大象传媒

This story has been written to the 大象传媒 People's War site by CSV Storygatherer Coralie, on behalf of Vice Admiral Sir Louis Le Bailly. The story has been added to the site with his permission and Sir Louis fully understands the terms and conditions of the site.

The following is the text of a sermon I have been asked to give this Remembrance Sunday 鈥� November 13th 2005.

We should recall today that the names carved in stone on our memorial were people like us. They lived, laughed, loved, wept, and no doubt sinned just as we do. We can鈥檛 bring them back; but let me tell you of a few I knew, like them, their names now on other memorials.

I had four close friends when I was young. The little scrum half in our rugger team died in his Spitfire in the blue skies over England in 1940.

My Dartmouth chum, whose supreme contempt for the brutal naval college regime carried me through four dreadful years, was Captain of four tankers filled with petrol which Churchill intended to send on a one-way mission into Calais and Boulogne if the invasion had started. Later he was picked up from a Carley Float with a dying youngster in his arms, only to lose his life a few weeks later on the way to Tobruk in HMAS Parramatta.

In the Thirties, with a cousin, I used to buy a 拢5 ticket at Victoria Station to take us in a wooden seated train to climb mountains in Germany and Austria. We thought how preferable Germany was with the friendly Hitler Youth and how much better the clean streets than the slums and squalor of Jarrow or Liverpool. My cousin landed with his Tank Squadron on D-day and fought right through till the Rhine crossing in March 1945, when a sniper killed him.

My fourth friend gave up his scholarship to Oxford, and because I was in the Navy, joined up as a sailor and rose to command a motor gunboat. One night in a fierce battle off the Dutch Coast he was mortally wounded. His initials are on the wrought iron gates of Bisley cemetery where he lies on the Cotswolds hillside he loved so much. His senior officer wrote an obituary in The Times, I quote a couple of sentences.

鈥淭om won men鈥檚 hearts by his sheer unselfish goodness. His gaiety, his sweet temper which no ups and downs of fate could ruffle were the expression of a well ordered mind swept by clean breezes鈥� He early realised that it isn鈥檛 life that counts, but courage you bring to it鈥�.

Those four, like me, had been educated till we went to war with our eyes fairly well open. Of the 42 of us who joined Dartmouth in 1929 only 20 saw 1945.

HMS Hood in which I started the war sank later with 1415 of her company of 1418 and I had known most of them. Some well. My next ship鈥檚 company, were mostly conscripted 鈥楬ostilities Only鈥� HO鈥檚 as they were called, or had been pulled back from retirement 鈥�.

Stoker Storey was a Durham miner who hewed coal in those low tunnels stretching out under the North Sea: his legs were short and his arms were long and, due to the poverty in which he had been raised, his face was scarred and pock-marked. To be candid he didn鈥檛 have much between the ears, so we were reluctant to put him in charge of machinery. But my chief stoker was very wise and made Storey 鈥淜ing of the tea boat鈥� 鈥� that bucket of hot, sweet brown liquid essential to the life of those who work in the hot steamy climate of an engine or boiler room. And so every hour, the hatch would fly open and Storey would descend the vertical ladder without spilling a drop: his rugged face, breaking into a heavenly grin as he took the bucket and tin cup round to each of us for our swig. As night fell after a day of intensive bombing, he must have reached the bottom of the ladder as the torpedo came in. His name is on the Jarrow war memorial.

Stoker Petty Officer West had been recalled after 22 years service from a job as postman 鈥�.. He was so staunch, so full of fun that I gave him the youngest and greenest stokers for his boiler room crew. When they were off watch their area of responsibility to repair damage or fight fires covered my cabin, and because I dossed down on a camp bed by the engine room hatch at sea, and West was twice my age, I made him rest his weary limbs on my bunk. After a vicious 鈥榥ear miss鈥� bomb I heard he was wounded. He was lying on the deck being bandaged by a sick berth attendant. When I told them to lift him onto my bunk, he opened his eyes, 鈥淚鈥檝e picked up a little puncture, sir. I told them not to鈥�. And there, on my bunk, later that night, he died. His name is on the Chatham memorial.

Leading Stoker Davies was from the Rhondda and like many Welshmen had a lovely voice. He had been wounded earlier and when I visited him in hospital I met the Methodist Minister, a man of the same calibre as we have had in St Tudy, Tom Darlington, John Young, and Brian Parkman. Davies implored us to get him back to the ship 鈥渢o my mates, and anyway it鈥檚 my home鈥� and this we did instead of allowing him to be sent to some safer shorejob.

As our ship sank there was some confusion in the water, many were burnt or hurt on the bilge keel as they slid down the side after the order 鈥淎bandon Ship鈥�. We wore our lifebelts, old inner tubes, below our arms giving us acute prickly heat and if blown up down below, the escape manholes were too small to let us through; while in the water enough 鈥檖uff鈥� for some was a bit difficult to find! Our task force was doing a mile every two minutes; our admiral was in the water with us and it would take several minutes for his second-in-command to decide whether to weaken the escort by sending a destroyer to rescue us. We had no lights and would be difficult to find.

The night was warm like the sea; and there was a thick scum of oil fuel. After an hour, when those a bit panicky or wounded had been put on the few Carley Floats, Davies鈥� voice came over the water, singing 鈥淎bide with me鈥�. Several joined in 鈥� others listened.
Heaven鈥檚 morning breaks and earth鈥檚 vain shadows flee;
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

The last two lines seemed rather appropriate as we paddled around 50 miles from the shore with our ship on the seabed 600 feet below us.

When Davies finished there was a silence broken by a few sobs and cries of 鈥楳other鈥� and into the silence steamed two destroyers with heavily shaded lights and megaphone shouts of 鈥榟urry up鈥�. Stopped they would be targets. Davies and I were helped up the jumping net together, but the final effort as he reached the deck was too much for his already wounded body, and his great heart gave out. With several others he was buried at sea that night as we sped back to Alexandria.

History tells us that Churchill never fully realised the SHEER EVIL of the human stud farm that Hitler envisaged as a prelude to German conquest of Europe and the world.

I have often pondered how it was that the Storeys and the Wests and the Davies and the hundreds of other soldiers, sailors and airmen who had left school at 14, and who had endured the appalling poverty of the Thirties, stayed so cheerful and so full of fortitude at finding themselves living in acute discomfort on a fuggy messdeck, or in the Burma jungle, in what the NHS would certainly call a LIFE THREATENING situation.

What was it that drove a youngster of 17 to climb the mast and re-rig our aerials with aircraft firing phosphorus-tipped bullets giving awful wounds? How did old West rally his boy crew when the down-blast from a near-miss bomb extinguished the flames under the boilers with the imminent danger of a massive explosion? What was it that caused Davies to sing 鈥淎bide with me鈥� just as we were all running out of hope?

They gave their all that we might live in freedom and liberty, but as long as there is hunger, poverty, disease, corruption, hatred, warfare, lies, spin and despair, the debt we owe them is not being repaid. The freedom and liberty they entailed to us is being betrayed. They gave their lives and they were so young, most of them.

Surely those names on our war memorial are speaking to us in the words of the poet:

Here dead lie we because we did not choose
To live and shame the land from which we sprung.
Life, to be sure is nothing much to lose:
But young men think it is, and we were young.
_________________________________________________

Vice Admiral Sir Louis Le Bailly (aged 89)

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