大象传媒

This story was submitted to the 大象传媒 People鈥檚 War site by Wymondham Learning Centre on behalf of Charles Pickard has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

In 1944 I was Chief Petty Officer aboard H.M.S. Zealous, a destroyer escorting the Russian Convoys; i.e. we sailed from Scapa Flow to escort American supply ships to Murmansk in Russia.

Our main duty being to guard the convoys from air or U boat attacks.
On this particular occasion we had returned to Scapa Flow to pick up ship鈥檚 supplies of oil, fresh water, food and mail. Normally there was a 12-hour turnaround, but we were informed we were on a 4 hour turnaround. Our destroyer carried 240 crew and supplies and there was very little room for anything else, but this time we also took on board about 6 large sealed cardboard boxes 鈥� contents not revealed. We duly left port with no knowledge of destination. After about a day at sea we came to very mountainous, snow covered land which we took to be Norway; at the entrance to a fjord we reduced speed and a man in a rowing boat appeared from nowhere; a ladder was lowered and he came aboard! We continued very slowly up the fjord and at its end it fanned out giving just enough room for the ship to turn, which it did and then stopped. Some of the crew, including me, came up on deck and I noticed lots of tiny black specks in the snow up the side of one mountain in the distance. Slowly these specks began to move and gradually they turned into people, mainly women and children coming towards the ship. We were close to a small fishing jetty and these 150-200 people all slowly filed aboard. As they came on board they filed into the washrooms where the officers, a doctor and the berth attendant were waiting; they were stripped, showered and powdered; wrapped in clean blankets; sent below and dressed in the contents of the cardboard boxes. It seemed they had been suffering greatly at the hands of the Germans who had been going ashore, raping the women and killing the men and also taking the women and children as hostages. Once they had all been clothed it was full speed ahead in extremely cramped conditions to land in Greenock about 48 hours later.

6/7 weeks later every wife or mother of the ship鈥檚 company received a food parcel with thanks from the Norwegian authorities..

Russian Leave 1944

On all our visits to Murmansk we only once got shore leave. The Russians didn鈥檛 seem too pleased to have us there so we decided to go to the pictures. Showing was Glenn Miller in 鈥淪un Valley Serenade.鈥� We thoroughly enjoyed it, but the Russians had to make do with subtitles!

May 1945

We were returning from Russia doing a steady 7 knots when we were ordered away from the fleet 鈥� full speed ahead until we reached Rosyth; the ship took on all supplies and returned to sea; for the crew 鈥� destination unknown. Next day we joined up with two cruisers, HMS Birmingham and HMS Dido and three more destroyers. Later all the crew stood to attention while over the radio came Churchill announcing the end of the war with Germany and V.E day. The captain then announced over the Tannoy that we were on our way to meet a German Minesweeper who would take us across a German minefield and into Copenhagen. When we arrived in Copenhagen it was the most wonderful sight because all the lights were on, something we had almost forgotten. We were there to escort two German battleships to Willemshaven in Germany. When we got there we discovered there wasn鈥檛 much left of Willemshaven to take them back to.

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