大象传媒

鈥淚TS HELLO AND GOODBYE, SAILOR鈥� PART 1 EX STOKER GEORGE FISH

I joined the Royal Navy on 30th January 1940 at Portsmouth as a stoker 2/c. I started training in a squad of 20 stokers of similar age and rating in an empty infants school with its own playground; we used it as a parade ground for marching and drill work.

After four months intensive training, from six o鈥檆lock in the morning to nine o鈥檆lock at night with no shore leave, I joined the main barracks HMS VICTORY and was drafted in 13th June 1940 to HMS ENTERPRISE in Plymouth dockyard.

After trials we were sent to Gibralter at high speed through a storm in the Bay of Biscay. The ship had four boiler rooms with two boilers on each. Each boiler had twelve sprayers for fuel oil and needed the white hot slag cleaning every hour with a twelve foot long 陆 inch diameter steel bar. To wield this with the ship pitching and tossing was a real baptism in the life of a stoker in the Royal Navy!! We arrived 8th July 1940.

We joined up with Force H based in Gibralter and after several manoeuvres with the fleet it became apparent why we had that very fast passage from The UK. France had been defeated by the Germans and her naval fleet was in jeopardy. In July 1940 they were about to transfer the fleet to the Germans and Churchill ordered their ships to be destroyed if they did not come to us at a neutral port.

French Ships were at Marseilles, Oran, Dakar, Casablanca and Laurenco Marques. Force H was allocated Oran and after protracted negotiation which met with refusal, our ships opened fire. The Enterprise was between the line of battleships and the shore. I was on watch in 鈥楢鈥� boiler room with all sprayers alight. Suddenly a huge pressure drop, a sheet of flame across the floor and tremendous noise. They had opened fire and the shells had passed over us causing the backfire to the boilers.

This went on for about ten minutes with firing going on steadily. Then we increased speed to chase 3 destroyers escaping. We opened fire and sank one and damaged the others. More than 1260 French sailors were killed in the operation known as 鈥楥ATAPULT鈥�.

Our next operations were the 鈥淢alta Convoys鈥�. Many accounts have been written about these. Our Captain had a swivelling platform made, where with his binoculars he watched the bombs from the attacking aircraft and manoeuvred his ship to avoid them. The ship was a lucky one, we had no one killed. We also shelled two towns on the Italian coast in the hope we could lure out the Italian Fleet in two operations. They did not come!!

We were then discharged from Force H and went to relieve HMS Hawkins in the South Atlantic Squadron looking for German surface raiders. This was a dreary, monotonous time, patrolling from the Equator south as far as the Antartic; one spell we went 106 days at sea and never saw land!! Apparently we just missed the armed merchant raider THOR and also the German pocket battleship ADMIRAL SCHEER. We visited Monte Video, Rio De Janiero and Beunos Aires staying 48 hours in each. Travelling up the River Plate to BA we passed the still smoking wreck of the German battleship GRAF SPEE. We were relieved by HMS Newcastle and went to Simonstown (near Cape Town) trailing one engine, for a 3 week refit.

Docked in Simonstown January 13th 1941. Left Cape town to patrol Indian Ocean, captured Vichy French ship SS Sontay on January 26th 1941 and Norwegian oiler on March 9th 1941. Met sister ship HMS Emerald in Columbo, Ceylon on March 11th 1941. Went up to Persian Gulf when Rachid Ali rebelled against British rule and tried to nationalise the oil wells. Sat off Bahrain for three weeks (had an invasion of locusts while sat in harbour. 3 inch long grasshoppers everywhere especially down the boiler rooms; draught pulled them down.) Left there and went to Seychelles for 3 days at Male.

Escort to Bombay with HMS HERMES. Met typhoon with waves recorded at 80 feet high. HERMES had 6 feet waves at bow and still 6 feet high off her stern. We had our upper deck crushed by two inches. Stanchions were bent and plates bent. Docked at Columbo trailing an engine and docked for seven weeks refit. Had a fortnight at a camp in Dyatalawa up in the hills in Ceylon. Went to Kandy and other trips, including golf and rifle shooting. The ship left Columbo for trials in January 1942.

We were detailed for convoy duty in February 1942 to take three large troop ships from Ceylon to Singapore, one of the fastest ever runs at 20 knots. All ships in the convoy had three funnels; very unusual. These ships went alongside the dock wall; we went round the island to the naval anchorage. We heard gunfire as we went alongside and it was realised the Japanese were close and shelling the island. Aircraft started bombing, so we left almost as soon as we had oiled and watered. Some of those troops we had escorted there, veterans of the fighting in North Africa, never even got off their transports before the over cautious English Officers surrendered.

We left to go safely to Ceylon; other ships tried to make Australia, including HMS ACHILLES and met a Japanese fleet and were sunk. We then transported marine commandos to Rangoon before joining the Eastern Fleet. We were at sea when the Japanese Fleet moved into the Indian Ocean where they sunk the destroyer HMS Tenedos, the aircraft carrier Hermes and bombed Columbo and Trincomalee in Ceylon. We were shadowing the fleet, which had also sunk the 鈥淧rince of Wales鈥� and the 鈥淩epulse鈥� but keeping out of their way for tactical purposes because we were heavily outnumbered.
Then the CORNWALL and DORSETSHIRE were caught and sunk on 5th April 1942 only 4 hours steaming away from the fleet, which meant that the Japanese fleet were closer than our admiral Somerville realised.

When it was assumed safe to do so, the ENTERPRISE with destroyers HMS PANTHER and HMS PALADIN were dispatched to pick up the survivors. It took 24 hours to reach them and we picked up the CORNWALL survivors while the others picked up the DORSETSHIRE鈥檚, some half a mile away. The ship was packed, men lying wounded in passage ways, on lockers and many vacant places. The smell was awful and dead men 鈥渃ommitted鈥� to the deep, with due ceremony during forenoon watches. The survivors were (in total eleven hundred from the two ships) were landed at Addu Attol and we rejoined the fleet.

The ship left the fleet later and docked in Durban, South Africa, where I left her to change my rating on August 18th 1942. The ship had crossed the Equator 41 times, steamed 140,000 miles (the equivalent of 10 times round the world) including a record 8,285 miles in 1 month.

鈥淚TS HELLO AND GOODBYE, SAILOR鈥� PART 2 EX STOKER GEORGE FISH

Having left HMS ENTERPRISE at Durban I was sent to a rest camp for 3 days then returned to Durban to take passage to the UK in RMS LACONIA on the 29th August, the day after my 21st birthday. I was put in a small mess, four decks down from the upper deck, in what had been a cargo hold, almost on the stern of the ship, the only naval ratings on the mess deck. I was allocated a lookouts job in 3 watch routine and significantly learnt my way on deck in the dim light at night. We called in at Cape Town where I bought myself a wristwatch for my 21st birthday 鈥� there was no one else to do so!!!

On 12th September 1942 at 8.10 in the evening, just as I had had my evening wash there was a distant muffled thud forward that was unmistakeable to a sailor. We had been torpedoed!!! Then a second confirmed it and the lights went out immediately. Pandemonium! I dropped everything and rushed immediately to the stairway. It was pitch black with just the emergency light glimmering over the hatchway and the ship had begun to list to port already. The temporary stairs were packed with men, the ship lurched further to port and the stairs collapsed with all the men thrown off. I remembered a steel rope ladder; a permanent peace time fixture for access to the hold. I scrambled up the deck, started to climb up but was held by 2 others, I struggled, they pulled off my shoes, but I went on and climbed up, kicking them away.

The next deck was the same, except I had to fight to get on the ladder; all the time the ship was keeling further to port. I think the four decks took me half an hour to climb. I arrived on the upper deck. The ship was listing to port over 40 degrees and everything was quiet. I don鈥檛 think many people got out after me. I looked for something to float on and threw a couple of crates over but they just rolled down a little way and stopped. I got on the rails to abandon ship and felt my finger nails were torn and bleeding. 鈥淪hark bait before I start鈥� I thought. Anyway, I walked down the ships side, nearly horizontal by now, over barnacles and weed, cutting my feet in the process; more blood.

I walked into the water, the ship was still moving slowly, and swam away. The water was warm with a slight swell. I was wearing white pyjama jacket, underpants, overall trousers, black socks, navy money belt and wristwatch. There was nothing but a slight phospherence to be seen. I swam on and found a 12ft x 4ft grating on which to rest. Then I heard a sound of a diesel engine 鈥� the submarine had come back! Expecting to be shot I was surprised to hear, in English 鈥渃ome aboard鈥�. It was the German submarine and it was picking up survivors. The time on my watch was quarter past four in the morning. I had been swimming for eight hours.

The reason for the submarine picking up survivors was that we had 1600 Italian P.O.W. from North Africa on board and though the first torpedo exploded in their quarters, causing many casualties, some had survived and were among those in the water. Anyway, the submarine picked up more survivors, went to a lifeboat, made them all come on board, gave out soup and bread, and then sent every one back into the lifeboat, including myself. Without this, I would not have survived at all. In a lifeboat made for sixty people we had over ninety people and it was dangerously overloaded. Still I was put in a good position with room because I could, and did, use an oar to row. We set out to sail to Africa but the submarine made us keep to a group for a while, there being two other German and one Italian submarine in the group. Then one German submarine was bombed by an American plane (which missed the submarine but destroyed the lifeboat it was towing) so they cut us all adrift.

After 13 days on lifeboat rations and in an effort to sail to safety, we were picked up, the last of the lifeboats saved, by the Vichy French cruiser GLOIRE. Two lifeboats eventually made it to Africa after a horrendous journey of extreme hardship. One had only four men left out of the original ninety. There were 2725 people on board the LACONIA and only 975 were rescued, the second largest loss of life of British ships in WWII.

We landed in Casablanca, and marching through the dockyard I saw something that might have explained why the Vichy French treated us like they did. I saw a large battleship the JEAN BART in dry dock with huge holes in her sides and badly damaged. I later realised she had had the same treatment that the RN had given at Oran.

We were transported to a POW camp at MEDIOUNA, a hastily converted barracks originally occupied by the French native troops. The huts were wooden, with corrugated iron roofs and asbestos sheeting. There were 46 in my hut (QUARANTE SIX) which we heard on roster night and morning. The water came on twice a day at eight o clock and five o clock for half an hour; this in a desert just north of the equator. The hut floor was concrete, on which they had put straw to sleep on; no blankets were provided until noisy protests from a French speaking airman backed by many others, after more than a week. Food twice a day was vegetable soup, a flat round loaf divided into five and a small cup of red wine, no plates, knives or forks; line up, take a metal bowl and cup, drink the wine, dip the bread in the soup, return the utensils and carry on.

We were eventually given old laundered uniforms of the French Foreign Legion (Legion Etrangers). After a few weeks nearly everyone had dysentery, crabs, skin sores and lice. We were finally liberated when the Americans invaded North Africa, north of Casablanca. We were taken to the US hospital ship USS ANCORN where we were stripped, shaved of all body hair, washed down with paraffin and given a disinfectant shower. They issued us with US Navy uniforms and we were taken to Norfolk, Virginia, then by train to New York where we were given English uniforms and the American鈥檚 returned. A week in a rest camp in the hills near Peeksville then transported back to England on the Dutch ship SS WESTERLAND. Landed at Liverpool and returned to Portsmouth barracks in the New Year 1943. Rated unfit for active service for 3 months.
For a fuller account of the sinking of the Cornwall and Laconia refer to 鈥淚N DEEP AND TROUBLED WATERS鈥� by Tony Large, published by Paul Watkins Publishing, Stamford, Lincs. He survived both sinkings and was one of those in the LACONIA life boat with four survivors.

鈥淚TS HELLO AND GOODBYE, SAILOR鈥� PART 3 EX STOKER GEORGE FISH

Repatriation to Portsmouth Barracks, 56 days leave followed; without pay, due to lack of current information, only victualling allowance and rationing coupons. When I arrived home I discovered I had been reported missing and assumed dead and my allotment of pay to my Mother had been stopped. A trip to my girlfriends house found she had been called up to the ATS eighteen months previously and was in an A/A battery near Dover. Thinking I had been killed, she had this last weekend announced her engagement to be married. Her mother begged me not to interfere so I just left to drown my sorrows as far away as my money would allow.

My next draft chit was to HMS DUNLUCE CASTLE in March 1943, this time as a joiner 4/c my trade. She was an ex liner anchored in Scapa Flow acting as a depot for the Atlantic Fleet. A reserve of many ratings was held to replace casualties and missing crew members of the ships that came and went on operations or convoy duty. Leave was granted for 10 days every six months and I travelled to the South Coast each time in a special train for the Forces to Scapa Flow. Then in 1944 the ship was decommissioned and we sailed to Rosyth and paid off I went back to barracks.

Almost immediately I was drafted to HMS MULL OF KINTYRE. She was a ship I later found to be being built in Vancouver, Canada as a repair depot to the Fleet. This meant train to Liverpool, ship to Quebec, train for five days and four nights to Vancouver, to find the ship was not ready. Ferry to Victoria on Vancouver Island and accommodation for a fortnight in HMS NADEN. Then I picked up the ship.

We sailed via Hawaii to a remote island where we anchored to let ships come alongside for repairs. Then the war in the Pacific finished, we were in Hong Kong a week after and Japan later, but that is another story!!

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