Philip Doyle was my maternal grandfather. He was born in 1891 in Ram Street Wexford. He sailed on schooners first and then he joined the Navy in WW 1 and served on “HMS Vivid” – the navy base at Devonport. He was also deployed to the front in the defence of Antwerp. He was later interviewed about his experiences during that time - “Interviewer: Philip Doyle, a marine recalls the unique experience from that time, when they tried a rear-guard action at Antwerp. Philip Doyle: The Germans was coming in, taking Antwerp, and they had a gun they called it Jack Johnson that time, ya know they only had the one big gun and you’d hear him roaring all over the sky coming in over your head. Well I suppose I knew a thing or two a kind of a bluff thing, bluffing the Germans because Mr. Churchill got up on a box in a big shed in Antwerp and he told us we’re going to meet the enemy but they were all old men. Well we found out our mistake they weren’t all old men. Old men. And we had nothing at all only Japanese rifles and Japanese bullets and we didn’t understand what we had and they were all loose in a big schoolbag, all our gear, we were only on a bluff and now we were in the trenches for about a fortnight and then they were through it out the trenches. The word come down through don’t retreat til dark if we’d retreated in the daylight, the Germans woulda seen us and they’da blew us all to pieces so we got out in the dark back into Antwerp and we docked again in Dover.” Philip survived the war and joined up again when WW2 broke out. Philip’s great grandchildren are still living in Wexford. When he retired in the 1950s he was in Bombay and he waited for weeks to get a ship home as he didn’t want to get on a plane.

Photograph
Philip Doyle