By JOHN COLES
HERO Kenneth Cummins has reached the age of 106 — after surviving fighting in BOTH World Wars.
Kenneth witnessed the horrors of the 1914-18 and 1939-45 conflicts while serving at sea.
He survived German torpedo attacks and a sinking before going on to become a cruise liner captain.
And this week he celebrated his birthday at home with Aussie wife Rosemary, 76 — and a cuppa.
Kenneth was just 14 and living with his parents at Southport, Merseyside, when the Great War began.
Too young to fight, he left school at 15 and joined a training corps for steamship company P&O before being called aboard HMS Worcester.
He finished training in 1917 and was drafted into the Royal Navy aboard warship HMS Morea as a gunner, protecting Atlantic convoys.
It was on that vessel he saw one of his most horrific sights.
He said: “The Germans had sunk a British hospital ship in the Bristol Channel and we were sailing through floating bodies.
“We were not allowed to stop. It was horrific and my reaction was to vomit over the edge.
“It was something we could never have imagined — seeing these bodies of women and nurses floating in the ocean having been there some time.
“Huge aprons and skirts in billows which looked like sails because they had dried in the hot sun.”
Kenneth returned to P&O after the war and by 1939 was a chief officer on the Viceroy of India.
She became part of an armada delivering troops to Algiers, Africa, when a German torpedo struck.
The Viceroy took four hours to sink while Kenneth scrambled his men into lifeboats.
With peace in 1945 he returned to P&O, where he became a captain until his retirement in 1960.
He remained a bachelor until he was 55 when he married Rosemary in Sydney. The couple have four children and four grandchildren.
Rosemary said at their home in Great Bedwyn, Wiltshire: “Kenneth has had an amazing life. He is very positive and this is what got him through two World Wars to his 106th birthday.”
thesun.co.uk
HERO Kenneth Cummins has reached the age of 106 — after surviving fighting in BOTH World Wars.
Kenneth witnessed the horrors of the 1914-18 and 1939-45 conflicts while serving at sea.
He survived German torpedo attacks and a sinking before going on to become a cruise liner captain.
And this week he celebrated his birthday at home with Aussie wife Rosemary, 76 — and a cuppa.
Kenneth was just 14 and living with his parents at Southport, Merseyside, when the Great War began.
Too young to fight, he left school at 15 and joined a training corps for steamship company P&O before being called aboard HMS Worcester.
He finished training in 1917 and was drafted into the Royal Navy aboard warship HMS Morea as a gunner, protecting Atlantic convoys.
It was on that vessel he saw one of his most horrific sights.
He said: “The Germans had sunk a British hospital ship in the Bristol Channel and we were sailing through floating bodies.
“We were not allowed to stop. It was horrific and my reaction was to vomit over the edge.
“It was something we could never have imagined — seeing these bodies of women and nurses floating in the ocean having been there some time.
“Huge aprons and skirts in billows which looked like sails because they had dried in the hot sun.”
Kenneth returned to P&O after the war and by 1939 was a chief officer on the Viceroy of India.
She became part of an armada delivering troops to Algiers, Africa, when a German torpedo struck.
The Viceroy took four hours to sink while Kenneth scrambled his men into lifeboats.
With peace in 1945 he returned to P&O, where he became a captain until his retirement in 1960.
He remained a bachelor until he was 55 when he married Rosemary in Sydney. The couple have four children and four grandchildren.
Rosemary said at their home in Great Bedwyn, Wiltshire: “Kenneth has had an amazing life. He is very positive and this is what got him through two World Wars to his 106th birthday.”
thesun.co.uk