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Beaconsfield is generous after massacre by Afghan policeman

Posted by Polly Manser on Nov 6, 09 02:08 PM in Beaconsfield News

THE SHOOTING of five British soldiers by an Afghan policeman on Tuesday has made the public give more generously to the Poppy Appeal according to a war veteran collecting in Beaconsfield.


Stan Hancox, 84, who served in the Royal Navy from 1942 to 1949 and for another ten years in the reserves, said that the first three donations he'd received on Wednesday morning had been for £20 each.
Mr Hancox, who lives in Forty Green, worked on submarines as a torpedo man in the North Atlantic and the Arctic, intercepting German ships taking cargo of iron ore from Swedish and Norwegian ore mines. His submarine sank two ships, in 1944 and 1955.
He said: "The captain in the control room would sight the target with a periscope, and we would go into the diving station.
"The captain would estimate the enemy ship's tonnage and range and speed, and it was all fed into a machine which would tell him where to fire the torpedo. This information came through to us in the tube space.
"If it was a big ship we would fire six torpedoes, but for a small ship only two."
Mr Hancox will travel to Whitehall on Sunday to join thousands of veterans and march past the Cenotaph in remembrance of those injured or killed in wars.
He said: "I go every year and it's very important to me. I'm proud of what we achieved as a nation and I'm proud to have served in the Royal Navy."Polly Manser

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