrived in Port Said on New Years Eve 1940.

My father had a shilling in his pocket when he left England and he learnt very quickly how to play pontoon and crib to keep himself in cigarettes and chocolate. My father says that he wouldn't recommend the card playing as a career.

This ship was famous for transporting internees at the beginning of the war out of Britain and to Australia. At some time during the war my father was lead to believe it had a score on its side that was caused by a torpedo.

The Battle Of Crete - Operation Mercury

Official Account Of The Battle Of Crete (Wikepedia) followed by my fathers part in it.

The Battle of Crete was a battle during World War II on the Greek island of Crete. The battle began on the morning of 20 May 1941, when Nazi Germany launched an airborne invasion of Crete under the code-name Unternehmen Merkur ("Operation Mercury") Greek and Allied forces along with Cretan civilians defended the island.
After one day of fighting, the Germans had suffered appalling casualties and none of their objectives had been achieved. The next day, through miscommunication and the failure of Allied commanders to grasp the situation, Maleme airfield in western Crete fell to the Germans, enabling them to fly in reinforcements and overwhelm the Allied forces. The battle lasted for about ten days.
The Battle of Crete was unprecedented in three respects: it was the first mainly airborne invasion; it was the first time the Allies made significant use of intelligence from the deciphered German Enigma code; and it was the first time invading German troops encountered mass resistance from a civilian population. In light of the heavy casualties suffered by the parachutists, Adolf Hitler forbade further large scale airborne operations. However, the Allies were impressed by the potential of paratroopers and started to build their own airborne divisions.

My father's account of The Battle Of Crete is as follows...

My father was evacuated from Greece to Chania on Crete where he worked on the tanks. On the day of the invasion he was put on parachute watch. That was quite unusual because he didn’t usually have to do guard duty as he was so useful in the workshops they kept him there rather than put him on guard duties. Afterwards thinking about it my father thought that it was obvious that they knew that there was going to be an airborne assault because the night before the raid, everyone was given arms and guns and they were told to go outside on parachute watch. This didn’t normally happen. A couple of days before the raid, some new Zealand guys had come into the workshops with a Browning machine gun and asked if my father would put it onto tripods with panniers on the sides. My father didn’t know them but he complied with their wishes and off they went. When my father was on duty on the day of the raid, there were an overwhelming number of German parachutes descending upon the Commonwealth troops. My father picked up a Bren gun and at that point he came across the New Zealanders that he had helped with the Browning machine gun in his workshops a few days earlier. They asked him for the gun he had just picked up. He said they could have it but only on the condition that he came along with them. They had seen battle before and my father thought they had a better chance of survival! They said yes and took the gun.

My father remembers several horrible things which happened during that parachute raid. He remembers being in a valley with parachutes falling all around and he remembers the men hanging by their parachutes in the trees, dead. As the parachutes came down and the planes were straffing the troops on the ground my father dove for cover into some trees and there was a New Zealand soldier wedged in a tree and he was dead and had gone black. When he was on his way to Souda Bay he stopped somewhere at a first aid field hospital and there was a man standing there, a Greek man, who was crying a lot. He didn’t speak any English but he gesticulated to my father to go with him and he took him to a lady who was obviously his wife and who had been shot and killed. My father passed the unknown Greek man his rifle and ammunition believing that he would kill more Germans than he would have done himself, particularly as he was on his way to the evacuation point.

On their journey to the evacuation point, they traversed along the mountains via exposed elevated goat paths. They could clearly see the German planes straffing all in their wake in the valley below.

A Friends Tribute To Frederick

Frederick William Atkey: Unsung local hero, national icon.

These are not accolades given over coffee or dreamt up over the dinner table, but deserved observations by family, friends and strangers whose lives his formidable but humane and witty presence has touched.I am privileged to have been in his confidence, and thus able to record his memoires, and as I have listened to his tales have felt humbled that one who has lived through such a traumatic period of modern history, has without complaint or prejudice lived a rich and productive life, given and received the love, respect and admiration of all who have known him.

These are the stories of one man’s struggle to survive and his will to poke a finger in the eye of the 20th centuries most prolific tyrant, Adolph Hitler; not just on the perceived glamorous hero laden front line or the unassailable beaches of Dunkirk, where many a brave warrior gave his life for king and country (although he was there) but in oppressive POW camps of the 3rd Reich, echoing the forgotten tales of so many who by perseverance against the overpowering oppressor, and an enduring will to live, triumphed against the odds and returned to our green and pleasant land to raise families and enrich the lives of all who came into contact with them. This is my humble tribute to your father. David Hunter:

My Fathers Story

For most of us memories fade with time but my father Frederick William Atkey (known as Bill during his early years and then mostly referred to as Dink) can recount his experiences of 70 years ago, still so vivid in his mind. I, his daughter, have to record this transcipt so that my children and their children can understand and know what their grandfather did for them. This transcript is not in chronological order but has been relayed as and when my father has told me.