Ahead of the 80th anniversary next year of the maiden voyage of RMS Queen Mary, built at John Brown's, Clydebank, we asked readers to share their memories with us of sailing on the great Cunard liner. Today Angela McManus retells the stories of men who sailed on the ship during the war years.

ON a typical Atlantic crossing, RMS Queen Mary would carry just under 2000 passengers on the five-day voyage. Depending on their budget the travellers would enjoy either the splendour of beautifully crafted first-class state rooms or the rather more basic interior cabins on decks far below.

While they sailed the high seas dining on the finest food and wine, it couldn’t have been a more different experience for the thousands of servicemen who came aboard when the liner was transformed into a troop ship.

Her last peacetime voyage was in August 1939 and she was ordered to run a zigzag course under blackout conditions. Comedian Bob Hope was one of the celebrities onboard on this final trip.

During the years of the Second World War, the distinctive red funnels, along with the rest of the ship, were painted camouflage grey as the great Cunard Queen earned her keep criss-crossing the globe, carrying men between Bombay, Suez, Florida, Sydney, New York and often coming home to Scotland, stopping at the Tail of the Bank in Greenock to drop off and pick up troops.

The war service of the Grey Ghost, as she was better known at the time, started in 1940 and at the height of the war she carried 16,000 men at one time.

Grainy photographs of thousands of servicemen packed onto the decks like sardines in a newly opened can are proof of the fact that the ship was used to move an entire army division at one time – and her speed was integral to getting them to front lines as quickly as possible.

Over the course of the war she carried more than 750,000 military personnel around the world, covering just under 570,000 miles.

It is no surprise that Adolf Hitler offered a bounty of $250,000 and the promise of the Iron Cross to any U-boat that could sink the Queen Mary.

Winston Churchill travelled on the liner three times during the war and considered it his headquarters at sea. He even signed the D-Day Declaration onboard.

Perry Harrison was a 29-year-old medical officer who served with the Atlantic convoys between Londonderry and St John’s, Newfoundland, during the war.

When his frigate, HMS Neme, was transferred to the Canadian Navy, the ship’s company landed in Boston to await orders to join their new vessel.

“We were delayed for three months and I was doing some hospital work in Boston while we waited. Eventually I asked to be sent back to the UK,” says the former village GP from Blanefield, now aged 99.

“Travel warrants were sent to go to New York and I sailed on the Queen Mary to the Tail of the Bank in the Clyde.”

The ship was packed with 11,000 men but Perry, who studied medicine at the University of Glasgow before his war service, was lucky enough to find space in a cabin shared with two other officers.

“They stuck two or three of us in a cabin which would normally have been for one person,” he remembers.

“There were a lot of RAF personnel who had been to Canada for training returning to Britain.

“And there were 11 sittings for each meal - if you didn’t jump to it you missed out. For the cooking staff it must have been a constant process. I don’t know how they managed.”

He says the ship moved quickly across the waters of the North Atlantic unescorted. There was no time – or spare space - for recreational activities. He remembers being confined indoors for the whole trip.

Perry still has his boarding card issued in New York and incredibly, despite the strict security at the time, managed to get a couple of photos of the ship after disembarking at Greenock.

This wasn’t Perry’s first encounter with the liner. As a teenager he stood on the banks of the Clyde at Inchinnan and saw the ship being launched from John Brown’s yard at Clydebank on September 26, 1934.

A ship’s bell outside his home in the village of Toward, near Dunoon, is a reminder of the days John More spent at sea during the Second World War.

A pilot in the Fleet Air Arm, John finished his training in Canada in 1943 and returned to Britain with the rest of his crew on board the Queen Mary.

Like Perry, they travelled from New York home to Greenock – one of the most marvellous things of the journey, he comments.

“I remember we were fed like lions. It was quite amazing the number of American servicemen who went around with big panniers holding food shouting: ‘Hot stuff, hot stuff’,” he laughs.

“Two officers took charge of us and gave us jobs, mine was manning one of the guns.

“The Queen Mary travelled alone, she was not part of a convoy because of the speed she could reach. That was why they regarded it as safer to bring all of us back on the Queen Mary.”

Thousands of men were packed onto every deck of the ship and John says he was lucky to get a hammock to sleep in.

He adds: “The swimming pool was full of potatoes because there were so many men to be fed.”

Many years later when John and his wife Moira were in Los Angeles they travelled south to Long Beach in California to see the Queen in her new permanent berth.

“I couldn’t believe the difference, it was so opulent inside,” says the 92-year-old.