大象传媒

Back to Alex

The trip back to Alex took about two days and luckily, was uneventful. The fo'c'sle however had been swaying from side to side in ever increasing angles and like any bit of metal that is bent too much, it eventually broke away completely and disappeared. So we arrived back in port minus about forty foot of our bow. The break was so clean, you would have thought it had been cut either by a knife or we'd run into a brick wall.

Anyway they put us into dry dock to get a temporary bow fitted, and this still left the ship about twenty-five foot short. They had to fill up the new bow section with scrap metal to make up for the lost weight. We eventually left Alexandria and proceeded at the great speed of ten knots through the Suez canal and Red Sea, to the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean en route to Hawaii, and eventually San Francisco to have a new permanent bow fitted. Incidentally, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour about two months after we left there.

As the Liverpool was the first British man of war to arrive on the West Coast of America they gave us a tremendous welcome. After far too short a time, the ship's company left the ship and hopped on two special trains en route for New York and Philadelphia. The journey took just over three days and eventually after a most enjoyable trip I arrived at my group in Philadelphia where I joined the battleship, HMS Resolution. They called her the Rolling Reso and I soon found out why. When we left port she started rolling like a log at the slightest ocean swell. Nothing of note happened during the four months I was on her and eventually we arrived in Devonport on the 14th October 1941.

After two months in barracks, I was sent to join the Sultan Hazaar. Yes, you heard right. This was a British destroyer, which had been built for Turkey during a pre-war agreement. All the notices around the engine room, the gauges and everything were in Turkish of which I only remember two. "Heri" was ahead and "Geri" was astern, which I suppose was most important for any engine room member to make sure you were going the right way.

Anyway, on our way to Turkey, we carried hundreds of Christmas parcels for the troops in Malta. There was a reporter on board who christened us HMS Santa Claus in his newspaper article. That is just by the way. Now we could only stay in Turkey for 24 hours, as they were a peaceful country of course and not in the war. After leaving the ship there, we travelled by bus to Haifa and then by train to Port Said. The train was so slow that we hopped off it and raided the jaffa orchards, filled our shirts with jaffa oranges and caught the train up again. Naughty naughty! There were flowers stuck all over the train as well - it looked very pretty. Anyway, eventually, we arrived down in Alexandria and I was drafted to the tribal class destroyer, HMS Sikh. The date was 21st February 1942. I was just 23 years old and unknown to me at the time, thank heavens, this was the start of thirteen months real warfare as far as I was concerned.

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