211291 Lt/Cmdr. Archibald Freebairn Campbell Royal Navy HMS Forfar from:Glasgow (d.2nd December 1940) Sub-Lieutenant Archibald Campbell was my paternal grandfather, who died on 2nd December 1940, aged 56, when HMS Forfar was torpedoed. He was in the Merchant Navy, seconded to the Royal Navy during the war. He served in the First World War too, but unfortunately I don't know the details. Because he was a seaman and home a lot, his children thought he was unemployed and so when free boots were being handed out at school to the children of the unemployed, my father and sister duly trotted out to claim theirs. My grandmother was furious and marched them straight back to school to return them.
My aunt was 15 when the telegram came to say that her father had died. Of course it was devastating. She said that her father was a wonderfully kind man, who was always laughing and who would let her play with his glass eye - if she asked nicely.
There are no photos of grandfather Campbell, unfortunately. Apparently his wife destroyed all the family snaps one afternoon in an excess of pique about something. Whether she lived to regret it, I don't know, but she survived my grandfather by 40 years, dying at aged 97.
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