大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Marie on behalf of Ron Walsh and has been added to the site with his permission. Ron fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

The 4th July started off like any other day, it was lovely and bright and I was with my chum on the forward mess deck. He was on the same gun (X) as myself. We had finished scrubbing out and the mess looked immaculate with all the hammocks stowed away in their nettings, just as they would be in Nelsons time. Up on deck there had apparently been a great deal of activity as rumours of aeroplanes being sighted heading towards Portland buzzed around the between the crew. Of course, down below, we only knew what people wanted to tell us until, from the tannoy there came that clamouring sound "Action Stations" and I shouted to my chum "Lets get up there then" and we sped out into the racket of gun- fire and loud bangs, and made for our gun station. As I stepped over the door combing there came a terrific explosion from behind and I was blown clean out of the door and across the canteen -flat on my stomach. I hauled myself upright and
went back into the mess where an appalling sight met me. From the back of the mess door I could see wooden mess tables on fire, their metal legs twisted into strange shapes. Hammocks were fiercely blazing, burning through the netting. With others I began to make my way down the port side below decks, towards the stem, and as I did so there was either a near miss from a bomb or a direct hit, I didn't know which. The ship appeared to lift out of the water, shudder, then drop back again with a thud. We all had got about half-way along the port side when from the engine room came another terrific explosion. The ships side blew out and from our position we could see the dockyard through the gaping hole. The deck -head was severely split as well so we had to turn back and make our way along the starboard side.

Halfway along there appeared a big shaft of sunlight shining down the ladder through the upper deck hatch from where the sound of voices shouting orders filtered through into the hell below. Then astern of me machine-gun bullets splattered down the hatch. As soon as it was clear to do so we got past and into the sickbay flat where a lot of the non-combatants had gathered including T125 ratings and RN writers, SBA's etc. The SBA's had begun to tend wounded men.

I made my way through the huddled mass of men and began to climb the iron bulkhead ladder to the shell handling room and then on up further to the X gun mounting platform. I had hesitated in the shell room because it was a small, enclosed space, pitch dark, and it was difficult to breathe with the heat and dust. There was some sunlight streaming down but that just lit up where it fell. The atmosphere was now full of floating particles shaken free by the explosions and I had to get into fresh air or choke. Finally I made it into the glare of that summer mornings sunshine and, as I expected, saw none of the gun crew where they would have been and surmised that they must be dead or wounded as they tried to close up to their gun. I clearly recall now my reaction as I stood there on that empty gun deck alone, after coming from the dark hell down below, with German dive bombers screaming over us at mast height fulfilling Lord Haw-Haw鈥檚 prophesy as they also machine gunned our upper deck. I must have cut an odd sight standing on that gun deck alone, about 15 feet above the upper deck, in my blue overalls, one shoe missing, face black with white stripes. Blast, I found out later, had rolled whole strips of skin up my face and the white stripes were what was underneath, the black being my original top layer of skin dirtied by blast. A bomb came flying past the upper structure of X gun mounting, through the upper deck steel plate and exploded in the sick bay among those poor guys seeking shelter. They would have known nothing about it when they died. Looking down onto the upper deck brought home to me then what this was all about. My mind took in huge swathes of information, the huge holes where bombs had crashed through steel decks, each gap with smoke and fire pouring out. Twisted metal was sculpted among shattered upper deck fittings. Amidst it all were the shattered and broken bodies of men I knew well, the victims of blast, flying metal, machine gun bullets, all lying on top of one another in heaps as more bombers roared over, taking their time to make sure the ship
and crew, obviously already dying, were well and truly smashed. I kept thinking to myself, why were we not closed up and ready for them. Why were we allowed to be taken by surprise? Had we been alert we could have given a very different account of ourselves. We had the most modem radar!

As the hell continued other boats, smaller ones like the tug 'Sundial' which was towing two barges at the time the enemy struck. One' Stuka' machine gunned the small group and dropped a stick of bombs, one of which went down the funnel of the tug and another alongside the barge that carried a sailor called Stan Whetlor who had been watching the terrible attack on Foylebank. Stan was one of four men picked up from the water by rescue boats seeking survivors from among other small boats among the mayhem.

Someone behind me was shouting orders in very nautical language and I peered over the mounting
boundary wall onto 'Y' gun mounting, the coconut splinter matting surrounding it ablaze and a couple of the gun crew were frantically running around as the gun captain barked orders in rapid succession. He was Leading Seaman (Badgie) Otley who was demanding his men bring him shells to ram up the breech of his gun. Looking up I saw a Ju87 (Stuka) coming straight down at us and Badgie wanted to deal with it in his service-like manner. "Give me some bloody ammo, " he screamed above the din. They called back that "There's only these practice shells in the ready racks. " "Well, what are you waiting for", he yelled, "give me those. "

By this time the main attack had eased off and we were listing to port with a huge cloud of thick black smoke rising into the sky from our stem. Someone on the upper deck was shouting, "Anyone on X gun?" I went to the side and looked over to see the First Lieutenant who asked me if anyone was alive up there. "Only me" I said. "Well get yourself down here and make your way forrard -we will be abandoning ship very shortly."

There was only one way for me to go and that was over the guard rail and down the iron ladder, welded to the bulkhead, to get to the upper deck 15 feet below. I soon discovered that only 5 feet of the ladder remained, the rest having been blown away, so I dropped the last few feet. Unluckily I landed on my back onto a kedge anchor which was secured into position on the deck and that is how I suffered my only bad injury in that mayhem.

I didn't have time to give it a second thought as so much was still happening. Making my way towards the bows I had reached amidships where the passageway between the engine room
bulkhead and the starboard guard rail had been reduced to about 8 feet in width and there I stopped for there was a pile of bodies in the way. "Push your way through them, or walk over them, they are all dead" said Petty Officer Sansome the Gunnery PO who was standing in the gangway just before the starboard 'pom pom' mounting. As I came up to him I saw there were four others waiting and he told me to "stay with them, Mantle hasn't finished yet. When he has we will need to get him down and over the side into one of those boats ".

Apparently a bomb had exploded near Leading Seaman Jack Mantle's gun and killed and injured his gun crew and he himself had a shattered left leg but had dragged himself up to the gun and prepared to engage the enemy. This one had dropped the bomb and was even now ready to attack again with machine guns having turned over the Mole and headed back towards us. Jack Mantle, although in great pain had the 5 barrels of his pom poms trained on the incoming enemy. The Leading Seaman was struggling to pull back the 'change-over' lever on top of the gun from 'Electrics' to 'Hand-Firing' . It had been slightly bent by blast and he was cursing as the range closed, then, in the last few seconds the enemy gunner and Mantle opened fire together. I was uncertain as to what happened in the next few seconds. Had the plane gone by or exploded into pieces? Mantle was slumped over his gun either due to his former wounds or due to the Stuka's machine- gun fire I can't say. What I am sure of is that Leading Seaman Mantle was still alive then.

Now it was a case of rescuing the survivors, many of them badly injured, and get them off the ship before it went down. We got Jack Mantle and his crew off the gun mounting and lowered them one by one into small boats which had been standing off during the action and dodging enemy machine-guns, but had now come alongside to our assistance. All their crews showed immense courage by being so near where the bombs, machineguns, and shrapnel could have got them. Some had been injured, some had boats sunk under them, there had been near misses, as we heard later.

Those of us left on Foylebank and still able, were split into two search parties and sent below, led by the 'Jimmy' . We found no one alive down there in the rapidly filling hull so we returned to the outside to further assist the work being carried out on the upper deck. Having done all we could we made our way wearily, up to the focsle and lowered ourselves over the bows onto a couple of large tenders which waited to take us to shore at Boscawen -part of the dockyard. There we were treated for minor cuts and bruises and the hospital cases were taken to Portland Hospital close by. A rudimentary role call during which our mail was brought to us showed that a majority of names were not being answered. It was not until that afternoon, about 2pm, several coaches arrived to take us to the Royal Naval Barracks at Portsmouth. Within 4 days we received new kit and were sent home on 14 days survivors leave.

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