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From the day he went to his elder brother`s King`s Squad Parade at Chatham in 1937, all Len Chester wanted was also to become a bugler/drummer boy. Two years later, when he was fourteen, he did just that and joined the Royal Marines. This is his story. He tells of life on board HMS Iron Duke – the ‘tin duck’, in the dangerous waters of Scapa Flow and then on the Arctic Convoys to Russia as a boy among hundreds of men. What he saw, heard, thought, ate, smelled and above all, how he felt; how he learned the many bugle calls, played at the funerals of six men blown up in their minesweeper when he had never been to a funeral before ‘or even seen a coffin -and burst into tears in the middle of it. Len Chester survived the war and came home. At Remembrance Day Parades he wears the rare off-white beret to which only men from the Arctic Convoys are entitled – yellow-white because blood turns yellow when frozen in snow. This is history made live, the experiences of a boy at war recalled with a man`s distinctive voice. It is moving, humbling, fascinating in its everyday detail and overwhelmingly powerful in its impact.

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