War vet on crest of a wave at 90

Photo: Darren Robinson

Tom Mayers: From D-Day to his 90th birthday.

PLUCKY D-Day hero Tom Mayers didn’t think he’d live to see his 18th birthday - never mind his 90th.

But he reaches the magnificent milestone today - not that life has been easy.

Life was tough from the start, and his mother gave birth to him in the Oldham workhouse.

At 17 he joined his brothers Fred and Sam in the Navy - and shortly afterwards found himself in one of the bloodiest battles of World War II.

As a stoker it was young Tom’s job to keep the boilers fired aboard a frigate protecting the battleship HMS Warspite off the beaches of Normandy. In the lowest parts of the ship conditions were horrendous and the boom of the depth charges left him almost deaf.

“It was rough,” said Tom, who has lived in the same house in Elm Road, Hollins, with his wife Vera for 54 years.

“Things were so bad at sea the men were relieved to go ashore and face whatever horrors were waiting there. The conditions were terrible and everybody was sick.

“I wasn’t scared though, I was too young to be scared, but I did think I might not live to see my next birthday.”

Tom then joined the convoys bringing supplies back to Europe from America and was out of Oldham for five years.

He later joined the weakened New Zealand Navy where he and 100 comrades staged a peaceful mutiny in 1947 to campaign for better wages. The New Zealand government eventually caved and granted its sailors the same pay as its soldiers. “We were thrown in jail for a couple of weeks but eventually we got what we wanted,” he smiled.

On returning to Oldham, Tom met Vera and they were married in 1950. Tom worked as a steel erector inthe summer and mill boilerman in the winter an the couple had six children. Tom has since beaten throat cancer and a heart attack, both in his sixties .

He is celebrating today with most of his family, which includes 14 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.

His daughter Joyce Merry said: “He’s amazing — after what he’s been through, it’s incredible.”