大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War website by Marie on behalf of David and has been added to the site with his permission. David fully understand the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

During my time on the Queen Elizabth we went on four operational sorties against Japanese outposts and shipping. My first time in action was what might be called a reconnaissance in force. We bombarded Sabang which is an island off the northern tip of Sumatra, in the province of Aceh, on 11 April 1945. We had two aircraft carriers with us and they did the reconnaissance and then spotted our fall of shot but they found little for us to engage. The force manoeuvred further south, off the west coast of Sumatra, for a week. Many aircraft sorties were flown but our ship had no further direct action.

On one day we criss-crossed the Equator, crossing it seven times. I tried to see whether water draining away could make up its mind whether to rotate clockwise for the southern hemisphere or anti-clockwise for the northern but it obstinately refused to play, always turning anti-clockwise.
Eventually we were in the Sunda Strait between Sumatra and Java and I had my first sighting of Krakatao or what remains of it. In place of a 1,000 meter high island there were just a few islets and a deep in the sea of as much as there had been height above until 1886 when the volcano exploded killing thousands.

There was an amusing discussion on the Bridge. We were not far from a lighthouse which would have been more use to the enemy than to us so there was talk of giving the secondary armament some target practice. 'Better not - the Dutch would send us a bill after the war.' Indonesia was still notionally a Dutch colony. It was my first introduction to the Dutchman's fabled tightness of wad!

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