Early Career
James McGinnes was born on 27 October 1919 at Majorca Street, West Belfast, Ireland. He was from a working class Roman Catholic family and attended St Finian's Primary School on the Falls Road, Belfast until 3 June 1935 when enlisted in the Royal Navy as a boy seaman (adopting the surname Magennis). He served on several different warships between 1935 and 1942, when he joined the submarine branch. Before joining the submarine branch, Magennis served on the destroyer Kandahar which was mined off Tripoli, Libya, in December 1941 whilst Magennis was on board. The ship was irreparably damaged and was scuttled the following day. In December 1942, Magennis was drafted into the Submarine service and in March 1943 he volunteered for "special and Hazardous duties" — which meant Midget submarines, or X-craft. He trained as a diver, and in September 1943 took part in the first major use of the X-craft during Operation Source. Two submarines, HMS X7 and HMS X6, penetrated Kåfjord, Norway, and disabled the German battleship Tirpitz. For his part in the attack Magennis was mentioned in dispatches "or bravery and devotion to duty" in 1943.
Read more about this topic: James Joseph Magennis
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or career:
“The secret of heaven is kept from age to age. No imprudent, no sociable angel ever dropt an early syllable to answer the longings of saints, the fears of mortals. We should have listened on our knees to any favorite, who, by stricter obedience, had brought his thoughts into parallelism with the celestial currents, and could hint to human ears the scenery and circumstance of the newly parted soul.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)