大象传媒

MY WAR - by Ken Bond..

My war began the day before war was declared on the 2nd September 1939, when my brother and I, with my school Latymer Foundation school were evacuated to High Wycombe, Bucks.
However by early 1940 we were back in London again, Then with Dunkirk we were evacuated again to Fowey in Cornwall. Once the bombing of London started my mother decided that we should die together and brought us back to London, West Kensington. I was sent to West Ken. Central school, but I was so far behind all the other pupils the head master suggested that i would be better off working. So started work in Knight & Go doing clerical work and delivering urgent letters by hand. The day after the big fire raid no the City, I was sent to the City to deliver letters, only to find all the premises I was supposed to deliver letters to gutted by fire with firemen and fire hoses and water everywhere, so I had take the letters back.

A short time later my grandmother paid for me to go-to The London Telegraph Training College in Earls Court,' where I obtained a certificate in radio telegraphy.
I hadn't made up my mind what I was going to do when Siemens Brothers wrote to me asking if I would like to go to sea, Yes!
At 15+ I was the youngest Radio Officer at sea.

My first voyage was on the S.S. Katha. which I signed on the 30th November, 1941. The ship was to be depot ship in Trincomalee Harbour, so all the officers went out and bought themselves Royal Fleet Auxillary hat badges. I was seasick for about a week but never again after that.
We went in convoy to Freetown and thence, lone ship, down the West coast of Africa round the Cape to Durban. The voyage to Durban was trouble free but after that, with the Japanese now in the war, I don鈥檛 think I went on watch once without receiving a distress signal either from a ship being attacked by submarine or surface raider (German). In fact I had to do extra dawn and dusk look-out watches.

We arrived eventually in Trincomalee Harbour and stayed there as depot ship. However after awhile it was decided that we weren't suitable as depot ship and we were sent to India to pick up a cargo of peanuts. The ship that took over from us as depot ship in Trincamalee Harbour was bombed and sunk shortly after we left.

After my first trip I mainly crossed the North Atlantic always in convoy and seldom withouy incident. Stragglers were torpedoed, there were fairly frequent emergency calls and constant depth charging.

I was mostly on tankers after that, except for a spell of about 2 months coasting between London and Jarrow or Sunderland coaling. It was while coasting that 3 or 4 of the crew including myself were invited into a house in Jarrow or Sunderland (I can鈥檛 remember which port) and given something to eat and a drink. We were 'First Footing' - something new to me - it was New Years Eve/Day 1942/43.
I remember that while at sea I never slept well. After one bad crossing, mostly due to bad weather the ship docked in Avonmouth Harbour, myself and a few members of the crew went ashore and had a few drinks after which I slept like a log, to waken next morning and find that Bristol had had its worst air raid of the war. I had slept through it.

On the whole I was extremely lucky, but my luck ran out when the tanker I was on, the British Fortitude was torpedoed, just forward of the engine room, on the 23rd February 1943. In tankers you
either blew up or you didn鈥檛 go down. We didn't go down despite the engine room gradually filling with water. The engineers managed to plug all the holes and start the pumps. We were in convoy at the time and four other ships were also torpedoed.

We left the convoy and sailed lone ship first to Havana in Cuba and thence to Tampa in Florida where the ship was dry docked and repaired. Fortunately the weather was calm otherwise the ship would have broken in half. The repairs went on day and night and the crew had to sleep on board.

The 'Brits' in Tampa took it on themselves to look after us while we were ashore but I must admit a we required a few drinks to help us get over the experience (there were no counseling in those days). Once the ship was repaired and loaded with aviation spirit we sailed up to New York in convoy and finally back home to Barry docks. For this episode we hit the Headlines for a day. The Chief Engineer and the Captain were awarded the B. E. M. and I was given 拢20 salvage money.

The last ship I sailed on was the Norwegian ship the M.V. Leiv Eriksen (a liberty ship) which ended up off the American Omaha Beach off Normandy, we had ammunition and wood as cargo. The Americans were quick to unload the ammunition but we were kept hanging around for weeks while they made up there minds what to do with the wood. In the mean time the British. army was being held up at Caen, I became so frustrated with not being able to do anything, I decided I would join the army when I got back home, which I did.

I enlisted as regular soldier in the Gordon Highlanders for 7 years with the Colours and 5 in the reserves, but my intentions of fighting for 'King and Country' were thwarted when I caught pneumonia. By the time I had convalesced and joined my regiment , the war was coming to an end. A platoon of my company of 'Gordons' marched in the Victory Parade but not me (which I rather regret).
I was later commissioned into the East Surrey Regiment and my Regular Army contract broken. I left the army in 1948, a captain.

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