大象传媒

This story was entered onto the peoples war website by John Warner on behalf of Bert Vickery, the author who fully understands and accepts the sites terms and conditions.

Now Mary and I were married in a lovely village called Mawnan Smith on the 14th. April 1944, in a church in the village called St Michaels. Mrs Rogers was on the organ and she said to my sister Frances, sister-in-law Frances, 鈥淭hat boy is too good looking to be a man, so that gives you some idea of what Mrs Rogers thought of me, if nobody else did! We couldn鈥檛 get married in the old church because this lovely old church, which overlooks the Helford River, was confiscated by the Army and also a large part of the cliffs the fields, surrounding it. In the meantime Mary had been moved from Market Harborough to a large gentries鈥� house called Rodborne House, 3 miles from Malmesbury, in Wiltshire. E K Coles took the house over, they were large wireless works called Ekco. That was located in Malmesbury, and they had eighteen girls who were directed to war work in this factory, and they were billeted in Rodborne House, and Mary, my wife, cooked for them girls. The Governor of the factory had his wife and his name was Mr Lipman, we think he was Polish, but as an electrical engineer he invented something to do with the radar, and he was honoured by the King.

At this time I was a senior ordinary seaman on a heavy lifting, specially designed, three and a half thousand ton ship that was built for the second front in France. In the meantime we carried coal from Blyth, South Shields, down to power stations on The Thames, which brings me to the time when I took Mary to London for the first time, and I found the date, the 12th. June 1944, and that evening the inevitable happened. On the first night the V1 flying bombs, nicknamed by us Cockneys, the Doodlebugs, came down two streets from my Mums鈥� house, in Appleby Street. The noise when it came hurtling down I鈥檓 sure will be embedded in Mary鈥檚鈥� memory for as long as she lives, so I put her straight on the train back to Rodborne in Wiltshire and I went back to my ship which was moored at the Thurrock Power Station on the Thames. My fears were not yet over, as along with three other shipmates we were sitting on the taffrail, on the stern of our ship, called The Empire Sedley, when one of those flying bombs came over, the engine stopped, and the siren, attached to the bomb, was screeching something terrible. We were petrified; we watched it as it fell in the Thames, and exploded as soon as the tip touched the water. I remember that, the blast sent the four of us having a cup of tea over the rail into the Thames twenty foot below. When we hauled ourselves up we heard the poor old skipper, on that lovely red sailed lugger, I think he was carrying grain, cursing the Germans for all he was worth. The blast had blown his mast, and his sail, completely off, but as far as we could see that was the only damage done by that bomb, not counting seamen soaked to the skin, smelling terrible, because if you fell in The Thames up at Thurrock you didn鈥檛 come out smelling of roses, I鈥檒l tell you!

Well we sailed on the next tide and dropped anchor in the Thames Estuary, waiting for the convoy to assemble for the next day, but most of the ships鈥� company were on deck watching those V1 flying bombs coming over all night, and you can bet your life had all those flying bombs got through to London that we saw coming up the Thames Estuary then London would have been like Hiroshima when the atom bomb was dropped on the city later in the war.

I had one more trip on another refrigerated ship strangely enough called MV, Motor Vessel Cornwall. Now that must be a coincidence because I鈥檝e now come to live in Cornwall with my lovely Cornish wife, the daughter of a farmer, who I鈥檝e heard say was the hardest working farmer in the West Country. He used to farm at Nansidwell, which is just outside Mawnan Smith. Mary is in her 84th. Year and I鈥檓 in my 80th. Year we鈥檝e stuck one another for sixty-one years. I must say it鈥檚 not been easy to record all these wartime experiences, but they鈥檙e all true, they all come form the heart that鈥檚 had a triple by-pass.

This is Bert Vickery EDH, that means Efficient Deck Hand, signing off and just saying 鈥淕od Bless You All鈥� and I hope you enjoyed my little experiences of the wartime.

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