大象传媒

Submitted by Stafford Library on behalf of John Bowen.

I was living in Ramsgate as a child and saw the beginning of the war. We had troops billeted with us. I remember ships being sunk and the Dunbar Castle being mined. I was in the school playground. It was taking educational materials and racehorses to South Africa. Books and pencils were washed up on the beach. I watched the evacuation of Dunkirk and saw the trawlers and boats coming into Ramsgate. My mother wanted to buy cigarettes for the troops returning, the local shop gave their supply freely to the troops.

In June 1940 a lot of children from Ramsgate were evacuated to Stafford. I remember walking up from the station. British troops were billeted in the technical college. With my two brothers we were billeted in Rickerscote. We eventually stayed with Mr & Mrs. Hughes, 29 Stockton Lane and we went to church regularly. Mrs. Hughes鈥� sister used to visit on a Sunday and we would stand for all the National Anthems. Mr & Mrs. Hughes were very good to us and looked after us well. Our school took over the old St. Mary鈥檚 School and we had some of the same teachers that we had in Ramsgate.

At the end of term in July it was time for me to leave school and so I went to Welling in Kent where my parents and other children had moved to. I got a job as a junior clerk in an Advertising Agency in Piccadilly. Part of my job was to visit newspaper offices around Fleet Street to collect copies of the advertisements we had placed with them. Using the buses and tubes I soon got to know my way around.

Within a few days the Battle of Britain began and I saw many dogfights between Spitfires and Hurricanes and the German planes as I was out and about. On Saturday 7th September I visited some friends in Kingsbury and went straight from work. During the four to five hours I stayed there we had a long air raid warning but heard no sounds of planes or bombs. However when I got back to Charing Cross Station there was chaos and thousands of people were trying to get trains to get home. The Blitz had started and London Docks area was ablaze. I had to wait ages to get a train but could only get to Eltham about 5 miles from home. As the evening moved on the raid started again and bombs were falling. We passed the fires at the docks. It seemed mile after mile of burning warehouses and homes were ablaze. Walking from Eltham I met a postman going the same way. Several times we threw ourselves against a wall as bombs were exploding. Arriving home I found the house in ruins and eventually found my father in an air raid shelter. He was a fireman and had had to leave the station due to unexploded bombs. The raid lasted till about 5am. I left the shelter to go to find the rest of the family at a rest centre. Returning to the house was impossible except to get food. We slept as best we could in the public air raid shelter nearby. Air raids continued during the week and some days I managed to get to work.

On Wednesday Mother saw some welfare people and arranged a rail warrant for the five of us to go to Stafford on Saturday 14th September. We sent a telegram to the people where our other sister had been billeted in Derrington asking if they could find us accommodation. Getting off the bus in Derrington at 8.30 just as the sirens sounded again we found that the telegram had not arrived. However three families took us in 鈥� Mr & Mrs. Ash, Mr & Mrs. Dodd and Mr & Mrs. Mould. There we all stayed until March 1945. Dad later transferred to Stafford Fire Brigade and joined us.

The following Wednesday I began work at English Electric Co. and three weeks later the place was bombed and machine gunned by a lone German bomber. Having dodged bombs in London and Stafford I began to think they were after me so I decided to go to sea in the Merchant Navy, which had always been my ambition. Training on the TS Vindicatrix at Sharpness was an ordeal for some lads but I enjoyed the experience and eventually began my service on July 18th 1942, aged 16.

My first sight of the Empire Trader was in dock at Newport and I thought how big she was and what an easy target she would be. We were bound for New Zealand, a voyage which would take 74 days and many adventures followed.

The Empire Trader was an old passenger 鈥� cargo ship formerly known as the Tanui, owned by Shaw Saville & Albion Co. The captain was Mr. W. B. S. Starr who had earlier been captured by the Graf Spee which met her end in the Battle of the River Plate. The boatswain was a man called Langhelt who was captured with Captain Starr but was transferred to the prison ship Altmark which was cornered in a fiord in Norway by HMS Cossack and the prisoners released. Both these men returned to sea in the Empire Trader.

We sailed in convoy from Belfast and on the day after I heard explosions from depth charges dropped by the Royal Navy escort destroyers. Saturday 1st August the convoy was attacked by U-boats and we were at action stations from 9.30 till about 2am. Depth charges, torpedoes and guns were banging all the time and I think 5 ships were sunk. Fortunately we sailed into fog. Eventually we arrived in America and sailed through the Cape Cod Canal and Long Island Sound to New York which was still ablaze with lights at night 鈥� no black out here. We sailed to Newport News, Virginia to take on coal for the rest of our voyage. Sailing on we entered the Caribbean and anchored off Key West on the day I celebrated my 17th birthday (no alcohol)! We then left to go to Guantanamo Bay for convoy to Panama. Panama Canal was heavily fortified and every man on the ship had an armed guard with him. After going through the Canal we sailed for Auckland catching sight of the Galapagos Islands on the way. We sailed alone without convoy but a notice on the mess room bulkhead warned us to keep a good look out for Japanese raiders 鈥� the end of the message said YOUR SAFETY DEPENDS ON YOUR VIGILANCE.

The voyage across the Pacific lasted 25 days and was uneventful except that one night the lookout man set the crow鈥檚 nest on fire. With the blessing of the First Officer who examined me on my ability to 鈥渂ox the compass鈥� I was allowed to take the wheel for two hours and learn to steer a ship and keep a steady course.

During our stay in New Zealand we visited Auckland, Wellington (twice), Dunedin and Port Chalmers. One abiding memory is that as soon as we had docked in Auckland I went to a kiosk on the dockside and bought a half-pound block of Cadburys chocolate for 9 old pence.

Sailing back towards Panama we were told from bulletins from the ship鈥檚 radio that the Battle of El Alamein had been successful. We made our way through the Canal again and arrived in New York where we spent five days over Christmas. On Christmas night we went to the Seamen鈥檚 Mission for a concert broadcast by Benny Goodman and his band with Peggy Lee. On Boxing night, again at the Mission, Gracie Fields was the main artiste. We arrived back in Avonmouth and paid off on January 15th 1943 and went home on leave to the surprise of the family who had no idea where I was. The date of January 15th is significant as I learned much later that the Empire Trader was torpedoed in February whilst on her next voyage.

My next trip across the Atlantic was on the Empire Mist and after one or two alerts for U-boats we arrived in Montreal to deliver cargo. From there our next port was Newark, New Jersey where we loaded one of the biggest cargoes of timber ever to leave the States. We thought it was to build huts, etc for American troops preparing for D Day the following year. The timber was piled 12 feet high on deck as well as below. We also had two railway engines on deck. There followed a safe voyage to Avonmouth where we celebrated in the Merchant Navy club the Italian surrender September 9th 1943.

My next trip was a bit different. With other crews we were passengers on the Mauritania to Canada 鈥� not a luxury liner then but a troopship taking Canadian troops and civilians home. We had been signed on the Fort Joseph which was being built to replace some of the lost ships. The ship was built in a port called Sorell on the St. Lawrence River. It had been completed in seven weeks and the paint was still wet when we went aboard. Time was short as the St. Lawrence usually freezes from October to May. We had a very rough trip home due to Atlantic gales. Three of the lifeboats were damaged by mountainous waves. One was in such a dangerous state that it had to be cut adrift. The ship also suffered a sixty-foot split along the side, luckily above the water line, and to cap it all the steering gear failed about 300 miles off Ireland and we had to leave the convoy and heave to for repairs. Completed after a few hours we went full steam ahead until an escort destroyer drew near and signalled a message 鈥淎dvise read Revelations Chapter 9 verse 2.鈥� Naval captains often used the Bible as coded signal. A New Testament was found and the verse read 鈥淎nd he opened the bottomless pit and there arose smoke from the pit as the smoke of a great furnace and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke.鈥� In other words stop giving our position away to an enemy sub or aircraft.

We arrived in Scotland and got home in time for Christmas. The ship was in dry dock for repair for months. Early in January 1944 I joined the SS SAMSTEEL in Manchester. Originally an American liberty ship she had been transferred to the Union Castle Line as a replacement for one of their lost vessels. All ships transferred to Britain from USA had the prefix SAM. After loading at several British ports we joined a convoy bound for North Africa, arriving off Algiers on 9th March to be met by a raid by German bombers. Instructions were to close watertight doors and stay inside. The noise of the bombs and guns was terrific and I resolved there and then to volunteer for gun crew so as to be on deck in any future action. I was trained by the navy gunners that we carried called DEMS in the use of 12 pounders, 4 inch guns and Oerlikon cannon guns. We used these in several air attacks. Our main role was to take equipment and men from North Africa to Italy and we were back and forth to Naples, Taranto and Brindisi and also Alexandria. This lasted till July when we went to Bone to be loaded with ballast and a layer of railway sleepers to form a roadway for tanks and transport carried in the holds.

All the work had been done as preparation for the invasion of Southern France which took place on August 14th & 15th. We carried American troops and their equipment to a bay near St. Tropez and they went ashore in landing craft. We encountered some enemy shellfire from shore batteries and a couple of air attacks but suffered no casualties. Following the invasion we returned to Naples and ferried troops and supplies to Marseilles and Toulon. Whilst in Marseilles I and two mates were invited to the village of Les Aygalads where a victory celebration was being held. Festivities went on till 3am. As we made our way back to the ship we were arrested by some gendarmes on suspicion of being German deserters but in my schoolboy French I explained who we were and so were released.

Return once more to Taranto we were loaded once again. This time with troops of the Ghurkha regiment and their British artillerymen. We left in a small convoy of four merchant ships, four destroyers and two cruisers. After two days a destroyer came alongside and fired over a message saying, 鈥淭hese are your orders for the operation鈥�. We were going on another invasion 鈥� this time to Greece. The orders were for the army to get the guns on deck and fight our way in. If we could not land, fight our way back out. Luckily the Germans had been cleared from Salonika and we landed everything safely.

One or two more trips between Algiers and Italy followed then we made our way to the UK via Gibraltar and Casablanca, arriving home in mid February. My longest trip away 鈥� 12陆 months. After a long leave I joined the SS MATAROA in Liverpool. This was a troopship and we were taking Canadian service personnel and some war brides to Halifax. The total trip was only 7 weeks and I paid off in Scotland and arrived home on May 7th just in time to celebrate VE day and celebrate we did!

I carried on going to sea for a further two years and at the age of 21 I settled for a life ashore, thankful that I and my family had come through the war in its many phases uninjured and ready for a new life with Stafford as my home town.

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