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This story has been submitted to the People’s War website by Anne Wareing of the Lancs. Home Guard, as told to Peter Quinn on behalf of Harry Foster and has been added to the site with Mr. Foster’s permission….

After the signing of the Japanese surrender, Admiral Fraser came on board HMS Newfoundland, because he had to go up to Nanking to see Chiang-kia-shek, the Chinese Nationalist Leader. The Yangtse is a big river, but they were not sure about getting a battleship through so he transferred to our ship, a cruiser.

We picked up a Chinese pilot in Shanghai, who was supposed to know the river, but halfway up we ran aground on a sandbank. This was dangerous because we were frightened of being shelled from the Communist shore batteries.

The ship was stuck with like a list on, but they thought it was something and nothing — they’d bang it into reverse and get off. That didn’t work, so they cleared the lower deck and everybody had to go onto the quarterdeck — that’s the back end above the screws. About seven hundred and fifty men were told to jump up and down on the quarterdeck, while they revved the engines on full power, but the ship never budged!

It was then decided to send to Shanghai for a destroyer. When this arrived it maneuvered so that both ships were stern to stern and a line was secured. The destroyer then attempted to pull the cruiser off the sandbank, but nothing happened. So we were all asked to jump again and the destroyer pulled again, but to no avail. So we were all ordered to carry a shell each across a plank and put it on the back end of the destroyer, because when the destroyer took the strain and revved to full power, its stern was lifting out of the water and so the screws couldn’t get enough purchase. So we carried our 6inch shells on to the stern of the destroyer and we were asked to jump again! And still no go!

So a second destroyer came from Shanghai and the two destroyers couldn’t budge the Newfoundland. You could hear the cables and they were as thick as my wrist, ‘singing’ and when a cable starts to ‘sing’ it’s very dangerous. So we then went for the 4inch ammunition and carried that on to the second destroyer.

At last, with the combined efforts of two destroyers, with two lots of extra ammunition, engines at full power and us all jumping; HMS Newfoundland was finally dragged off the Yangtse sandbank!

I was up against the rail, which is only a wire on a warship and I thought I was going to get cut in half, because the angle of the ship tilted alarmingly and all the men staggered towards the stern when the ship shot off the bank. I had large wheals across my back!

We proceeded to Nanking. A few years later the very thing we feared happened, when HMS Amethyst got captured by the Communists, having strayed too far up the Yangtse and had to fight it’s way out. The film the ‘Yangtse Incident’ told the story.

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