Blind to Misfortune - Tapa blanda

Bill Griffiths lost both hands and both eyes when he was a prisoner of the Japanese in Java in 1942. This book tells the story of how he overcame these two shattering handicaps, either one of which might have qualified him to spend the rest of his life quietly in a home for the disabled. But Bill had no intention of allowing himself to become an object of pity and it was not long after his return to civilian life that he began to make it clear that, even if he had no hands and no eyes, he still had his own two feet and he certainly intended to stand on them. Inevitably life has not been without its ups and downs, and he certainly Bill could not have got where he has without the care and devotion of Alice, his wife. Their story is one of remarkable courage, told with no trace of bitterness and with a generous helping of laughter. It is a measure of the man that Bill can end his story with the words, "I've been lucky"!

William Griffiths served the best part of his working life in the Royal Navy, from the North Atlantic- including the frightful Russian Convoys- to the South Atlantic, the Medataranian, and on to the Far East and the Pacific. He served in many types of ships: landing-craft- from the Beaches of North Africa to Messina, Salerno, Anzo and D-Day Normandy- destroyers, frigates corvettes, and aircraft-carriers. So what? He says; so did many thousands of other matelots. To become an officer in peace time, he-in Naval parlance-'came up through the hawse-hole', which means that he was commissioned from the lower deck. The hawse-hole is a hole in the bows of a ship through which the anchor cable travels on its way up and down. Since retiring from gainful employment he has travelled extensivley, in many instances back to the places where the navy earned some of it's hard come by laurels. Otherwise he has concerned himself with authorship, and says that there are other books to follow this one- if he can find a publisher. A confirmed European, he has a second home in France, and when not there, lives in Surrey, is married and has a daughter who aspires to be a full time artist