大象传媒

This story has been added to The People's War website by Liz Andrew of the Lancshomeguard on behalf of Captain Paddy Vincent and added to the site with his permission.

I was a fourteen year old schoolboy when the War started. I was a boarder at a school called Christ's Hospital in Sussex. In 1942, when I was seventeen, I took a cadetship with the Royal Navy and went to Dartmouth where we were supposed to spend two terms before we went to sea. But within two weeks Dartmouth was attacked by a squadron of enemy bombers. The shipyard and the College were both hit and one of the ships in the harbour was sunk. Fortunately we 35 cadets were on the river in boats and had a grandstand view.

We were evacuated from Dartmouth and sent to Eaton Hall near Chester and thence to sea. At first I was posted to a World War One battleship called the Ramillies - it was fairly uncomfortable. She had been in the Indian Ocean but was called home to join the bombardment at D Day. Then, to my amazement, I was sent to a more modern battleship - the HMS Duke of York. I spent three months on her during which D Day took place. We were at sea off the coast of Northern Norway, marking the Tirpitz and ensuring she did not break out and interfere with the Invasion. But it was frustrating to know that the Second Front was going on and we were not there.

Then I joined a brand new cruiser called Swiftsure as a midshipman. My Action station was a gunnery station. I was the director of a battery of six four inch guns - the high angle anti aircraft guns which we used either in bombardments or to protect our Aircraft carriers.

We spent some time in home waters including a trip off North Russia and some time in the Mediterranean. From there we were supposed to be coming home for two weeks leave so we all dashed ashore
to stock up with bananas. The whole ship ended up being crammed with bananas - there were hands of bananas in every cabin and cranny. But as we approached Plymouth, where we were supposed to have disembarked for our leave, we were given fresh orders. We were to refuel and proceed to Scapa Flow. Everyone said, "But what about our bananas" but as we steamed north toward Russia we just had to leave a trail of bananas for many miles behind. Trips to the Arctic in rough seas were never fun - for me the worst parts of the War were probably the periods of tedium spent in rough seas and difficult conditions.

We spent a short time in Burma, then in December 1944 we were the first ship to make contact with the US fleet. We joined up with them in the Caroline Islands to sort out communications etc between their fleet and ours and then we steamed south to join the Pacific Fleet in Sydney.

Then we headed for Okinawa where we spent long periods at sea. We became very familiar with the Kamikaze attacks. They were unusual! I don't recall being frightened - once committed to action, you're too busy doing your job to feel miserable.

I remember meeting up with four friends - one of them, Joseph Warren, was in Air Defence at the top of the superstructure on the Indomitable, one of the Aircraft carriers of the Pacific Fleet. It was a very vulnerable place to be.

I had a grandstand view as a kamikaze pilot strafed the Indomitable and then crashed into the Indefatigable. Joseph was covered with blood and his petty officer died in his arms. He was brought down and flopped onto the deck. His shipmates tore off his shirt to find big shrapnel wounds in his arms and legs and a small round bullet hole in his chest. He recovered to to pursue a full career in the Navy and eventually became a Commander and was awarded the OBE - all the time with the bullet still lodged inside him!

One of the most striking things about our war was that we were all kids - the average age of our ship's company was only 21 - half of us were aged just eighteen, nineteen and twenty - and the Kamikaze pilots were just the same. We found out later that the Kamikaze pilots were the youngest in the Japanese Air Force. They were most expendable - to be a kamikaze would have been the waste of an experienced pilot.

They were very difficult to stop - they would dive fast and change course unexpectedly. Altogether there were about 2000 kamikaze attacks and about a fifth of them got through - 402 of our ships were hit and half of these were sunk or damaged beyond use. I remember being with a US liaison officer when a Kamikaze plane crashed into the deck of one of our carriers. "There goes your first carrier," he said. But I replied, " Don't be so sure about that," because unlike the American carriers our decks were armoured and for us in the Royal Navy, it was just a case of "Sweepers, Man your brooms," and then business as usual.

We continued to spend long periods off Okinawa and on VE Day we were anchored off Okinawa. The following day we went in to bombad one of the islands. It was called Myako Jima. But we had just started the bombardment when the carriers contacted us to say they were being attacked by kamikazes. From then on we had to stay close to them.

We had been in Okinawa for four months when we picked up a new carrier, the HMS Implacable and headed for the Japanese island of Truk, a pretty island with a lovely coral atoll. Our targets were the Japanese gun positions on the hillside. Our first salvo went quite well but our second and subsequent salvoes went all over the place. Something had gone wrong with the control.

So we were given local control and we carried on the bombardment with Four inch guns. I was the distribution officer. We had been prepared for air attack so our shells were loaded with proximity fuses - ie proximity to aircraft would have set them off. But our first salvo from the four inch guns just ended up amongst the waving palm trees. Their movement had triggered the shells and the fallen trees then just succeeded in camouflaging the Japanese positions!

We later found out that our ARL plotting table, a sort of manual computer into which we fed information like our enemy's course, our own course, wind speed etc, had malfunctioned. We found the reason to be a cogwheel and a split pin rolling around underneath it - the pin had slowly been shaken and worked its way loose after a year's hard sailing - so, for want of a split pin, the battle was very nearly lost!

After the Battle at Truk we replenished our stocks and then the War was brought to a sudden end by the Dropping of the Atom bomb.

We were the first ship into Hong Kong. We came ashore in a landing party and came under fire from a Japanese sniper - but one of our Petty Officers was able to shoot him. One of the River signals that came through about that time was from our Fleet Commander. He told us that it was possible we might still encounter individual Kamikazes and that, in the event of an attack, they were to be shot down, " in a friendly manner!"

In Hong Kong we had the happy job of releasing all the prisoners from Stanley Prison. We stayed in Hong Kong until the Army turned up and we remained in the Pacific until late 1946 when we managed to get home.

I had started the War as a schoolboy - but by the time I left Swiftsure I was a Lieutenant and had served all over the world. I was awarded the 1939 -45 Star, the Burma Star, The Atlantic Star, the Italy Star, the War Medal and the Russian Convoy medal but my abiding memory of the War is of Comradeship. I stayed in the Navy for the next thirty six years.

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