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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Roger Marsh of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of Philip E. Marshall, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

A Slice of Autobiography (1939 to 1946) — Part 1

By
Philip E. Marshall

The Second Great World War of 1939 to 1946 had little impact, at first, on the suburb of Hartshill, near Stoke-on-Trent, where I and my family lived. In mid-1940 I was sixteen years old, and every working day saw me cycling away from Stoke-on-Trent towards Newcastle-under-Lyme, where I was the most junior clerk in Lloyd's Bank. By day it was a routine existence, undisturbed by the battles across the Channel but enlivened by week-end pleasures of visits to the cinema and tennis club. Fourteen year old Tibby Norris and I won the Junior Doubles, beating the favourites, Joseph Dunning and his glamorous partner. None of us could foresee, and I learnt only after the war, that four years later Joseph would be flying from an aircraft carrier off the coast of Norway to attack the Tirpitz, while I tossed on the waves below, in a small escort ship, out of sight of the carriers. It was Joseph's brother, Norman, who compared dates with me, several years later; Joseph himself was in one of the five planes which failed to return from the raid.

Night-time, in 1940, was more sinister. Though never a major target for German planes, the Potteries area had many alarms as attackers flew over towards Manchester or Liverpool. Sometimes bombs fell, by design or mistake. Our house was near a hospital which may have looked like a factory from above on moonlit nights, and on one occasion, a stick of incendiary bombs fell across the area, the last of the stick penetrating the roof of our next-door neighbour. Father, I and others, carrying the stirrup pump and a bucket of water shot off up the stairs, only to be met by a flood of water coming down. The bomb had extinguished itself in the cold water tank in the loft, which was now the source of the waterfall.

Less amusing was the day when the pretty junior clerk of another local Bank failed to turn up for our routine meeting to exchange local cheques. She had been one of the few casualties, caused by a stray bomb.

Whether such incidents turned my thoughts to fighting back, or whether teenage restlessness would have driven me away from home, war or no war, I volunteered for the "Y" scheme. This offered accelerated entrance into the Royal Navy, with the chance of qualifying for a Commission in due course. The decision puzzled some people and pleased nobody.

"Why the Navy?" they asked. Perhaps two school years in Southampton had sowed the seed, though there was little sign of the Royal Navy in Southampton Docks; besides we had been privileged to watch the test flights of the prototype Spitfire over our playing fields, an experience which might have inspired us with the thought of serving in the Royal Air Force. Yet I did not follow that path. I think the answer lay in my love of sea stories featuring Drake, Nelson, and even the boy who "stood on the burning deck, whence all but he had fled". Romance versus Reality. Fortunately my romantic visions were not shattered during the next five years. Reality was different, but I never regretted my choice.

"Why the hurry?" they asked. My parents were a little hurt and worried, having grim memories of the First War, when father was wounded, fighting in the trenches, and many of their friends were killed. However, they accepted my decision, with outward resignation. The local girls were saddened to lose me, but they welcomed me back later, in my attractive uniform. The Bank Manager was annoyed, and rightly so, for he had offered me a position as a favour to my father, and had hoped to defer my call-up for two or three years. However, at the end of the War, he wrote me a friendly letter offering to take me back, but again I chose a different course.

The agreement I signed obliged me to join the Sea Scouts, until I reached the age of eighteen. At the meetings we marched up and down, each holding aloft a flag, and when the leading "ship" dipped his flag, we all turned 90° to port, or starboard, or did something even more complicated. I did wonder whether the ability to manoeuvre a fleet at sea, usually the province of an Admiral, would be of much use to youngsters, but, to be fair, we did learn to distinguish port from starboard, bow from stern, how to tie a bowline-on-the bight instead of a granny knot, and other mundane and possibly life-saving skills.

Four days after my eighteenth birthday, on November 5th 1941, I was taken, by train and coach, to HMS Raleigh, a shore base in Tor Point, Cornwall, for training as an Ordinary Seaman. The first shock was to pass through the suburbs of heavily-bombed Plymouth and Devonport; row after row of wrecked houses made me realise how lucky the Potteries had been. The second shock did not hit me as hard as it did some of the other young men, for I had experienced boarding school life, being ordered about in groups, sleeping in a crowded dormitory, and eating mass-produced food. Others were more home-sick than I. Even the classroom and physical education lessons were not unlike school, though some subjects were new, and the P.E. Instructors were coarser than I, at least, had been accustomed to, with their suggestions about what we could do with our young male bodies once they had brought us to a peak of fitness. The days passed quickly. Sometimes we rowed the cutter up river to the Tamar Bridge and back. Sometimes we were trusted to cross the Torpoint Ferry to the surviving fleshpots of Devonport. For my group, that just meant the W.V.S Canteen; we were very innocent. Sometimes the nearby anti-aircraft battery was firing; once we sat on the ferry at night and watched a plane come down in flames, like a distant firework. No-one cheered. After all we could not be absolutely certain that it was one of "theirs".

By the time of the passing-out parade, in mid December, we were a lot older, and a little wiser. Joining instructions had been received; after Christmas leave, three of us in the "Y" scheme were to travel to Northern Ireland to join H.M.S. Londonderry.

ALL AT SEA
I have not, since the war, had an opportunity to compare notes with other "Y" schemers. Some, perhaps, were sent to serve their apprenticeship in cruisers, battleships, or aircraft carriers. For one of my temperament, the Londonderry was an excellent choice. Small groups always seem to me more human, more informal, and more friendly. Small ships, and, later, small schools, were my ideal.

H.M.S. Londonderry was a sloop, about the size of a destroyer, but slower and less heavily armed, though with much longer endurance at sea. In peace time, a sloop could travel, the world, showing the flag, and occasionally, perhaps, dealing with some minor trouble anywhere in the British Empire. In wartime she could escort a convoy across the oceans.

A unique feature of our ship was that we were based in the port of Londonderry, from which many of our crew had been recruited in peacetime. When H.M.S. Londonderry sailed up the River Foyle on its return from a spell of duty, the Captain would play a record of Danny Boy at top volume on the loud hailer to let the citizens know that their ship was approaching. We were welcomed with open arms. There were Catholics and Protestants among the crew, but I saw no sign of sectarian friction, nor did I see any signs in the city itself. Perhaps we were in a privileged position. Only much later, in a another ship, in a different city, Belfast, was I warned not to walk down the Falls Road in uniform, for fear a hot-headed Nationalist should stick a knife in my back.

The arrival of three extra crew members seemed to take the Petty Officer on duty by surprise. Most of the crew were on leave and there was little sign of activity above deck. However, he told us to drop our kit bags and hammocks; then he produced a plank, some ropes, and pots of paint, and lowered us over the ship's side, with orders to paint as large an area as we could by the end of the afternoon watch. At teatime, in civilian language, he pronounced himself satisfied, even surprised, at the effort we had put in; by then he had obviously decided what to do with us next. We were fitted into one of the three watches and given a mess-deck place. Unfortunately the ship already carried extra crew for wartime duties, and there was no spare room for us to sling our hammocks. Now, I must say that a hammock is a very comfortable nest to sleep in, especially when the sea is rough, but a thinly-padded hammock, laid on a steel deck, is not the height of comfort. It is a tribute to the virtues of fresh air and exercise that, some days later, when the ship put to sea, and the alarm bells rang for practice in the early hours of the morning, with a noise to waken the dead, I slept on. But I shall describe that occasion later.
The Captain of H.M.S. Londonderry, Lieutenant Commander Scott, R.N., was a ‘passed-over two and a half’, so the crew said. In the peace-time Royal Navy, promotion of an officer is automatic by length of service, up to the rank of Lieutenant Commander. After that there are too few openings for everyone to rise higher. Less than one in four talented, or lucky, or favoured, ones are awarded the three broad stripes of a Commander, with "scrambled egg" on the peak of his cap, and the chance to rise to Rear Admiral, Vice-Admiral, and Admiral. The others, "passed over two and a half s" are eventually retired on half pay, to eat their hearts out ashore. Lieutenant Commander Scott was obviously delighted that the outbreak of war had recalled him to duty. He loved the sea, he loved his humble little ship and he loved his crew. His enthusiasm was infectious, and we were a "happy" ship. Drills were practised, decks were scrubbed, and all the brass work was polished, without complaint, until a signal from shore declared that sparkling brass work attracted enemy bombers, and the practice was to be discontinued.

About a week after the arrival of our small group we set sail, or rather revved up engines, and set off to join a convoy. It was on the first night that I stirred uneasily and painfully, until I became aware that I was all alone on the mess deck. However, I felt very sick, so I stumbled to the "heads" (toilets). Despite all our drills, the porthole cover had not been closed, a serious oversight, and as I leant over the bowl a blast of fiery air hit me in the face. The 4.7 inch gun on the deck above had fired, possibly to send up a star shell. The shock was such that I forgot about sea-sickness and staggered to my action station, below deck, where the projectiles were pushed manually up a metal chute to the gun position above. The others greeted my late, and woe-begone appearance with surprise, but not without sympathy. Very few sailors sneer at sea-sickness because most of them suffer, more or less, for the first couple of days at sea. Nelson, of course, was a martyr to sea-sickness.

We found the convoy, and settled into escort positions, bound for West Africa. In the Spring of 1942 the Battle of the Atlantic was far from over, but we were consistently fortunate. Some convoys were heavily attacked, some slipped through almost unnoticed, while the submarines were back at base picking up more fuel and torpedoes. We always seemed to be with one of the quiet ones. When, on one trip, we were attacked, south of the Azores, it was by two Italian submarines; no doubt they were manned by gallant seamen, but they lacked the training, experience, and ruthlessness of the U-boat crews.

I have here to supplement my memories with facts gleaned from reference books, because junior ratings often knew surprisingly little of what was happening. "Theirs not to reason why," as the poet said. Occasionally the Captain would broadcast an official announcement. The rest of the news came in snippets from signalmen, or those on duty near the bridge. I remember that we were summoned to Action Stations on a pitch-black night. The books tell me, that our group leader, H.M.S. Lulworth, located and sank the Pietro Calvi. This was July 14th, 1942. My station was now with the depth charges on the quarter-deck. We were proceeding very slowly, and I believe we were looking for survivors, when there was sudden acceleration, and a sharp turn to starboard. A surge of water swept the low lying quarter-deck , causing two of us in its path to cling to the depth-charge rails to avoid being swept overboard to join the enemy. On the mess-deck there were two stories; one said the Lulworth, using a searchlight to illuminate survivors, had shone its light further and spotted a second submarine; the other, less credible, claimed that one of the survivors had been in the Italian Olympic swimming team, and when he set off towards Lulworth, at a fast crawl, he was mistaken for an approaching torpedo. Whichever story is true, or neither, the ships abandoned men in the water, and prepared to fend off another attacker. We picked up no-one at the time, but some had been rescued, and next day they were transferred to the Londonderry to ease the pressure elsewhere.

Presumably because I was of "higher" education, though certainly not Italian-speaking, I was posted as armed guard at the open cabin door, dressed up in great-coat and gaiters, with a belt and revolver strapped to my waist. No one told me how to use the weapon, and I feel sure it was not loaded. In any case the precaution was unnecessary. The prisoners were very subdued and quiet, until one asked me politely, in perfect English, if they could have something to read. The only tense moment came when our ship started dropping depth charges; I was unhappy myself at the sound of great hammer blows on our hull, and the Italians, who had recently been blown out of the water, looked ready to bolt up on deck. I managed to appear nonchalant and smile reassuringly, not betraying my own desire to escape from the steel trap. The next day the guard was withdrawn; no doubt our Captain accepted their word that, as Officers and Gentlemen, they would cause no trouble. I must say here that, just as I saw no sectarian "spite" on board Londonderry, I saw no hatred of submarine crews. It was generally considered that we would not care to change places with the "poor devils" suffering our depth-charges. You stalk us, we stalk you. However there was enormous sympathy for the seamen in the merchant ships, the main target for attacks, and navy men would risk their own lives to care for survivors from those ships.
One more incident comes to mind, not significant in itself, but as a possible example of the paranormal (there is one more to come). When we were approaching Freetown, Sierra Leone I tripped over a hatch cover and took some skin off my shin. Not wishing to make a fuss, I did not report sick; this was a mistake for, in the tropical heat, the wound festered. It took the Sick Bay attendant much longer to clean it up, and left me with a scar visible for some years afterwards. Very trivial, in the context of a war. However, when I was next on leave, my father told me that, at about the time of the accident, my mother had woken him up in bed and said "Philip's hurt his leg". The sceptics can make of that what they will. I have no reason to believe that my parents would make up such a tale.

Pr-BR

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