大象传媒

Memories of a C.W. Candidate Part Four - Portsmouth and a Commission to First Lieutenant. Mine sweeping on Filla and Gulland in the Mediterranean and Command of a Mine Sweeper out of Lowestoft.

Part four of an oral history interview with Mr. Stanley Shield conducted by Jenny Ford on behalf of Bedford Musem.

鈥淚 was posted to Portsmouth with two of my shipmates. One of which was the Irishman who ought to have died on H.M.S. Somali - QP18. Laughter! We were all three of us C.W. Candidates you see and we went through the Commissions together and we all got our Commissions together. (Paddy Sullivan and Laurie Brown). That was for six months I think, after we got ashore. That was really concentrated - that course for Commissions because we really had to learn stuff, navigation we鈥檇 never done, signalling, you know I could read Morse on a lamp. In 1943 I got my Commission.

We had some adventures on Mine Sweepers as you might imagine but nothing to compare with what I鈥檇 already been through. I was one up on my crew all the time. 鈥榊ou鈥檝e not seen anything, boy.鈥� Laughter! 22 or 23 years old, oh yes - the Father of my ship then. She was 200 tonnes, she had had ASDIIC, anti submarine gear, so we did escorting until VE Day and then VE Day we started work clearing the mine fields. For two and a half years in the Mediterranean and after that doing this sort of work. I wasn鈥檛 in Command then. Then we came home and my Command was based on Lowestoft which was a nightmare with tides and sandbanks, it really was. After two and half years with no sandbanks and tides in the Mediterranean it was murder.

We did all sorts of work out there in Mediterranean. We had several submarine attacks which we duly fended off. And we did a mad thing too. There were little German Convoys running up the Gulf of Genoa at night between Spezia and Genoa, that鈥檚 right up at the top corner. Well we were working from Leghorn, Livorno as it鈥檚 known in Italian, clearing various mine fields around Corsica and this sort of thing and Maddalena and Sardinia, all around there and doing little escort jobs and they decided that this Convoy ought to be taught a lesson. So five of us, small Mine Sweepers, 200 tonnes, compared with that little lot we had one 12 pounder gun, we had three Oelikons, which are big heavy machine guns and some twin Brownings and that was the sum total of our armament. So they sent us up there, five of us, to attack this Convoy. They were only small too, they weren鈥檛 using big ships. Anyway we did so and we were lead ship, the 鈥楪ulland鈥�. We were a star shell ship, our task was to fire the farthest star shell over the German Convoy and keep them going so that it was lit up the whole time so the other ones, some of which had 4 inch guns, which were bigger than ours, hammered them. Anyway it was declared to be a success and three medals were awarded to my ship. The Captain, he was a Lieutenant same as me, he got DSO I think, one of my gunners he got the DSM and one of the engineers got mentioned in Despatches. Because we were the lead ship and all the German tracers were coming at us. That was the award to the little attack force, all three went to my ship which was jolly good. I didn鈥檛 get one but you couldn鈥檛 give them to everybody.

The Mine Sweeper was a trawler class but it was Admiralty built, anti-submarine Mine Sweeper. It was 200 tonnes, the Somali 2000 tonnes and could do 13 as opposed to 40 knots. Well it had to be a towing vessel you see that鈥檚 why you had different things. You couldn鈥檛 have high speed and towing, towing has to have a different sort of grip on the water. Mine sweeping gear is heavy you know. Anyway that鈥檚 it, that鈥檚 when we used to do our fishing. Everytime we brought a mine up we used to blow it up with an anti-tank rifle and put a boat down and collect all the fish. Laughter! A good change in diet for us.

It was all moored mines. German and Italian, two sorts and you weren鈥檛 quite sure where they where. I don鈥檛 know whether there were some French ones, I believe there were some French ones in some places but I don鈥檛 know any details of them. We went to all the little Italian islands to moor for the night. Because when you are mine sweeping you don鈥檛 work in the dark because your navigation, your pilotage at close quarters has to be spot on to clear mine fields and we always went into the nearest harbour at night. So all these Italian islands, which aren鈥檛 marked on a map necessarily we used to call in a night, drop the anchor. Mind you we used to start at first light which would be about five o鈥檆lock the next morning.

It was a ship鈥檚 company of 40. Well in the Mediterranean at 200 tonnes, there was the Captain and three other Officers, three engine men, three engineers, we didn鈥檛 have Engineering Officers but they were Chiefs and Petty Officers. The Cox鈥檜n, who was the Head Seaman, he would be a Petty Officer and he would have a Leading Seaman as well and the rest where the ASDIIC people, gunners, cooks, a couple of cooks, stewards for the Officers. We had beds, well bunk beds. We were supplied from the main bases. We had Naval Barracks in all these places. We had one in Leghorn, Naples oh and Augusta, in Sicily.

Life was much more comfortable than on a Destroyer because we had to go back to harbour every few days because we hadn鈥檛 got the range. We spent much more time in harbour. First of all we were based on Naples, well Sicily first of all actually. We went up sort of as the Army moved up and then we went up to Naples and then we went up to Leghorn or Livorno. I was in the Mediterranean for almost two and a half years, yes. We knew some convenient words like 鈥榪uanta costa?鈥� How much, or 鈥榯ropo鈥� too much! I think the only interaction I had was when I was on leave at an 8th Army Rest Camp with some Canadian Officers and they said, 鈥楲et鈥檚 hire a fishing boat. Come on Stanley you can drive it.鈥� I thought, 鈥榦h, my God!鈥� This was at Bari (on the Adriatic coast of Italy). I should think it would be a week that I was there.

I was on two different ships (the Filla and the Gulland) but they were the same crew on each, they were static on the ships. I was a Lieutenant. Couldn鈥檛 get any further unless you were exceptional, which I wasn鈥檛, until you were 30, you couldn鈥檛 become a Lieutenant Commander until you were 30 normally speaking, on normal promotion anyway. So I remained a Lieutenant. I had two rings on my sleeve.

When I sailed into Gibraltar as an Officer, on Filla it was then, manning the guns at the entrance was an old friend of mine from Biggleswade, Don Rogers. We were in harbour for a few days and I asked him to come aboard as my guest and he had lunch with us in the Ward Room with the Officers naturally. He was most impressed, he said, 鈥榊ou鈥檇 never get this in the Army.鈥�

I didn鈥檛 have home leave. I came back to Greenock after two and a half years and then home for leave. Then I went down to Lowestoft. I had a Command working out of Lowestoft. Oh, clearing the East Coast mine fields. It was a ships company of 30 from Lowestoft. But we were working against magnetic mines there.

They were totally different and the other thing is of course a moored mine, the old fashioned type which is what I was for in the Mediterranean, if you catch a mine and you cut it up you know you鈥檝e got it. But you could never be certain with a magnetic mine because sometimes they needed more than one pulse. They were set, they were cunning these Germans, they set them for two perhaps I think probably as many as six, so it was the sixth ship that went over them that 鈥檅ought it.鈥� So that鈥檚 why we had to sweep so many times before you could be sure that you鈥檇 cleared them, that there were none left. We had great long cables trailing out, rubber covered about that thick, about 6鈥� diameter, and there were two of them in parallel and you towed them behind the ship. And you sent out an electrical impulse, you were on a wooden ship doing this, and sent electrical impulses down and they blew the mine up astern of them. That was the idea. I never liked that much. I liked the ordinary moored mine sweeping because as I say you knew where you where with them, if you got one you got one and you got fish!

We were told, it might just have been a story, I don鈥檛 know, but we were told that Lloyds insisted that a mine field be swept by the British Navy, but that may have just been a yarn, I don鈥檛 know but we believed it anyway. We got paid extra for it after VE Day some fantastic sum like I think it was 6 shillings a day. Well it was a lot in those days. I think that鈥檚 what we got. Because they used to have to use swept channels until the fields were cleared. You kept a channel clear by mine sweeping that but of course that鈥檚 different from doing a big area. The channels were marked on a chart. Of course in the North Sea there were bouys there anyway so you knew exactly where you were. There were no bouys in the Mediterranean it was too deep so that was pure navigation, getting it right out there. But as I say, I much preferred dealing with moored mines to magnetic mines.

Lowestoft that鈥檚 right, that鈥檚 where I was demobbed from. I was at Lowestoft only for about six months and then it was my turn to come out. I felt I had to go in the Navy, it was an adventure, I don鈥檛 regret any of it. Well I regret loss of life and all that sort of thing. But I鈥檓 glad it happened to me, which is a daft thing to say but that鈥檚 how I feel about it. It was an experience never to be repeated nobody could ever do the things that we did, you can鈥檛 do it, it鈥檚 not possible鈥�.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.