大象传媒

World War II memoirs of Sheila Bayley

Part III, 1942-45: Gibraltar and home

It got a bit dull after the landing was all over. We didn鈥檛 have a lot of work. I became the Duty Commander鈥檚 Woman again for a bit, just as I had been in Liverpool. But there wasn鈥檛 much to do really. We had done our bit. We worked in the hollowed-out centre of the Rock. The sailors used to enjoy embarrassing us 鈥� for example, they said 鈥淎sk for a Lady Hamilton鈥� in the cafeteria and we found this was a tart (Nelson鈥檚 tart)!

A little marine major with a moustache asked if we鈥檇 go down to a dance on Renown. We all said no at first, but then were persuaded to go. I was dancing with the major and looked up and saw this man standing on the other side of the room. I said 鈥淚 know him! Who is he?鈥� The major said, 鈥淗e鈥檚 the Commander.鈥� R茅 wasn鈥檛 feeling very well so he wasn鈥檛 going to come to the dance. He just came to see how it was going. I went over and said, 鈥淚 think we鈥檝e met before.鈥� He arranged to come up and see me in the Wrenery in the old naval hospital when he was off duty. He arrived, wearing a red tie and an emerald green shirt (to look as different as he could out of uniform!). I remember writing to my mother and saying, 鈥淗e has just arrived.鈥� I was up on the balcony (we had balconies round all our rooms). We walked up and down the Rock. He said later that I wore him down by walking him up and down the Rock!

I went on board Renown (as we could use the Admiral鈥檚 quarters, because there wasn鈥檛 an admiral on board). I was able to go and have lovely baths in the Admiral鈥檚 quarters, and they had nice food on board too.

When he asked me to marry him, I said, 鈥淚 don鈥檛 know. I might.鈥� And then he rang up on the Friday and said, 鈥淲e can get married today or we can get married on Monday.鈥� And I said, 鈥淚 can鈥檛 get married until I have dried my hair.鈥� So I did that, put on my uniform and collected my bridesmaid (my roommate). We scoured Gib and couldn鈥檛 find a ring so I said, 鈥淢ake it Saturday.鈥� There was a dance that evening at the Rock Hotel that I was going to anyway so we went after we had got married, but he had to be back on duty at 10, so we had no wedding night!

The Dean of the Cathedral married us in the little Lady Chapel on 21 December 1942. The Engineer Commander gave me away and the Paymaster was the Best Man. I was married with my husband鈥檚 signet ring, filed down by the ship鈥檚 engineer to fit me. We were all in uniform. After the wedding we all went on board. We had three bottles of champagne and a bunch of rather tatty red roses. The Captain thought that my husband was being funny when he asked, 鈥淲ill you come to my wedding reception? I have just been married.鈥� Not quite the way to do it.

After the wedding, I had to meet the crew. We had photographs taken, which had to be secret and not show where we were 鈥� they had a large picture of the Rock in the background! It made the Petty Officer laugh.

After that, R茅 went off home to England and I had to get home somehow. I didn鈥檛 want to stay in Gib. It was rather boring. So he moved heaven and earth 鈥� he saw all sorts of people, including Lady Cholmondeley, the Head Wren 鈥� and eventually I got a signal saying I must fly home immediately.

I left Gibraltar in January 1943. I had to go to Lisbon in plain clothes. I went with a major in the Black Watch and two others 鈥� four of us, all in civvies. We stayed the night there and then went to Lisbon airport. When we were waiting in the lounge of the airport, four Germans came in wearing suits, and they went into their glass cubicle and took off their hats and put on caps and all did the Nazi salute, and we sat and goggled at them. A very strange situation really. As we were being put on the plane 鈥� KLM, a Dutch plane 鈥� there was another plane standing on the runway and the pilot who was leading us out to the plane said 鈥淭hat鈥檚 one of ours they鈥檝e stolen.鈥� Anyway, we flew back to Bristol. We didn鈥檛 know where we were going. We arrived in Bristol in the middle of the night and then somehow or other got a train to London. I went to my parents.

Eventually R茅 and I had a little honeymoon at the Savoy Hotel and we went to see Blithe Spirit. My parents went with us to see The Cocktail Party, which was rather clever but a horrible play 鈥� about people at a cocktail party and the awful things that happened to them later. Then, of course, I had to meet the boys and the family 鈥� and so we went down to Dorset, to Chardstock, and met my husband鈥檚 mother and sister. My husband鈥檚 youngest son was there, because he had just had his tonsils out, and his cousin, because she had just had her appendix out, and they were much of an age. Then we went down to meet his eldest son, who was nine, in Taunton and there was this little boy in a grey suit waiting for us in the hotel when we got there. It must have been very traumatic for him really because he did remember his mother vaguely, as she had died when he was seven.

Of course, I was still in the Wrens. My husband had a house at Breedon which had been let and I went there, and the boys came there for their holidays and that was my reason for getting out of the Wrens. However, before I was discharged, they asked me to report to Dover. We thought it was D-Day and so I said I would go but I must be back for the boys鈥� school holidays. Dover was very dull. We worked in the Castle but it wasn鈥檛 really very exciting. We were shelled every night so they had a sort of slit trench we were supposed to go into, and then later on they got a lorry that we all piled into and we were driven out of range of the shells. I insisted on taking my cat with me, which I wasn鈥檛 allowed to do, so I stuffed it into my greatcoat and it purred lustily. It was only a kitten. I was there for about a month and my husband asked the Commander there to look after me, which was nice.

Then, when the holidays were coming up, I got an honourable discharge and returned to await the boys. My parents came and stayed for a little while, and then my husband came home. Soon R茅 went off again and I think that must have been when he took Churchill across to Quebec and had to go up to be the adviser because the First Sea Lord who was with him, Dudley Pound, had had a stroke and they hadn鈥檛 got anybody in the Navy to go. So he left his ship somewhere in Halifax and went on to Chateau Frontenac in Quebec, and then he brought back Churchill, Clemmy, Mary and also Churchill鈥檚 son Randolph. Mary nearly got lost overboard, because I think they met a hurricane and had to sit around and wait for it to pass. She went on deck with a naval officer and R茅 was very cross with him, because a wave came and nearly washed them overboard, but they were all right (they didn鈥檛 tell Winston!).

A lot of stuff came back through Churchill with a large 鈥楥鈥� on it. Things R茅 had bought in Quebec for me, like grey flannel for the boys, which I made into suits that they wore at school, which were battledress tops and shorts. I took the fly buttons out of an old pair of shorts and stitched them in complete. And some shoes for me and some goloshes 鈥� overshoes 鈥� and a hot water bottle and an air gun, which I wouldn鈥檛 let the boys use, but actually it wasn鈥檛 any good because the little bullets sort of trickled out of the end 鈥� I was afraid they would shoot each other, but it didn鈥檛 really work. Then the boys went off to school and I was on my own. I grew lots of vegetables.

R茅 suddenly sent me a message to go to Greenock. A rather cryptic message because he couldn鈥檛 say the ship was there (in Gourock). So I got on the train 鈥� my parents were with me at the time and looked after the children while I was away 鈥� and went off to Greenock. We were there for a couple of nights 鈥� and then he set sail and went off to the Far East (I wasn鈥檛 going to see him again for 16 months). I travelled back and I got to a little station not far from Breedon but too far to walk and in the middle of the night, and the porter said I mustn鈥檛 try getting back on foot because there were a lot of Americans around and it wasn鈥檛 safe. So they gave me cups of tea and I spent the night in the waiting room, which had a fire in it (they brewed the tea on their coal fire, because of course they had lots of coal), and I got on a train at 3 o鈥檆lock in the morning and got back to Breedon or thereabouts and got home.

I grew a lot of runner beans on the ground, not up strings, and the man who we rented the house from, who was a baker, also had a market garden and he used to take the vegetables to market for me. I grew cabbages and things. We had a pony and a trap. Trying to get the pony into the trap was exciting 鈥� it was all right when my husband was there!

R茅 was based in Trincomalee, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) with the Far East Fleet. When he left the battlecruiser HMS Renown in 1945, he went by liner to Durban, where he met Wilfred Van Lennep and the Belgian Consul. Van Lennep was a Baron and I think Dutch Ambassador. My husband, Van Lennep and the Belgian Consul came back on a troopship, sharing a cabin. There were three of them in the cabin and he and Wilfred got on very well together and used to take it in turns to get early morning tea, which wasn鈥檛 heard of I don鈥檛 think in a troopship.

When they arrived in England he came home and saw my daughter Lizzie for the first time, aged over six months. (The Admiralty hadn鈥檛 sent him my telegram saying she had been born so it was a month before he found out.) He arrived back at the little house in a butcher鈥檚 van because there was no other transport from the station, and he suddenly turned up. I was in bed with bronchitis and Lizzie was there, screaming. He said he鈥檇 try and make her a bottle, which he did. He first tried to sterilise two glass bottles by dropping them into boiling water and of course they both broke. Then he tried to bath her. He put a towel round his waist and tried to put her into the baby bath, but she bellowed and roared and struggled. I suppose he was a stranger and she was frightened, even though she was so little. He was on leave for quite a while and then he went to the Admiralty in London, before leaving for Germany.

That was when we decided to give up the house which we were renting. So we got the car, which had been on bricks for the whole war, and we put Lizzie in the back and set off for London to stay with my parents, who had got a house in New Malden and said they would have us there. The trouble was the water jacket round the engine. There was a bung in the bottom of it and it had rusted and it eventually fell out, so we were doing about a mile to the gallon of water. We couldn鈥檛 think what was the matter with the car. There was nobody to help us. So we had to coast down the hills and then hope we could go halfway up the next one before starting up the engine again. We eventually crawled to Beaconsfield, where our bank manager lived. We knocked on his door and said, 鈥楶lease, please can we stay the night with you?鈥� and they put us up and found a cot for Lizzie and everything. In the morning we got a taxi, if you please, to tow us to New Malden, which was miles away! They weren鈥檛 supposed to do it. It was out of their area really 鈥� I think it cost 拢30!

So we got there and that鈥檚 where we stayed until we went to Germany. There was plenty of room because part of the house had previously been let off to somebody and so the boys were able to have that room. The house had been bombed and so the conservatory wasn鈥檛 there 鈥� it was just a slab of concrete.

The next thing was that my husband鈥檚 posting came through to Germany, to Wilhelmshaven, and one very foggy morning a party of sailors 鈥� petty officers 鈥� arrived in a jeep. They all came in for coffee. It was very early morning and a horrible day. We gave them some coffee and just toast or something and off they went 鈥� a naval party to Germany. My husband had to be dressed up in khaki, and the only thing that wasn鈥檛 khaki was his cap. He had all the gold trimmings on his cap but he had a khaki covering to it and battledress. He didn鈥檛 know how to put on all his webbing and stuff. He had to get a bemused marine to show him how!

They drove through Holland, I think, and then through Germany. The Canadian troops were in support of them and, apart from the driver lighting a cigarette over the petrol tank and blowing the whole thing up, everything went well!

(continues in Part IV)

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