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AM. Reginald "Darkie" Hopkins
Royal Navy HMS Daedalus
from:Islington, London
I recently found, sitting at the bottom of a drawer in my mother's house, my father's service records. His name was Reg Hopkins, known as Darkie while he was in the Navy on account of being quite swarthy, although he's described as pale in his records. He volunteered at the age of 17 in December 1943 slightly too early and signed up for the Navy as he was terrified he'd be made a Bevin Boy and get sent down the mines, which is what happened to a friend of his. The same friend who, on his first bit of official leave, walked straight into a police station and said "Hello. I'm a Bevin Boy and I'm not going back." and ended up in the Army in India.
Reg became an Air Mechanic, training, from what I can tell from his records, at HMS Gosling. He was demobbed in December 1946. Interesting to see that from the records that he was paid a total of £38 10 shillings and sixpence for three years of service, which equates to about £1,400 in today's money.
