Photographer Sasha Maslov has tracked down more than 100 Second World War veterans over the last decade — and has travelled around the world to photograph them at home.
P hotographer Sasha Maslov has tracked down more than 100 Second World War veterans over the last decade — and has travelled around the world to photograph them at home. Among his subjects are a Japanese pilot who was recruited at just 14, a German officer who risked execution by his own country to help his men, and a heroic British SAS commando. Here he shares some of their remarkable stories
I remember the day the war broke out. I was in church and at 11am Chamberlain was going to make an announcement, so I ran home. I remember him saying, ‘We are at a state of war.’
W e were told to be ready for air raids, so the first thing I did was go into the garden and dig a big trench. I was there the whole day, expecting a raid. But during the night, it rained heavily, and the next morning the trench was filled up with water.
I loved football, and a friend of mine said, ‘Join the Royal Marines; you’ ll get plenty of football.’ I joined when I was 18 and was sent to a ship in Newcastle, HMS Manchester. We used to go around Iceland in the bitter cold, looking for German weather ships.
O ne day we pulled into Scapa Flow, off the coast of Scotland, to collect supplies from HMS Hood [the last battlecruiser built for the Royal Navy] , and I received a telegram that said my father was dying.
I tried to get leave, but because I was a gunner, the commander said no. I asked for the captain: he said no. So I said, ‘Can I see the admiral?’ He was on HMS Hood. I had to dress up in my best uniform before seeing him. While I was getting ready, they spotted the Bismarck (the German battleship) .
D ressed in my best, I had to help hoist the ship’s anchor. The bugle went, and we shot out of Scapa Flow. We went looking around the north of Iceland, while the Bismarck went around the Denmark Strait, and the Hood went along the south.
The Bismarck sunk it, blew her to bits. We chased the Bismarck until we ran out of petrol. We were lucky enough that she was sunk about a week later by five ships. Next we took a convoy to Malta. We were almost there when torpedo bombers attacked us. The stern of the ship was blown away; we had a lot killed.
T he deck was covered in blood and oil and there were bodies all around. We made it back to Gibraltar and were patched up, but they weren’ t equipped for all the repairs. We were in Philadelphia next and as soon as we docked, hundreds of workmen came aboard and repaired us – this was hush-hush because America wasn’ t in the war at the time.
Later I was sent to another ship, the HMS Penelope, which was hit so many times we became known as HMS Pepperpot. The Germans were about to invade Greece in 1941, so we left Algeria and bumped into a German invasion armada on the way. We sunk most of it.
While leaving, we were hit by a bomb. We had a lot killed on the gun deck. The sergeant major asked if I would like to be a commando and I said, ‘Anything to get off this ship.’
S hortly after I left, the Penelope was hit by three torpedoes – 417 men went down with her. I spent the rest of the war as a commando in a new top-secret unit [the SAS] .
First I went to its base in Haifa, Israel, then I did ski training, a parachute course, a gunnery course in Jerusalem, and a sniping course in Cairo (I went to the pyramids, where they had a range) before being attached to a special boat section in two-man canoes.
W e did commando raids on various islands. I got a bullet in the arm in 1944 during a night raid on the island of Lošinj, in Croatia, as the Germans were waiting for us. The bullet is still there.
When the war ended, my SAS unit was ordered to return and I was on the first boat back to England. These days, the past is hard to remember, but I can recall those exploits like they were yesterday.
I was born into a family of farmers; the fourth of six children and the only boy. When the war started, the other men in my area [Ibaraki, east Japan] went to be soldiers. I began training in 1941, at 12 years old. I was young. I wanted to help Japan. I had no fear of death.
W e had been taught that we should be honoured to die for our country – everyone was brainwashed and we thought it was noble – so I applied to become a child pilot when I turned 14.
