Definitely a less than glamorous posting! Here's a bit more about the operation- http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/about_bas/our_history/stations_and_refuges/index.php "[SIZE=1.4em]When war broke out in 1939, George James wanted to do his bit. At 14, though, he was much too young to enlist, so he volunteered to help out his local air raid warden, bicycling about his hometown of Cardiff ferrying important messages in time snatched from his job at a builders’ merchants.[/SIZE] As soon as he turned 18, he enthusiastically signed up for the Royal Navy. Finally, this was his chance to be on the frontline. “I was always keen on the Navy,” he said. “I wanted to be on a destroyer.” Yet, in February 1944, as Operation Overlord was approved and planning began for D-Day, the largest naval invasion in history, Mr James, a year into his Navy service, was knitting a rug in a wooden hut on a tiny island in the Antarctic. Far from taking charge of a destroyer, he was wireless operator on HMS William Scoresby, a former whaling trawler scarcely credible as a battleship, tossed about constantly by the icy waves of some of the world’s most inhospitable waters. As his comrades in Europe were readying to land on Normandy’s beaches, Mr James and the rest of the Scoresby’s 12-men crew were fighting off penguins and leopard seals more than 5,000 miles away. For 70 years, little has been known about this most peculiar episode of the Second World War. Even the men involved never quite knew what they were doing there, improbably told that their secret mission, codenamed Operation Tabarin, was designed to deter German U-boats from lurking in Antarctic waters. Now, for the first time, Mr James, the last surviving member of the Scoresby’s crew, has spoken to the Telegraph about the expedition. Mr James, the youngest on board the ship, discloses the harsh conditions endured by the crew as they spent two years in the Southern Ocean. He has broken his silence as a new book, Operation Tabarin: Britain’s Secret Wartime Expedition to Antarctica, argues that the operation’s true objective was to assert Britain’s claim to the continent and defend whaling revenues against incursions by Argentina." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/10763010/Survivor-of-WW2-crew-who-fought-in-Antarctica-reveals-life-in-alien-waters.html
