大象传媒

This story is by Jack Grisdale

In November 1942 I finished my training and set off from Portsmouth to Scapa Flow where I boarded HMS Scylla.

The first thing we did was an exercise with HMS Nelson in the Pentland Firth. With it being rough HMS Nelson decided to return (and I was rather ill with sea sickness at this time).
After that, we refuelled and reprovisioned with amunition, food and water.

We set off into the North Sea, we didn't know where we were going as it was a secret. Our ship was the flagship with Rear Admiral Burnett in charge. We had to rendezvous with a convoy which had already sailed and would probably be in action by the time we arrived - which did actually happen. We were, in fact, a little late getting there, which resulted in us going to action stations before we caught up with them. We had the aircraft carrier Avenger (a converted cargo ship) and support craft with us. I had to do lookout duties in the crows nest which was 75 feet up the mast. The sea was so rough at times that I would be looking at the top of the waves - At 70 feet above the deck!

We took up our positions in the convoy and were constantly attacked by incoming German aircraft. In fact, we avoided quite a few torpedoes dropped by the aircraft. The attack lasted five full days with very little respite which meant that we had to sleep on the guns at times. I remember the first time I loaded the gun, I had a shell in my arms ready to load when the alarm sounded to announce a shell was to be fired - it was fired and the noise it made was horrendous, shocking me for several seconds before I recovered and calmed down enough to carry on.

We took what was left of the convoy to Mermansk Ffiord where we left it to return home.

On the way back we had to round up some stragglers. I remember being in the crows nest and seeing something on the horizon which I thought was a ship. Eventually, after two hours chase, a ship was found - an oil tanker. I was commended for my eyesight for this. We took control of the British ship and escorted it back, calling at Iceland for a few hours ashore.

Our next trip was to the Med. We took Admiral Cunnungham, who was commanding the fleet there. Crossing the bay I think we must have taken a short cut too short because the lookout spotted a plane coming towards us which turned out to be a German bomber which had a range of 1000 miles fully loaded. The plane didn't do anything but turned round and went back, however, a few hours later we were attacked by quite a number of these aircraft and a stick of bombs was dropped across our bow which resulted in us taking evasive action, although we did engage the enemy at the same time with the possibility of one of them being being shot down by us.

An event that occured on our way back from the Med. was reported in the Sheffield Star.
"Ordinary seaman Jack Grisdale, son of Mrs E Grisdale .... who ewas a loading number on one of the port guns of HMS Scylla when she sank a big German merchantman blockade runner on New Year's Day, was recently in Sheffield.
"OS Grisdale who had his 19th birthday a few days ago signed up for the navy in July 1942 and spent last Christmas in Algiers."

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