THE diary of a 17-year-old Navy seaman survived the Second World War - but the 100-year-old veteran who wrote it has told how he hoped it would be lost during Nazi raids on the Arctic Convoys.
Sir Thomas Baird joined the Navy in August 1941 in Plymouth, and his first impressions are recorded in a journal which midshipmen lowest ranks write.
He enrolled in Dartmouth College aged 13 and later became ViceAdmiral Sir Thomas Baird, head of the Royal Navy in Scotland and Northern Ireland, during a 41-year career.
Sir Tom recalled how he hated the diary and hoped it would be lost, but it provides a first-hand account of the war, including a poem describing his desire for "noise and excitement", bleak boredom, and a Nazi firefight.
An entry from September 1, 1941 described how teenage sailors were "bumped along uneven roads with luggage piled up one end of the lorry" to their digs, and added: "By the end of the evening I knew practically everyone and felt I might have lived among them for years."
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