David Lindsay was born in Bermuda on March 4, 1920, the son of Walter and Mary Lindsay, formerly of Kirkaldy, Fifeshire, Scotland. Walter had come to Bermuda to be chief electrical engineer at the Hamilton Hotel, then the largest in Bermuda, where city hall now stands.

David attended Saltus Grammar School until he was 16, when he went to Scotland to complete his education.

What follows are excerpts from David Lindsay's well written vivid account of his experiences as a soldier overseas in World War Two. It was originally published in the Bermuda Mid-Ocean News of October 20, 2000, under the headline "My 6 ½ years as an anti-aircraft gunner".

David had written that he had remained in Scotland after leaving school. His story, word for word as he wrote it, follows:

"At the outbreak of the Second World War, I was 19 and an apprentice insurance actuary.

I had not long to wait before being called up for the Royal Scots, the oldest regiment in the British Army. Following 12 weeks of basic training, a special course and a lance corporal's stripe, I qualified as an instructor. I could really shout in those days!

My platoon was in dawn-to-dusk stand-to duty.

I quickly decided it was time to move on and, along with three others, answered a call for volunteers to become Lewis gunners on trawlers. We trained in everything from basic .303 ammunition to six-inch naval guns. On completion, we were posted to the 3/2nd Maritime Anti-Aircraft Regiment in Middlesburough.

A further call for volunteers for training on 40mm Bofors guns saw me posted to a troop ship leaving Gourock in Scotland for South Africa. I was sea-sick for days.

After a stop at Freetown, Sierra Leone, we reached South Africa. I've always thought that the view, as we approached Cape Town from the sea was the most beautiful I've seen. We spent three glorious days there, and a further nine at Durban, where people were wonderfully hospitable. I still had my Glengarry (the special Scottish cap worn by the Royal Scots) which was a great passport abroad.

Eventually, we returned to Glasgow where I went to Sheerness to join a tanker bound for the United States. It had been refitted at Mobile, Alabama.

On the way to Halifax to join a convoy for Britain, we were torpedoed. We got off safely, were picked up and taken to Norfolk, Virginia. We ended up in a convoy named Operation Pedestal with 14 merchantmen and 50 escort ships bound for Malta. We hardly got through the Straits of Gibraltar when the aircraft carrier Eagle, at the rear of the convoy was torpedoed and sunk. We fired so many rounds we had to change gun barrels twice as they became too hot.

After two days of chaos, the two battleships and the aircraft carriers departed, leaving us to get on with it. I was the loader on top of the gun and at dusk someone handed me an ammunition clip the wrong way round. The gun jammed just as German Stuka dive bombers were attacking us.

I looked up and saw a Stuka coming straight down. Its bombs went diagonally across the aft part of the ship, just below us. The blast blew me off the gun against the parapet. All I got was an injured knee. Another guy broke his wrist. We were lucky.

Next day we came upon the convoy's only tanker, which had been torpedoed. Another destroyer was standing by. The two destroyers (HMS Penn and HMS Braham. I was on the Penn) got ropes aboard the tanker. But the dive bombers appeared and the destroyers had to let go of the ropes.

Eventually, they lashed the destroyers to the tanker, one on each side and, in spite of further attacks, we got into Malta's Grand Harbour where, later, the tanker sank. They gave the tanker's captain the George Cross.

They should have given our destroyer's captain a medal. I don't know how or when he could have slept. When we got him ashore, they had to cut his boots off, his feet were so swollen.

Things were so bad that each gun crew had been on a ration of only four rounds of ammunition a day. That took two seconds to fire off.

We were kept in Malta. We thought we would be there until the war ended. However, Allied victories in North Africa and Sicily changed things.

I was put on a trooper and a guard to prisoners-of-war going to Egypt and Palestine. It had been a hard year in Malta. We had dysentery and sores which wouldn't heal due to shortage of rations and Vitamin C.

After four months on a tanker plying between Haifa and Egypt, I got shipped to Scotland, and my fortunes improved. I went to a new regiment in Bristol, and was placed on a small Dutch coastal ship loaded with coal.

I was waiting to go on a sergeant's course when D Day intervened. I was assigned to a top-heavy American vessel, taking supplies to Utah and Omaha Beach Heads in Normandy. We ran the ship up on the beach at high tide and waited for low tide to unload . Later, we twice went up the River Seine to Rouen.

After a course at the Royal Artillery School of Survey, I went to Hanover, Germany, and Osnabruck, Austria, and ended up in charge of a 25-pounder team in Dortmund before demobilisation after six and a half years of service.

Looking back, it didn't seem that long.

*****

During David's post-War period of duty in Germany, he met and married Maria. They were married for 54 years before Maria died following a serous illness.

David told me that it was the most wonderful thing that happened to him during the War years. They are survived by a daughter, Elinore Thomson, and a son Robert. Elinore and Robert are now retired but still live in their ancestral home city of Kirkaldy in Scotland.