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This story was submitted to the People's War site by Catherine Garvie, Learning Project Manager at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Scotland on behalf of the Greenock War Detectives project and has been added with their permission. The authors fully understand the site's terms and conditions.

What struck me as funny about the Free French sailors were their hats. They had a hat something like ours, but they had a daft pom pom on top, like a big red cherry, and we used to laugh at that. We thought they looked funny compared to our more manly sailors. Apart from that the uniform was similar to ours although it didn’t have as much of a flare in the trouser leg. Our sailors had quite a large flare in their trousers.

The Free French sailors were brave guys though and lost a lot of men when the Maille Breze went down. One of the boats torpedoes exploded on board and the ship sank. It was a terrible tragedy. I was in school at the time, Cartsburn in Ingleston Street, and we were out playing when the first explosion happened. The teachers were demented trying to get us all lined up to go to the shelters before they realised that we weren’t under attack. We were only schoolboys and didn’t know what had caused the explosion. From the school we could see right down on to the harbour and everyone was lined up along the wall watching the explosions. We saw the rescue boats go out to rescue the sailors but lots of the men couldn’t escape. The portholes were too small to escape from and they could only get their heads out. There were rows of guys hanging out of portholes just waiting to die. It was terrible.

There was a big loss of life and the sailors that died are commemorated with the Cross of Lorraine on Lyle Hill. I go up there sometimes to visit, especially when I’ve got relatives over from Canada and Australia — they like to see it.

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