Dunstaffnage War Years

A Memory of Oban.

Like your other contributors I also spent my very early years in Dunstaffnage.
Dad had spent the early part of the war from day one as a young Engineer Officer on North Atlantic convoys in the Merchant Navy. When you were lucky to survive three Atlantic crossings '39/'42 he had done 19. To give him a break he joined the SS Faraday a cable laying ship outward bound from Falmouth to lay telephone cable to West Africa to aid communications in the desert war in North Africa. Only a few days out she was dive bombed and sunk in the Irish Sea by a German bomber returning home after refueling in the Republic of Ireland.
The death toll was high and he was rescued by a fishing boat and sent to Chatham Naval Hospital to treat his injuries. Still recovering he went to work at the Naval Dockyard in Chatham.
As Mum was Scottish and myself just a toddler living in London he was asked to relocate to Dunstaffnage as they needed marine engineers to serve on the new floating dry dock anchored just off the village.
It was there that I spent my early years and also the birth place of my brother who was born in February 1945.
Dad returned back to sea at the end of the war but we as a family remained in Scotland where only last year Dad at 98 passed away, still with fond memories of those days that we lived in Dunstaffnage.
Many years later on one of my many visits back to the UK I took Mum and Dad then in their 70's on a drive to Oban and Dunbeg where they introduced themselves to the homeowners of the a house which stood on the same site as their wartime home looking out over the Atlantic Ocean.
I suppose like me most of the children of that era are themselves much older and the history and stories of that era will pass with them.