大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by CSV Lending Time Volunteer Pauline Bollen & Rob Illingworth of Kent County Council Shepway Library District on behalf of Mr Owen Proctor and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I WONDER, YES, I WONDER.

It is forty-four years since I offered to give King George VI a hand when he had a bit of trouble with the Germans and I think I will set this down as a reminder for my yarns to my grandchildren before the memory fades.

After repeated failures to enlist in the Royal Navy on a 鈥榳ar only鈥� basis in the Medical Branch of the Service, I was eventually invited by the Admiralty to enter as a Physical Training Instructor. This was on account of my two years training course at the Lucas-Tooth Gymnasium and when I reported at the Physical Training Centre via R.N.Barracks, Portsmouth, found several of my former gymnastic mates there. There were about thirty of us in the class but after three weeks of concentrated effort, four of us were thrown out: one was Tom who had been working on two undiagnosed broken toes and another, myself, who worked with badly strained biceps and triceps muscles of the right arm which made my heaving exercises look pretty poor. I had the option of leaving the Service but requested transfer to the Medical Branch. My four years as a N.C.O. of the Red Cross Platoon of my School Corps persuaded the Principal Medical Officer to accept me.

I then underwent three months training at the Naval Hospital Haslar and after a week or so on the wards following my qualifying as Sick Berth Attendant, spent four weeks on night duty. It was a punishing four weeks, as little sleep could be obtained by day owing to persistent air raids which meant that we turned out every time to carry patients to and from the shelters. During that September Hitler was bombing London and the South regularly and all staff and patients, except certain seriously ill and wounded, were transferred to the hospital cellars for the night. It was when I returned from a weekend leave following the ending of my night duty that I found my night billet was in the F Booster cellar. Patients and staff were packed on stretchers relatively cheek by jowl in complete contradiction to the adequate separation of patients as laid down in my instruction lectures. Furthermore, we sweated in the heat until about midnight after which all heating ceased and we awoke in the early morning wet and shivering.

I decided to report the conditions to the Wardmaster Lieutenant who was my Divisional Officer and after breakfast reported to his cabin (apart from wards all rooms were cabins). Someone ushered me into the cabin and when I was asked what I had to say, explained the reason for my presence. The Lieutenant was not pleased and growled 鈥淒on鈥檛 you think that the Naval Medical Officer of Health and I know more about health conditions than you do?鈥� 鈥淵es, Sir鈥�. He barked back 鈥淭hen why waste my time with your stupid complaints?鈥�. 鈥淏ecause neither you nor the N.M.O.H. slept in F cellar last night, Sir, but I did鈥�. My final reply seemed to upset him somewhat and I was fiercely instructed to remove myself. I subsequently learned that my Wardmaster Chief who passed me in the corridor on my way to my ward made a similar complaint to the Wardmaster Lieutenant and arrangements were altered. Nevertheless, my Chief was told to have me drafted forthwith and without draft leave.

The next day the draft came through for me to join the China Station but Chiefie was good to me and my duty watch was changed every Friday for the next three weeks to enable me to go on leave on the Saturday mornings, on the understanding that I would report back to Hospital within four hours of receiving a recall telegram.

Incidentally, five plus years later Chiefie who was a Pensioner Chief recalled in 1939 travelled with me, a 鈥榳ar time only鈥� Petty Officer, on the overnight train from Aberdeen to London on our way to be demobbed. He had about thirty years medical and surgical experience which I could never match with my paltry six years service. I had great respect for that man. About a year after I had left England I learned that some weeks after I sailed, the Staff Quarters at the hospital and the Royal Sailors鈥� Club in Queen Street, Pompey, were bombed on the same night. Air raid shelter requirements in the hospital had been eased and whether I had been watch aboard or ashore that night, I would have been in one of the two places bombed. Perhaps opening my mouth to the Wardmaster Lieutenant saved me from something.

On the afternoon of 18th November I humped my gear down to the hospital jetty where I met Tom who had been at the gymnasium with me and who was in the same draft. We chucked our gear into the hospital boat and steamed across to the Portsmouth Harbour jetty. As I stepped ashore, I bumped into Stanley, an old schoolmate whom I had not seen for seven years. He was a Sapper in the Royal Engineers and kindly grabbed my hammock and steaming bag whilst I struggled with my kitbag and suitcase to the R.N. transport for Portsmouth Town Station. The Naval draft eventually arrived at Waterloo, was transported by lorry to Euston and we boarded a crowded overnight train for Liverpool. On arrival we were given a breakfast somewhere after which we were marched on that damp morning through grey misty streets to the docks. As we marched, with an awareness of the threat of a German invasion of Britain, my heart was in my boots. My family and fianc茅e were in danger and I felt that I was running away in the face of the enemy. In the words of a Chief Gunner鈥檚 Mate instructing his funeral party my features must have 鈥渁ssumed an expression of deep gloom鈥�. At length we arrived at Gladstone Dock and had the first glimpse of our ship 鈥� she was about 6,000 tons, built in Belfast about 1900, painted grey, work-stained and with the tall smoke stack typical of the Blue Funnel Line鈥檚 Eastern fleet. This was to be our home for the next fifty-eight days. The total Naval draft consisted of about one hundred men and we were joined by a similar number of Royal Artillery personnel. Some of them were ultimately lost in the fall of Singapore. Tom and I served together for the next sixteen months.

That night we stood on the upper deck bemoaning our fate and watching the display of anti-aircraft fire accompanied by the flash and crump of bombs across the city. As one of the bombers droned overhead, Tom looked skywards and said as he pointed to the forward hatch cover 鈥淒rop one in there mate, and then we can go home鈥�. We sailed at 1300 hours the following afternoon. It was a dismal afternoon except for a shaft of sun striking the top of the Royal Liver Building. The ship threaded her way through a graveyard of sunken ships and lonely masts out into Liverpool Bay. At some time we were overflown by an R.A.F. Flying Boat 鈥� probably from the squadron where another schoolmate, Charles, flew as a Pilot officer. He never saw his daughter!

For the next few days our ship battled her way through the Western Ocean in convoy. Tom, ex-Merchant Navy, has only seen worse seas once and that was when he was a member of the Queen Mary鈥檚 crew on her maiden voyage to New York. Our destroyer escorts ploughed into the seas and the most we saw of them was their foremasts. One afternoon a party of us were securing a lifeboat which was swinging outboard from its davits and as I grabbed the gunwhale, the bearing-out spar slipped and she swung away with me. I nearly stepped over the side.

In the heads there was a total of six washbowls for two hundred men鈥檚 ablutions. We had to change into shorts for this, because we had to stand in six inches of the cold Atlantic, which entered the hatchways with every pitch of the ship. How the old stagers managed to stand shaving, rolling with the ship amongst weaving men and use cutthroat razors constantly amazed me. I fully expected to see the odd nose flying through the air but it never did.

During the first four days or so out of twelve ratings in our mess eight of them were seasick. The lucky four of us had three breakfasts each until the blighters recovered 鈥� except for a particularly bad morning when I was cook of the mess on my own and after staggering along the upper deck from the galley with my hands full, I was rapidly assisted down the companionway by a sudden roll of the ship and the porridge on the steps, to end up at the bottom sitting in porridge with a lap full of porridge, hot tea over my legs and fried egg and bacon in my hair. I only said two words but with great emphasis. No one was surprised. During those early days, as soon as I woke up, I left my hammock for the upper deck to experience the joy of fresh air, because darkened ship conditions amongst so many suffering from mal de mer made the early morning atmosphere below deck indescribable.

The convoy steamed without lights through the blackest of nights and one morning we noticed that an oil tanker, which normally kept station with us, had disappeared. She had foundered overnight in the rough seas with the loss of all twenty-six hands. Eventually, the bad weather was left behind us; our ship broke away from the convoy and proceeded independently into the Southern Ocean. Three members of the convoy were torpedoed after we broke contact. It was the second worst month for shipping losses in the war.

The change in the weather lifted our spirits and we were able to indulge in controlled sunbathing. The Royal Marine Corporal organised physical exercises and decided that there should be a tug-of -war contest between the Navy and the Army. As he only had two Marines on the ship, he had to make do with a large proportion of sailors for his team, but he was quite insistent that the Navy was to beat the Royal Artillery and contemplated no other result. His skilled training made sure that they did. That was the only occasion that I have seen the art of the periodical locking of the rope across the thigh by a tug-of-war team.

Tom and I were busy treating minor ailments under the loose control of a doctor whose official position seemed somewhat obscure. Early in December the skipper developed a bleeding duodenal ulcer and was confined to his bunk. Then we admitted a young seaman to Sick Bay. He was a schizophrenic. A few days later, a young A.B. apparently suffering with an acute appendicitis was a further admission but as the doctor considered his instrument kit and other facilities were inadequate for operative purposes, we constantly applied ice packs to the patient鈥檚 abdomen until we reached port. I secretly approved of the doctor鈥檚 decision, because, after seeing him take a blind swipe with a scalpel at the carbuncle on the Artillery Sergeant鈥檚 buttock, I felt that the possibility of seeing my first burial at sea was unlikely.

On the 16th.December I caught my first glimpse of Table Mountain as we hit the Cape rollers. We entered port in the early evening. South Africa was the first foreign country I had ever visited just as it was for my father forty years before. He entered Cape Town as a Private of the Buffs but stayed for two years until the Boer War ended before he too moved to the Far East.

We made out the necessary hospital admission documents and after loading our patients into an ambulance Tom and I secured a lift in the vehicle into town. 鈥淐ome on, Proc: I鈥檒l show you Cape Town鈥�. Well, I recall walking along one or two streets before entering the Palace Hotel where the iced Castle Lager after days of rusty water at sea was like nectar. I did not see much of Cape Town. The next morning after our water tanks were filled, we sailed.

After leaving the Cape we heard that a German raider was operating in the Indian Ocean. However the next few days were uneventful and we steamed into Durban Harbour on the evening of 21st December 鈥� the day after my 25th birthday. The following morning all Services personnel were mustered on the upper deck to be informed that Christmas Leave ashore had been granted, we would all be guests of South African families who would shortly collect us and we had one hour to dress and pack our shore going gear. About an hour later a stream of about fifty cars appeared on the jetty and we all trooped down the gangway with our cases. Within a few minutes Tom and I had been swept into a blue Plymouth by three young ladies and followed by another car containing the R.M.Corporal and his two Marines we left for our particular destination. After a journey of about forty miles out of Durban, we entered the little village of Stanger decorated with bunting and a banner across the street proclaiming 鈥榃ELCOME TO THE NAVY鈥� 鈥� all five of us.

The two of us were taken to the girls鈥� home. Their father, a Scot, was the local sugar mill manager. The Marines were close by in the house of the Chief Accountant of the Durban Electricity Supply Company. We were away from dawn and sunset action stations and the German raider for five whole days.

In the evening we were driven for a special treat to the village hall to see the bioscope 鈥� Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in 鈥楾op Hat鈥�. The film was so worn that it seemed to have been filmed throughout in a cloudburst and the sound was scratchy but the audience loved it.

I particularly remember the Christmas Eve, because our hosts鈥� three daughters took us to a village dance. After I had blundered through two or three dances with Joan, she gave up and selected someone who could dance. Before she went, Joan indicated a man of about forty sitting alone at one of the tables. 鈥淗e is a Boer鈥� she whispered 鈥� 鈥淢ost of them are pro-German. If he talks to you, be careful what you say鈥�. Whilst Joan was dancing, the Boer stepped over to my table. 鈥淕ood evening. Can I buy you a drink?鈥� I thanked him for his offer and he sat down for a chat. 鈥淚 saw the ship you arrived in. She would not be much good in a fight would she?鈥�. I thought to myself 鈥� 鈥淧roctor, you had better start thinking quickly鈥�. My companion was perfectly right, because the ship only carried an A.A. Lewis Gun amidships and a light gun aft. Moreover, she was not exactly a greyhound of the sea, although not quite as bad as one saturnine and hypercritical Petty Officer had put it 鈥渢op speed forty miles a bloody fortnight鈥�. I looked at my questioner with an assumed look of pleasure. 鈥淭hat is how she looked to you? I鈥檓 glad of that鈥�. There was a look of puzzlement on the Boer鈥檚 face, until I asked him whether he had heard of our 鈥楺鈥� ships pf the Great War. These fast moving ships with concealed armament had effectively dealt with submarines and surface raiders in that war. I told him that ours was just such a vessel and our concealed weaponry would give any German raider a lesson once and for all. As Joan returned to our table, he excused himself and left.

On Christmas morning we visited our host friends and after sundown partook of a massive Christmas Dinner. We had a wonderful holiday but all good things come to an end and on the morning of the 27th we were driven to the docks and reported back on board 鈥� what a contrast!

We sailed at about four bells in the afternoon and as dusk approached, I was surprised to see our navigation lights had been switched on together with the lights on the bridge. I asked one of the Officers what was going on, because the ship鈥檚 tall smoke stack revealed us as a British ship and could not be mistaken for a neutral. 鈥淒o not worry鈥� replied the Officer. 鈥淲e are being used as a decoy. An armed merchant cruiser is following just over the horizon. We are after the German raider鈥�. I told him of my conversation with the Boer in Stanger. He looked at me for a moment and then said, 鈥滻 think you had better keep quiet鈥�. I did. On the few occasions that I recall those days, I wonder whether or not opening my mouth to the Boer affected possible sea history. I wonder, yes, I wonder.

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