大象传媒

(War broke out 5 days after my 7th birthday in 1939)

I was in Christchurch, Morningside, Edinburgh attending morning matins when] the 鈥渂alloon went up!鈥� The air raid siren goes to alert when we鈥檙e in church to denote the beginning of the war. The alert- The warble- this appalling sound enveloping your senses. We鈥檇 wait for the straight tone and then you could go back to breathing again. Everybody looked quite frightened in the church where we were. I don鈥檛 think that any of us felt that we were protected by outside influences by just happening to be in a church.

When it came to news broadcasts on the Radio everything stopped. One even stood for the King. The National Anthem always came at the end of these news broadcasts. [In our house the news was received with] deathly hush, with a lot of stuff coming out and people getting more and more worked up. I remember my father, particularly, was very very upset by the proceedings. He dealt corporal punishment for any interruption of the sound through the dropping a noisy toy or something.

It was an appalling situation. My sister had been born on the 21st of July 1939. She, after the beginning of the war had not been issued with a baby gas mask.The rest of my family had been issued with these appalling gas masks, vile cardboard boxes covered in wax, they stank to high heaven, I couldn鈥檛 stand 鈥榚m on my face anyway, but we used to have to keep pulling these damn things out and putting them on- Just a matter of practice. But we all knew, even at my age, what type of alert to identify. And the one prevalent in all our minds was the gas attack, which was heralded by a football rattle.

We were living at 10, Paulworth crescent in Edinburgh, which was a commercial road; we were living above a tobacconist鈥檚 shop, which had a vast concrete stairway- That was our main air raid shelter. And I remember one day, the siren went off and next thing we had this football rattle go. And I remember everybody putting their gasmasks on and I refused to put mine on.
And I remember, (this is my worst incident of the war,) screaming,
鈥滿y sister, my sister, my poor little sister!鈥�
And I was determined I would die with her, because she hadn鈥檛 got a gas mask. That is my worst recollection of the war. I鈥檝e see action and everything else but that, to me, was the most appalling incident which lives with me today. And, it was invariably a practice. But it gave an idea of how a 7 year old was affected by so-called adult affairs.

As a 7 year old you鈥檙e not allowed emotions, other than the fact you鈥檝e got hunger, or want to go to the loo or something. I was possibly primed by my father鈥檚 defeatist attitude and this just seemed to be the pits. And I think it was just horror, unbridled horror.

I had sensations which lasted with me virtually throughout the whole war, whenever there was the imminence of an attack, I had this appalling sensation in my stomach, total utter terror, sickness, diarrhoea. It enveloped me totally, every time that bloody siren went off. In fact, I developed a 6th sense later on where I could almost get these attacks before a raid even came in. That was in the early days of 鈥�39

The scenario was this; that my family and I came back to this country in December 1938 for me to go to boarding school, which was the norm for people working in the Far East and Asia.

I went out to India when I was 6 weeks old in 1932. I鈥檇 had a good old bash of growing up and having an Indian education and things.

My father took ill, and went we should have gone back(to India,)we didn鈥檛. And so we had an extended sick leave time which he decided to utilise by going to see one of our neighbours from India who鈥檇 actually retired in Norwich. We spent some time there, then we went to Edinburgh to stay with his brother鈥檚 mother in law鈥檚 family. And it was the son who was the main character in the early days. And we鈥檇 known him before the War as a young, newly appointed Radio Officer in the Merchant Marine. We鈥檇 met him in the King George V Docks in Calcutta. Subsequently, we saw him once, in Edinburgh, just after the war had started and he was joining a ship to go to the North sea. And that trip turned out to be quite a nasty because he was torpedoed. He was immersed in the waters. Such was his exposure, it had taken away the use of his lower limbs and it had been reported that he was in hospital in the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh. And the next thing we heard he was dead in action. And we couldn鈥檛 equate this. And it was many years later in India I met two Merchant Navy Officers who, apparently, on hearing his name: Peter MacDonald, had actually been with him on that particular operation. It transpires that they were so short of Radio Officers that they actually bundled him out of the infirmary, in the early hours of the morning (so noone would be availed of his movements.) In a wheelchair and he was taken on board another ship which was subsequently sunk. And Peter went down tied in the message room giving SOS signals in the waves. He was round about 22 years old.

And we then had the bombing coming in reality. We thought they were attacking the forth bridge. And they made 2 major attacks on Edinburgh. We were very very close in the vicinity of the operation. And my father had already volunteered for active duty with the British forces and was told that as he was an Indian government servant he would have to go back to India. And of course, with his feelings of defeatism he thought it would be a good idea if the whole family were repatriated.

And we given 3 ships (of which 2 were cancelled last minute) for our embarkation. First ships, we understood, were sunk. We got number three which was the Strathnaver. We were given less than 24 hours notice to get from Edinburgh to Southampton, (and that was a devastating run by train.)
And we got to London and there was no connecting train because restrictions on travel had been put into operation, such as it was for us anyway. I remember we were bundled into a taxi and travelled by taxi to Southampton, jumped out the taxi and just got on the ship.

So we got on the ship, we were bound for Bombay and I remember we set sail and went past the Isle of Wight.

And, as a little boy, I was always impressed by aviation and if I鈥檇 been particularly good my father would drive me down to Diamond harbour from Sibpur where we lived, a staging post for the Empire class flying boats which became the forerunner of the Sunderland aircraft- I used to come and see the Royal Mail being delivered. Used to come sweeping down past the balustrades on either side of the ornamental approach to the river. And it used to be tremendous.

And of course, when we were going past the Isle of Wight, they鈥檇 all been suspended from flying, the entire fleet of flying boats, festooned the whole circuit around. I remember that too. Round and round the Island. And I thought, Oh My God, this is looking bad.

I was also petrified, my father was petrified and although it was just on the verge of the bad Winter of 1939 we understood that we were going to join a convoy. Because Churchill had said that no British ship would leave this country without a convoy. But, to our consternation, we were on our own. And, to the best of my knowledge we were given certain instructions, the ship鈥檚 configuration had been altered by putting one 4.5 unit gun on the stern quarter, and they had taken the centre funnel off to confuse the enemy.

The family group consisted of my father, my mother and my baby sister and myself. And we were allocated cabins and my father decided that my mother and my sister would stay to together and I would stay with him. And we鈥檇 do these things in a pairing situation whereby we had to eat but we did not go into our cabins. We slept in the lifeboat, waiting to be shot, and I was so frozen that I got severe frost bite- iced up completely and I remember taking my socks off, one of the most painful things I ever did, up to that stage. I remember that I used to have trouble getting shoes on because I had this impediment, (my left foot is bigger than my right,) we used to have shoes made for me and they always used to measure my right bloody foot. So, consequently, my left foot used to be crammed into tight shoes and I remember that! This I think was appalling, when I took my socks off I had an imprint that had been welded into my foot by the ice and it had lasted for a long long time embedded in the skin of my sole.

Time was difficult, when you鈥檙e 7, I didn鈥檛 have a watch. Suffice to say that we were supposed to go from Southampton to Gibraltar. That was the main factor. The belief was, if you got through Gibraltar, you鈥檇 be safe. But, for us and I鈥檝e got no corroboration on this, it took an awful long time getting to Gibraltar. Because I could only go by eavesdropping on conversations, because I was a very inquisitive child and I was always in trouble for that. And all I can make out was 1) in the darkened ship in which all the lights were out, 2) you had your restrictions on sound, 3) you had your coded signals to abandon ship, 4) you had restriction on meal times, in other words, my father and I would go for a meal, then my mother and sister would go down for a meal. As far as the lavatorial process was concerned- that was something you tried to hold it as long as possible, you didn鈥檛 know if you鈥檙e on the commode, then the damn ship would be hit- that was always a factor. The terrible cold I remember, being stuck on that bloody thing!

And I don鈥檛 know why, being in a lifeboat, we thought we would get away with it. We could have been hit on the lifeboat side; we could have been blown up anyway. But my father had this idea that we had to have this thing. It was very exceptionally cold and I think the ship was round about 25,000 tonnes which was a big ship in those days.

There were no other families on board. It was a special trip; we shouldn鈥檛 have even been there. It was my father supposed to be going out, not all of us. We had one or two other civilians, I don鈥檛 remember much of it, there was one elderly bloke.

So we had this situation where I understood we were observing a zigzag pattern. You鈥檇 be waving your passage, north, south or whatever. And I understood that we were acting as a decoy for a more important convoy. And this effect, I remember it was a moonlight night once, my poor little sister was all wrapped up, it was appalling. All because my father was so frightened. And I remember looking up to see- to this very day, I鈥檓 sure I wasn鈥檛 hallucinating- I saw 3 U-Boats on the surface, possibly about a mile or so away and I could just about make these shapes, (and as it happens, I did become a Navy Officer,) and they could have been there because submarines did come to the surface at night to recharge their batteries. It was conceivable we were being followed by a wolf pack and I could see them. And I kept it to myself. If I told my father he would have been throwing up and probably having a nervous breakdown because he鈥檇 already had a bad time anyway!

I was in a state of total inertia. You ate, you drank, you went to the loo and that was it. You鈥檙e waiting to die. The threat is there, you鈥檙e waiting to die, something鈥檚 going to go wrong.

We could have been hit by a battleship which was, infact, the Graf Spee, we could have been hit by a mine and we could have been torpedoed. So we had a choice of nothing. Just waiting to die.

So, to the best of my knowledge we came out of Southampton, and instead of turning to starboard to the right hand side to make for the Bay of Biscay and into Gibraltar, I honestly believe we came round the corner, travelled North through the Channel, zigzagging as far as Holland I understand. I did the same thing in reverse when I went down to West Africa. So I would say, for about 5 days, we were messing about. Could have been 8 days. Because you can imagine we鈥檝e been freezing to death at 1 Meridian, the next minute we鈥檙e boiling to hell because we鈥檙e near Africa. And once we hit the warmer climes it was not so bad, and when we got to Gibraltar it was all clear and it was beautiful in the sunlight but, ahead of us, into the Mediterranean was this mass of fog.

So we got going again and this fog persisted, it was weird because it was like highly illuminated mist, you couldn鈥檛 see a damn thing but it was bright all around you. And, all of a sudden it parted, there was a bubble of clear air, and out of this bubble, to our port side, was Franco鈥檚 capital battleship and I remember it was painted silver and had about 3 black roundels around the funnels and we think it was Franco鈥檚 flagship of the Spanish navy. Of course, as you know, they were in cahoots with the Germans, and we had all her guns pointing at us, uncapped. We wondered if we were going to be blown out of the sea by a hostile ship and, as we saw it, it saw us, pointed at us, and we both went our separate ways in the fog. We were carrying on a due easterly course and they were coming on a sou-westerly approach.

We got warmer and warmer and by this time we were approaching Port Said and everybody breathed a sigh of relief because we were virtually out of European waters. We all went down to our cabins and got ourselves washed and so forth. My parents did relax a bit after this point.

We then chugged through the Suez canal and then we got to Aden. And as far as we were concerned, that was the end of the war. We been to the whole mainland of whatever and now we were at the other end of the world sort of thing.

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