大象传媒

33. The effect of this on hundreds of godowns and crowded huts of the poorer Indians living near the dock area can well be imagined, as the shock waves even registered on the seismograph at the meteorological station at Simla, one thousand miles away. The exact number of casualties was never known. Large numbers were taken to St. George鈥檚 Hospital. After the injured
came the dead. By the Sunday morning the hospital mortuary was packed to the ceiling with casualties. Hundred of bodies were never recovered.
When the 鈥楩ort Stikine鈥� had first exploded at 4.06 p.m. it caused such a tidal wave within the dock that the 鈥楯alapadma鈥� was lifted bodily from the water and turned at right angles, with her stem coming down across the quay and one of the dockside sheds. It had been only minutes earlier that we had disembarked from her and were only a very short distance away from the 鈥楩ort Stikine鈥�. Our survival I attribute to the fact that when the first explosion tore the ship apart, although we were not too far away, we were sheltered by the huge sheds which
absorbed the main impact of the blast. We were well experienced in dealing with explosions but nothing quite like this. We immediately returned to render such assistance as we could, helping the wounded by placing them between any two intact walls where they would be relatively safe from the continual bursts of exploding ammunition. We also assisted in the work of rescue, salvage and fighting the fires in the blazing warehouses and we helped in the moving of ships, some of which contained explosives, from the dock into the open sea. The explosions that day caused a total loss of 34,639 tons of shipping, all 27 ships in the docks were sunk, burnt out or badly damaged beyond repair. All the dock buildings were gaunt heaps of rubble, it taking three days to fully extinguish all the fires. Over the next six months a million tons of debris were moved to get the harbour working again.

34. Out of this grim tragedy came one amusing tale. Nearly a mile from the docks,
D. C. Motliwala, a retired Indian civil engineer, whose flat had been damaged by the flying
debris, was sitting on his third floor veranda. In a comer of the veranda, almost covered with rubble, he saw what appeared to be a lump of metal. On picking it up, he found that it
measured I5ins. x one and a half inches, weighed 28 lbs. and was one of the bars of gold from the welded tank in No.2 hold. For his honesty in returning it to the Authorities he received a reward of 999 rupees. It was the only one of the 124 bars ever recovered.
Part of a communiqu茅 issued by the Bombay Government on the evening of Friday, the 14th of April, 1944, read鈥� At about 4.00 p.m. today an accidental fire broke out on a ship in the docks and before it could be brought under control, it spread to some ammunition and caused two violent explosions. A number of casualties have unfortunately occurred and the injured are
being attended to in the hospitals.鈥� These words cloaked one of the major accidental disasters of the Second World War.
Eventually after some days, we were relieved and taken by truck once again to
HMIS 鈥楤raganza鈥� where we received counselling during the following days. This consisted of being awakened at 4.00 a.m. by the Bugler sounding Reveille, assembling on the Parade
Ground in full kit and with buttons highly polished at 5.00 a.m., and being subjected to foot drill for the next few hours under the command of a Petty Officer of the Royal Indian Navy, until, as can be imaged, the perspiration ran down our backs in torrents.
This form of counselling, I imagine, took the form of replacing in the mind, one horrible situation with another scene equally as horrendous or even worse.

35. On the 6th of June, 1944 while we were at HMIS 鈥楤raganza鈥� we heard over the radio of the
launching of Operation 鈥極verlord鈥� -the landing of Allied troops on the beaches of Normandy. D-Day had arrived, another 鈥楧er Tag鈥�.
By the 12th of June the Allies after a tremendous struggle held a beach-head 42 miles long.
Nurse Iris Ogilvie [no relation] of Unit No. 50 of the RAF Mobile Field Hospital was one of the first women to land on the Nomlandy beaches after D-Day.
As we had been stationed in India at the time of Operation 鈥極verlord鈥� and had not taken part in it, we were later dubbed as the D-Day Dodgers, to which insult some unknown Forces鈥�
humorist wrote a poem, sung to the tune of 鈥楲illi Marlene 鈥� of which I will quote only the last
verse:-

Look around the hillsides, Through the mist and rain, See the scattered crosses, Some that bear no name.
Heartbreak and toil and suffering gone, The lads beneath, they slumber on, They are the D-Day Dodgers, Who鈥檒l stay in Italy.

The Allied drive into Europe continued and by September the Allied Forces were fighting on Reich Territory.
All the rumours about our being drafted to the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal, to continue the fight against the Japanese came to nought when on the 2nd of October we left
India on the Troopship HMT 鈥楽trathnaver鈥�, a peace time luxury liner, built in the shipyards of Vickers Armstrongs Limited at Barrow-in-Furness and now converted to a troop ship. As we left I made a vow, which I have kept to this day, that never again would I eat a curried meal.

36. When we went aboard we were delighted to learn that we were not being allotted any
watch-keeping duties. This would mean uninterrupted sleep at night and would make a great change for us, as invariably when boarding any sea-going vessel we were always called upon for watch-keeping duties. The 24 hours of the day were divided into 5 watches of four hours each, starting, say, with the First Watch, 8.00 p.m. to midnight; then the Middle Watch, midnight to 4.00 a.m.; then the Morning Watch, 4.00 a.m. to 8.00 a.m.; the Forenoon Watch, 8.00 a.m. to noon; the Afternoon Watch, midday to 4.00 p.m.; followed by the Dog Watches of2 hours each, the First Dog Watch 4.00 p.m. to 6.00 p.m.; the Second Dog Watch,
6.00 p.m. to 8.00 p.m., the latter two enabling a rotation of the watches. I understand that these two watches were called Dog Watches because they were curtailed watches.
Of all the watches, I preferred keeping the Morning Watch as when on watch I must have seen the sun rising above the horizon on the hundreds of occasions, a red ball of fire, at the start of yet another day.
On the 鈥楽trathnaver鈥� we took advantage of slinging our hammocks on the upper deck and we slept in them every night until arriving at Gibraltar, where with the weather becoming a little colder, we retired gracefully to one of the suites below, enjoying a life of ease and luxury. When sleeping on deck we were awakened each morning by members of the Lascar crew, a very happy lot, washing the decks, -wartime or not, the peacetime routine continued for them.

37. We arrived at Liverpool on the 23rd and after disembarkation leave I was posted to the Shore Establishment HMS 鈥楻obertson鈥� at Sandwich in Kent.
Two months later in December, 1944 the German Forces counter -attacked in the Ardennes, in the so called Battle of the Bulge, and we were assigned to 902 LCS[M] Flotilla of Landing Craft. We left Tilbury bound for Antwerp in Belgium, the ship having difficulty in docking because of the thickness and volume of ice in the harbour. Antwerp lies on the River ScheIdt, 88 kilometres from the sea, the river pouring out into a vast estuary which is divided into two parts, -the East and the West ScheIdt -by a long peninsula, South Beveland, and the two islands, North Beveland and Walcheren. We were based initially at Wolphaartsdijk and then at Wemeldinge, both on the island of South Beveland, being given the task of night time patrolling the ScheIdt in our craft and being ordered to keep a vigilant lookout for any attack on the buildings on the shore banks by German explosive filled motor boats.
These operated in a 鈥淰鈥� formation of five or seven boats, one of which contained no explosives, but instead carried the radio operator, usually one of Hitler鈥檚 Youth Army, who controlled the other craft in their progress towards any opportune target. Our task was to identify and 鈥渢ake out鈥� this particular craft and in so doing abort the attack. But the problem in the half-light was always to correctly identify the operator鈥檚 craft, as with each attack his craft鈥檚 position in the 鈥淰鈥� altered. Sometimes we won, sometimes we lost.
In addition to our night time patrolling in our craft, we also formed a 24 hour guard on the lock gates at Wemeldinge which controlled the northern end of the canal through South Beveland. Any destruction by the Germans of this important waterway between the East and West ScheIdt would have meant a major setback to the Allies in winning WWll.

38. In April 1945 we returned from Holland to the United Kingdom, being drafted once again to
HMS 鈥楻obertson 鈥�.
World events at this time were moving very quickly. In that same month Franklin Delano Roosevelt died, with Harry S. Truman inheriting the Presidency of the United States; the Russian and American Forces linked up in Germany; Benito Mussolini, the Italian leader was killed by Italian partisans; the German Army in Italy surrendered and Adolf Hitler, the German leader, committed suicide. In the following month German Forces in North West Germany, Holland and Denmark surrendered and on the 8th of May the war in Europe ended. VE Day [Victory in Europe] being celebrated on the same day. In July with the populace of the United Kingdom wanting a change of Government, the Labour Party won the General Election, with Clement Richard Attlee becoming the Prime Minister.
Air attacks on Japan continued, and on the 6th of August an atomic bomb destroyed Hiroshima, with Nagasaki suffering a similar fate 3 days later. On the 14th of August Japan surrendered unconditionally with VJ Day [Victory in Japan] being celebrated the following day. So ended World War Two at last.
It had been at a tremendous cost, with an enormous loss of life and a great deal of suffering to
many throughout the world.
It had been in June, 1945 that while home on leave I had become ill with a recurring attack of malaria. I was sent, firstly to Morriston Hospital in Swansea, which had just been constructed and then to an auxiliary Military Hospital at Boncath in Pembrokeshire.

39. It was while I was at Boncath that I became friendly with my future wife, Mabel Irene Thomas, whose hometown was Barrow-in-Furness. Mabel鈥檚 father and also her maternal grandfather were originally from Neyland in Pembrokeshire, both having left there while in their teens due to lack of work, to gain employment in the ship building yards of Vickers Armstrongs Limited. Mabel was a member in the horticultural section of the Women鈥檚 Land Army and was based at Pentre Mansion, the estate being owned by the Saunders-Davies family. The mansion had been commandeered by the Military Authorities to be used as an Auxiliary Hospital and Convalescent Home for sick and wounded personnel. One half of the mansion was occupied by the family and their staff, and the other half by the Military.
The mansion was a beautiful place, with its glittering chandeliers hanging from the ceilings, old paintings of the family ancestors together with framed photographs of the present day family hung on the walls. Each of the rooms had colourful names, and on the landings stood suits of armour worn by the family ancestors during previous wars. We were dressed in vivid light blue suits, white shirts and red ties, and were cared for by VAD [Voluntary Aid Detachment] nurses under the command of a matron, while our discipline was taken care of by an Army Sergeant Major, with an Army Medical Officer attending every two weeks to carry out medical examinations. We were very careful in arranging to be on a week end pass on each occasion of his visits, thereby ensuring a further two weeks stay at the mansion. I made a point of always passing through one of the conservatories each morning on the way to carry out my ablutions at the same time as Mabel would be watering all the plants, and so our interest in one another increased with each day. We, as patients were not allowed to go into the gardens but were allowed to walk in the grounds at the front of the mansion. Mabel and I spent our evenings together walking along the neighbouring country lanes and in so doing our acquaintanceship
deepened.

40. Life was progressing blissfully, until one Friday evening, as we lined up outside Matron鈥檚 room for our usual passes, disaster struck. There was no answer to our persistent knocking on her door, and we were told by a passing nurse that Matron was away on leave. What were we to do? The Medical Officer would be along in the morning and we would all be available for him to carry out his medical examinations. We eventually decided that fate was against us and that there was nothing we could do, our little scam had come to an end.
Tomorrow arrived and so did the Medical Officer. He took one look at the majority of us, and without any hesitation, stamped our notes with the dreaded letters, RTU [Return to Unit], an event that we had spent so much time in carefully avoiding.
So I was discharged from the Hospital on the 11th of August, and with a heavy heart, was taken, with the others, to catch the train at the local railway station by the chauffeur in the family limousine, I having been posted to HMS 鈥榃olverstone鈥�, a Shore Establishment, again in Kent.
Unfortunately, Mabel and I could only meet very infrequently after that, only when I had weekend leave or sick leave, and it was at this point that we became engaged to be married.
In May, 1946 I was drafted to the Royal Marine Barracks at Plymouth prior to my being medically discharged from the Corps, suffering from malaria, [sustained in Burma], gun shot wounds to my head, neck and right shoulder [which I had sustained in Djijelli in Algeria in April 1943], cervical spondilosis, bilateral noise induced sensorinaural hearing loss, headaches and tinnitus. Of all the time that I served in the Royal Marine Corps, I spent about 50% of it afloat, the remainder on land, whereby I believe I upheld the motto of the Corps, PER MARE, PER TERRAM -BY SEA, BY LAND.

41. I kept in touch with my 鈥榦ppo鈥� Ben and also with Marine Glyn Griffiths for many years until their demise, but the other members of our initial squad I never saw again.
I was fitted out with a demob suit and a mackintosh, shirts, socks and a pair of shoes all neatly done up in a brown paper parcel tied with string.
I received a single journey railway voucher to Swansea, and the sum of 拢67 .19s. Od. [拢67.95] composed of a War Gratuity of 拢28.0s.0d., which was in respect of 56 months service at
10s.0d. [50 pence] per month and Post War Credits and Pay of 拢39. 19s.0d [拢39.95] being 1598 days at 6 old pence per day.
Along with my Campaign Medals I received a letter from the Minister of Pensions stating that he had been commanded by His Majesty the King to forward to me the King鈥檚 Badge, which was a silver lapel badge with the Royal Cypher surmounted with the words, For Loyal Service, and which was issued to members of the Armed Forces who were disabled as a result of war service.
It took me some time to settle down in civilian life. I had changed and no longer spoke the same language as previously. It was now interspersed with Arabic phrases, together with some 9fFrench, Italian. German and Dutch. Life now seemed rather slow, as we had lived on a knife edge for so long, seen dreadful sights, and lost many good friends, but with patience I soon got the hang of it again.
Mabel was granted a willing release from the Land Army on the 7th of January, 1947, and was given a single journey rail voucher to Barrow-in-Furness, returning to her home, which by then had been repaired and had become habitable once again after having been damaged in May 1941 during German air raids on the town.

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