Bud Abbatt - Volunteer Extraordinaire
Added to website: 12 November 2003
From the battlefields of World War Two to fighting for conservation with CCC, Bud Abbatt is one of the most inspiring Volunteers CCC has had the privilege of working with. This is his story…
Bud vs Rommel
“I was 16 in October 1938 when I joined the Territorial Army. With the whispers of war growing louder, it was the ‘thing to do’. Like everyone else I was called up in September 1939 and served in England until I was 19. Then it was out to the Middle East, up the Suez Canal to Cairo. There I was ‘given’ a 3-ton, 4-wheel Chevrolet Truck, loaded with ammo for the Royal Horse Artillery and went off to pound Rommel. Life was a little noisy at times, if not a bit dangerous, but we all considered ourselves immortal.
Winning the war
It was an adventure. I had my 21st birthday in Tunisia and quickly found myself in Sicily fighting my way up Italy. When the Indian Division arrived I took three weeks leave back in dear old Blighty and then joined the assault on Normandy. It was a little crowded, but with so much going over we knew we were going to win. After five weeks of trying to keep my head down I finally got wounded in the stomach by a shell burst and was sent home to recover before being posted onto Hounslow to help on the supply ships. The doodlebugs and V1 rockets raining down on London kept me busy with the Ack Ack!
Rewriting the retirement rulebook
In 1977, my two sons started diving and not to be outdone I decided to learn to snorkel first and then to dive. I trained in the UK diving locally with Canterbury Divers and on wrecks at Dover. In early 1996, I turned 74 and leafing through a copy of ‘Diver’ Magazine, I stumbled across an advert for Coral Cay Conservation (CCC). It was my calling, I applied, was accepted and by March I was on my way to Belize. A month on expedition was not enough, and so in September, the calling was once again too great and I was back on the road with CCC, this time for a month in Indonesia. Since then, I’ve been diving around the world from the Maldives to Borneo. But in September 2001 I was diving in Egypt’s Sharm-el-Shek on the Red Sea and the experience reinforced the magic of Coral Cay. I had booked my dives, and was taken to the dive boat with 18 others. We chugged along for five minutes to a dive-point when we could have easily snorkelled out to. There were two dive boats tied up alongside us and I counted twenty others in the near vicinity. Believe me, there were more divers than fish. The place and the diving gave new meaning to the word ‘wreck’! It has been totally spoilt by money, money, money. Please keep Coral Cay Conservation alive and well - it’s the best way of diving abroad”
There are no ordinary Volunteers in CCC and Bud Abbatt is the one of most extraordinary. He’s an inspiration to us all.
