Sea Your History - Support from the Royal Navy 3 - "...he wasn't allowed leave to come home"

Support from the Royal Navy 3 - "...he wasn't allowed leave to come home"

Anne Agar

Anne met her husband Mark in 1955 the year he joined the Royal Navy as a National Serviceman. They married in 1958 and had two sons. During his career Mark served on a number of ships but spent the majority of his 22 years in submarines. He was often required be apart from his family. When his elder son was only five months old he was sent on a year's deployment and was away from home when his second son was born. Anne liked to move to be near her husband, living in married quarters at Portsmouth, Chatham and from 1966-1968 in Singapore. Mark left the Navy in 1976. Anne remains proud of her association to the Navy, especially the submarine service.

Anne recalls why her husband missed the birth of his son.

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Extract Text (Duration 0.46)

And he was born at home, hmmm, on a Friday, and that weekend the submarine wasn't going to sea and my husband was up in Ireland, he wasn't all that far away really. And... but they wouldn't let him have any leave; he wasn't doing anything, he wasn't working that weekend, but he wasn't allowed leave to come home and see me and his newborn son. And of course we weren't on the telephone, but nobody was then, we couldn't phone one another. So it was letters, I was writing letters to him saying, ‘by the time you receive this, I'll have had the baby' and he was writing similar sort of letters back. So when he did come home and our son was two weeks old. So he missed it, sadly.