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This is the second part of ‘Came the Hour’ by George Birkin (A2895528) and has been added to the site with his full permission.

DRAFT TO GUNBOAT

Our MTB Flotilla paid off at HMS Hornet, Gosport, in September 1944. The Wren Petty Officer there told me I had been posted to a gunboat at Milford Haven. I asked her if the boat did not already have a telegraphist aboard. ‘Yes’, she replied, ‘but the skipper was someone who has seen action and the present sparks has only just left training.’ Having spent years aboard an MTB in the Channel, action was the last thing I wanted but how can you argue with a Wren Petty Officer?

On arrival at Milford Haven I found a motor launch, number 330, with very little armament, a wireless cabin full of bits and pieces and a base wireless mechanic trying to put it all together. He confirmed what I had been told by my friendly Wren PO at Hornet that the vessel was to form part of a force under the direction of Lord Louis Mountbatten to invade Malaya. The code name was ‘Operation zipper’. When I queried the lack of armament he told me the boat was to be re-armed as a ‘ C’ ‘Class Gunboat’.

We finally got under weigh in the company of a slow moving convoy to Gibraltar; the wireless was still kaput. The Bay lived up to its reputation and we rocked and rolled for three to four days. I had never been sea-sick before and ended up on the wireless cabin deck bemoaning my fate and coming to only as we entered Gibraltar Harbour under blue skies in warm sunshine and with the smell of Tarantella tomatoes with frying bacon coming from the galley. I had eaten nothing since Milford Haven and was ready for it — and ravenously hungry.

Gibraltar was a new experience for me and I remember a game of football on the concrete jetty, a climb up the Rock and, particularly, the luscious grapes.

Despite all efforts but still minus radio our next port of call was Algiers. The grapevine told us to buy as many consumerables as possible, particularly Lux soap at three pence a tablet. The Arabs in Algiers would pay the equivalent of two shillings and six pence in Francs for this and anything else we could offer. On arrival we tied up along side the jetty, the whole dock area being surrounded by a high wire fence. Arabs were clamouring on the other side of the fence anxious to buy anything we could offer. ‘Jack’ was in his element and digging down to the bottom of his kit-bag. The Francs were first pushed through the wire and the goods were then thrown over the top. The highlight of our visit was to the Casbah and Muscatel wine in the French Navy Canteen at three pence per glass.

We then slipped away to Malta where Jimmy the One collected our Francs to exchange for British currency. He never questioned the source of our riches. Sliema Creek, near Valleta and the Grand Harbour was our base. Memories of the ‘Gut’ (Straight Street I think its proper name was), a street of brothels and bars is without recommendation. In Malta we received a variety of inoculations in readiness for the Far East. Passage through the Mediterranean, particularly through the night was balmy and peaceful. We had a midshipman aboard who had been a choirboy in Bradford and his rendering of ‘Green Grow the Rushes’o’ still lives with me. The radio was still out of action and I spent my time on the bridge enjoying the fresh air.

Shortly after leaving Malta the entire crew of about fifteen were struck down with diarrhea. There was only one toilet aboard so we had to resort to a bucket in the forepeak. In my case and with one other member of the crew the skipper considered we had dysentery and put into Benghazi where we were confined to an army sickbay. A course of M&B (sulphur drug) tablets plugged the gap and after two weeks we climbed aboard an army lorry to pick up the boat in Alexandria. We spent the night in an Italian army barracks at Derna. It was lousy with fleas and then went on to Tobruk and got a train for Alex where the boat was waiting. Travelling through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea we came to Massawa, enjoyed some convalescent leave at an Army rest camp near Asmara then sailed on to Aden and into the Indian Ocean and the island of Masira off the coast of Oman — home of the biblical frankincense trees and myrrh. Finally we travelled across to Karachi and down the West Coast of India to Bombay where our armament was fitted. On completion we sailed up the East Coast to Vizagapatazm and across the Bay of Bengal to Chittagong where there was a Cholera outbreak. We had to boil all drinking and cooking water before use (some hope with the temperature well into the hundreds and only a coal burning galley fire).

Cruising down the coast and passing the island of Ramree, a destroyer going in the opposite direction started flashing us. I acknowledged with the Aldis lamp and after conversation by Morse code I put the lamp down. ‘What was that all about’, asked the skipper? I replied, ‘Just to say that the war in Europe is over and they are going home. They wished us the best of luck.’

On arrival a Rangoon we discovered that the fourteenth army had done a wonderful job and, as a result, Mountbatton had cancelled ‘Operation Zipper’. Our orders were to cruise up the Irrawaddy River and destroy what remained of any Japanese gunboats. We did this and had only one serious firefight with six Jap gunboats tied up by the riverbank. On that occasion my action station was with a strip Lewis gun. Determined not to be a target I tied a sausage rope fender on top of two depth charges and fired through the gap. Unfortunately my spent bullet cases landed on the bare back of the coxwain who was firing beside me. I can’t repeat his language! Our time there was spent with millions of mosquitoes and Mepacrine tablets to ward off the onset of malaria. The delights were pineapples, mangoes and Burmese sheroots, for which we bartered with the native people for tins of bacon and soya links masquerading as sausages.

I remember news on the radio of the dropping of the Atom Bomb and the cessation of hostilities. We were tied up in Rangoon Harbour and my one thought as I lay beneath my mosquito net in the wheelhouse was, ‘The war’s over and I’m alive.’

The journey home was aboard an American Lease Lend destroyer from Colombo — chipping rust on the upper deck and red leading. January 23rd1946 brought us in sight of Guz to shouts of joy from everybody. We were still wearing our shorts and sandals but it was — ‘Devonport and tiddly oggies here we come.’

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