大象传媒

JACKO鈥橲 STORY

It was 1939 and I was working at the coal face in a local colliery in Leicestershire. I wasn鈥檛 called up to fight in the Royal Navy but my brother had already signed up for duty, so I thought, maybe it was time I enlisted as well.

I visited the recruiting office five times in all before I was finally signed-up, but only on the understanding that I visited the dentist to have most of my teeth removed (16 in all). This would enable me to pass the stringent medical that enlistees had to endure. I signed up for seven and five. Seven years service with colours and five years reserve. I received the queens shilling for joining up. I joined as a stoker and was assigned to the HMS Carlisle, an anti aircraft ship/cruiser built in 1916.

We were one of many ships involved in the Malta Convoys. We were responsible for carrying supplies out to other ships. These supplies consisted of ammunitions, medicines and fuel etc. The Carlisle took a lot of pounding during the convoys. I remember her holed up in dry dock with tremendous damage to her bow. Huge pieces of shrapnel had caused tremendous damage to the ship. She looked so vulnerable, just as if she were made of butter. We managed to come through much of the conflict. Many times facing a barrage of dive-bombing stukas.

When we returned to Alex after the last Malta convoy, they transferred quite a lot of ships personnel to a more modern cruiser, the HMS Lightning. Unfortunately they hadn鈥檛 been at sea very long before they were heavily bombed. This resulted in having to beach her. A lot of my ship mates were on that ship, including Geordie and Tommy Barrett, Tommy Cole, Lofty Marsh, Roy Cocking (I believe he was from the Derbyshire area). I would like to know what happened to them and all the others.

We sailed on to South Africa, Cape Town. We were involved in taking on board millions of pounds worth of gold bars (believed to be for the war effort). The decks were crawling with Marine sentries. It was all hands on deck to load the staggeringly heavy cargo of boxes on board. I joked with one of the sentries whilst carrying one of the boxes, that this one was for the stokers mess, he soon gave me short shrift. The site of such wealth was something which we could only dream about and would never ever see again in our lifetime.
The Carlisle didn鈥檛 have submarine detectors or devices. This made us extremely vulnerable to attacks from such vessels. We were guided safely back to Plymouth by a Dutch destroyer (The Isaac Sweers). The HMS Belfast which was carrying out a similar exercise (transporting gold) was destroyed in the Bairant Sea. The ship was sunk. I believe the gold was retrieved many years later.

On arriving back in England (Chatham) from South Africa I embarked on a 2 week diesel course. I was immediately posted to America on the HMS Queen Mary. On her entrance to the docks (Boston -Massachusetts) with 30,000 American troops on board the ship hit an English cruiser, HMS Curacao, and cut her in two. Tragically there were very few survivors. The Queen Mary was badly damaged, with a hole in her bough big enough to fill with a 4 storey building. Work was soon underway to repair the ship, which was helped along with the aid of quick setting concrete. Time was of the essence and the navy couldn鈥檛 afford for vessels to be stranded in dry dock.

The Bostonians were very kind to us, and we were hailed as heroes to their town. People turned out to cheer us on as we marched through the streets
During our stay we were housed in a big fur warehouse. It was called Fargo Barracks. We were looked after extremely well during that time. Food was plentiful, in fact many of my shipmates would go ashore after eating aboard ship, to visit the local hostelries and partake in further appetising fare.
We were all much fatter when we left Boston than when we entered it.

We were assigned LST 302. She was commissioned in Charles Town naval yard Boston. Our convoy consisted of 70 LST鈥檚 in all. We sailed from Boston to New York, and docked in Brooklyn. We then made our way to Bermuda, and then Gibraltar. The trip took 28 days in all. During the crossing we lost four of the convoy of LST鈥檚. These particular floating craft were constructed of such huge amounts of steel. The sheer weight of the vessel on the water meant they became extremely vulnerable to metal fatigue and would break up during sea manoeuvres. There were many fatalities.
We eventually arrived in Oran. I remember we had an LCT on the upper deck full of pig iron, I wasn鈥檛 quite sure why. It was resting on baulks full of beeswax. The purpose of the exercise was that (in the tropics) the wax would melt (on the baulks) which, in turn would put a list on the ship, enabling the LCT to slide off. The people organising the exercise made a major error, whereby they took the rail that was holding the craft in place, down and attempted to slide the LCT off. They unfortunately forgot to remove the pig iron from the craft and through the sheer weight of both it slid graciously into the sea, never to be seen again.

I was also was involved in manoeuvres in Sicily, Salerno and Anzio when my ship, LST 302, was recalled home to attend the D Day landings. The Navy were particularly short of landing craft for this call of duty. We immediately set sail across the Atlantic. Our first port of call was Loch Ewe, where we had to refuel. From there we sailed round to the Pentland Firth and on to Leith in Edinburgh, where our tank space was fitted out with holding bunks and a mobile operating theatre. We became oblivious to the gruesome comings and goings exiting the operating theatre.
We made our down the coast, along the Straits of Dover to Gosport Hard, along with many other craft to the D Day Landings starting point. We landed on Sword Beach, where we despatched our cargo of tanks, guns and Lorries.

I thought the D Day landings would be my that last tour of duty. I imagined by the time we arrived back at barracks in England my naval career would be at an end, but I was called up by emergency draft and we were sent out again on HMS Sheffield. We set sail from Chatham on a Monday night and by dawn on the following Saturday morning we were lying up in Bizerter, North Africa. We sailed to The Hard, where we were commissioned LST4. We sailed, initially, to Toranto, to pick up troops. These men were destined for Piraeus in Greece to help in the fight against the Elas rebels.
By the time we reached Malta my warrant mech, Mr Griffiths was undecided whether or not to re-fuel. Diesel was in short supply and we weren鈥檛 sure where or when we would have the opportunity to fill-up again. Fortunately for us, the decision was to be our savour. Upon setting sail back to Plymouth, we collided with a mine. Fortunately for us the weight of the fuel cushioned the main impact and prevented any serious damage to the ship. The fuel tanks took the full impact of the blast, otherwise we would have sustained more serious damage. We crawled back to the harbour in Piraeus where the local people scrambled to cash in on our misfortune by filling buckets with the leaking diesel oil. The skipper was later court marshalled for his negligence.

I was still holed up in Greece on VJ day. I remember spending VE day in Malta.

I stayed with the Carlisle until we were demobbed/ paid off.

I was always unlucky enough to be stationed abroad at Christmas time, and my wife, Kathleen would cry when everyone sang Auld Lang sign.
I was one of the lucky ones to survive the 2nd world war and was able (most recently) to celebrate, with my wife, our Diamond wedding Anniversary.

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