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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Roger Marsh of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of Philip E. Marshall, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

A Slice of Autobiography (1939 to 1946) — Part 4

By
Philip E. Marshall
Rockingham also suffered through having a very low status. No "secret" signals were decoded on board; Shore-base had to inform us of anything likely to affect a target vessel cruising up and down the Firth of Forth, i.e., not much. Then, one day, we were sent on an errand to Aberdeen. Setting off back, late in the evening, we returned to our familiar waters, with the Forth Bridge in sight, bright and early next morning. We flashed the recognition signal. After a pause the reply came from the shore "Stop immediately or we will open fire!" Consternation on our Bridge. After a flurry of signals it emerged that we had used the wrong recognition letters, and, as Signals Officer, I was once again in danger of reprimand. However, I was able to prove that I had followed instructions to the letter, sending a signal man ashore one hour before sailing, to get the latest information. It was Aberdeen Signal Station, not used to Rockingham, which had forgotten to tell us that all signal codes would be changed at midnight.

That was not “T”’s fault, but I think the collision was, even though the engine room received some share of the blame, We had to go alongside a tanker to refuel. I was on the foc'sle , with the Petty Officer and team, and I should explain that in this old destroyer the anchor lay on a sloping bed in the bows; it was held by two "stoppers" which could be released quickly to drop the anchor over the side, encouraged by a push with the foot, if necessary. We were not using the anchor, of course, to tie up alongside the tanker. The foc'sle hands were standing in the bows, with heaving lines; the Petty Officer was by the steam winch, which could haul the mooring lines, or, by moving a lever, be switched over to the anchor chain; and I was standing by the port guard-rail. It occurred to me that we were coming in rather close, and rather fast; there was just time to shout a warning, "Stand clear of that anchor chain"; then we were scraping along the Tanker's side. As the fluke of the anchor caught on some obstacle, it reared up like a bucking bronco, breaking one of the two stoppers, and then settled back on deck with a mighty clang.

The danger was that it might drop over the side, taking some lengths of chain with it, and maybe one or two members of the crew. Meanwhile, as I peered anxiously forward, I was unaware that we had started to go astern, and the wing bridge of the other ship, passing over the top of our deck, was about to hit me in the back. This time the vigilant Petty Officer shouted a warning, so that I was able to swing round, and then retreat, arms outstretched, apparently fending off the tanker with my bare hands. On its lookout position, face to face with me, stood a seaman. "What the fg 'ell do you think you're doing?" he enquired cheerfully. I feel sure that "T" would have had the presence of mind to reprimand him for his language to an Officer, but the only riposte I could think of, on the spur of the moment, was, "Don't blame me, chum," and with that we drifted apart. Some time later, with the anchor secured, we approached again, very, very cautiously. As "T" said afterwards, "Not much damage done, Sub?"

In June, I was given a new posting. In September, Rockingham was sunk. I heard some details later, from an officer who was in the area, though not on board. Apparently, one of the ill-fated Barracudas sent a message that it was ditching in the area a few miles away, towards Aberdeen. "T" did not hesitate nor, apparently, did he consult the Shore-base. Full speed ahead he went, to rescue the air crew, and he headed the ship right across one of our own minefields. Quite soon a mine blew the bows off Rockingham. I was not given a full list of casualties , but was told that my faithful Petty Officer had suffered a broken back. If the incident had happened a few weeks earlier, I would have been standing near him, in the bows, searching for the aircraft dinghy. Lucky me, as usual. It is ironic that my closest brushes with serious injury, or death, during the war, were on the non-combatant Rockingham. The ship, according to the records, stayed afloat for some hours, and an attempt was made to tow it to port, but in the end it sank. I never heard what happened to Lieutenant "T" R.N.V.R. I hope he was not given the command of another small ship; he was a "big ship" man at heart, and would have been happier with fellow officers above and below him, all impeccably obeying orders, whilst strictly observing Royal Naval etiquette and ceremony.

H.M.S. INMAN
During my short leave between ships, the Normandy Invasion began. My new posting, in June 1944, was to H.M.S. Inman, a Captain class frigate. Like Whimbrel, it was purpose built for convoy escort duties, but this time built in the U.S.A., as another item for Lend Lease. It must have been just newly commissioned, but I have no recollection of suffering the Tobermory "working-up" again. Perhaps I was a replacement for a Tobermory "failure"!

We were the leader of B one escort group, and, to prove it, the Captain had a bull-dog, with a bone in its mouth, painted on the funnel. Surely this was a sign of increasing confidence in these small ships that the Battle of the Atlantic was nearly won. Luckily we had not heard of Hitler's new electro-boats, able to travel faster under the water than we could on the surface, and had only just been warned about acoustic torpedoes, which home in on the noise of a ship's propellers, and were aimed at the escorts rather than the merchant ships. In my ignorance of these and other matters, I enjoyed being back on board a fighting ship, as a Sub-lieutenant of a full seven months experience, even if that had been on an old target ship. As a non-specialist Deck Officer, I could be allocated a variety of duties so, once again, I was in charge of the foc'sle , especially for entering and leaving harbour; in charge of the forward 3-inch gun; in charge of a safe, full of code books, to be issued at the correct time, when a signal came from the shore; and Second Officer of the Watch, on the Bridge, paired with the First Lieutenant. Normally that duty was four hours on, eight hours off, but if the situation was tense, it could be changed to "four hours on, four off', so that sleeping time was a maximum three and a half hours, even if the alarm bells did not interrupt.

Our early convoys were across the Atlantic, from Londonderry, Belfast, or Liverpool, to St. John's Newfoundland. Once again we were not involved in any large-scale, heroic actions. but I do remember many small incidents, not always involving Germans, and not necessarily in chronological order. One concerns a point I have made before; the discomfort, even nervousness, that many commanding officers felt when they exchanged the wide-open sea for the cramped manoeuvring of tying up safely in harbour. We were going alongside in Liverpool, soon after my joining, when the Captain lost his temper. Forgetting the loudhailer was switched on, he came out with (I can only remember the milder part) "Sub-Lieutenant Marshall, why the bloody hell can't you get me a 'spring' out? What's the bloody Foc'sle Party doing, Sub.?" The curses boomed through the ship, and across the dockyard. I was startled, and somewhat hurt, having left my experienced Petty Officer to get out the forward lines, including the "spring", while I attended to the lines amidships. The Petty Officer's team had so far failed to land a heaving line on the jetty, but we had just succeeded. So we rushed our line forward to the Petty Officer, and a few seconds later the "spring" was ashore, enabling the Captain to edge the ship safely up to the jetty. I could feel an instant wave of sympathy from "my" team, but it was necessary to keep a straight face, see the ship "all fast", and dismiss the Foc'sle Party, before going down to the Wardroom for a stiff gin (yes, I had taken to drink by this time). But now comes the surprise, and the comparison with Captain "T". My new Captain tracked me down in the Wardroom, and said, "Sorry about that, Sub," a very handsome apology from the most senior officer to the most junior. We were on excellent terms from then on.

I was more successful in a later task, when the Captain suspected that a submarine might be shadowing the convoy. As we steamed towards the position, I was sent up to the Crow's Nest, where my keen eyesight (in those days!) and better knowledge of what we were looking for, would supplement the watch being kept by the seaman on duty. I was able to report a tiny black dot on the horizon, which was replaced by a flurry of white, and then disappeared. The Captain was satisfied that I had seen a U-boat submerging; it would now stay down for some time, so that the convoy could alter course unobserved. We did not waste time chasing, for the U-boat would also be busy altering course and speed under water. The time was coming, though, when there would be enough escorts to leave a couple of ships "sitting" on top of the submarine until it was forced to surface for lack of air. Or, better still, aircraft to take the submarine more by surprise than we could.

During the attack by carrier planes on the Tirpitz, in August 1944, we saw nothing of the main fleet, being part of the distant antisubmarine screen, but we spent some time sitting at "action stations", which in my case was the 3-inch gun on the foc'sle. It was pleasant summer weather off Norway, though cloudy. At daybreak one morning, two planes dived out of the clouds ahead. I think the pilots were as startled as we were, for they were planes from one of the carriers, officially on patrol, but unofficially playing "Chase me Charlie". Both sides acted very correctly. The planes went into line astern, and flew slowly between the ships; we swung the gun around and "covered" the leading plane until he had gone past. We did not load, but he was not to know that, and must have felt nervous, for he would not have been the first plane shot down by "friendly" fire. The gunners on merchant ships were notoriously trigger happy. This incident ended with a friendly wave.

There were moments of excitement, too, when I was on duty as Second Officer of the Watch. The convoy ships sailed straight ahead, but all escorts zigzagged, and this was not carried out to a precise pattern, or the idea of confusing the enemy would have been nullified. Consequently, during the hours of darkness, it was possible for one escort to edge over to port, and another to edge over to starboard. A gap of a couple of miles could quickly close. One pitch black night there was a cry of "ship ahead", and only by going "hard a' port", did we miss the stern of a Canadian escort colleague. We were lucky, also, that the other ship was not towing a "foxer", a device for distracting acoustic torpedoes, as that might have entangled our propellers. The Captain rushed up from his cabin below, but exonerated us, as we seemed to be in correct position in relation to the convoy; we reckoned that the Canadian ship had strayed. There seemed to be little point in having an argument by signal lamp, on a dark night in the middle of the Atlantic; so we headed for a safe spot, until order could be restored at day-break. If we had collided, there would have been a small fuss, but nothing like the one over another collision, carefully concealed from the public until long after the war. The Queen Mary was sailing, independently, at high speed across the Atlantic, with two cruisers for company. All three were zigzagging. One night the Curacao zigzagged across the bows of the Queen , was rammed amidships, and sent to the bottom, with heavy loss of life. Such incidents should not have happened after radar sets were developed. Curacao probably had one, and Inman certainly did, but we were reminded that no instruments can entirely eliminate the need for sharp eyes and quick reactions at sea. No doubt our radar team were closely questioned as to why we, on the Bridge, had been given no warning.

Even in the sophisticated twentieth century, it was easy to understand how myths and superstitions have influences sea-farers. I saw, just once, "St. Elmo's Fire", when the masts and rigging of the ship were illuminated by flickering lights, and the ship sailed along like a set-piece in Blackpool Illuminations. Sober scientists tell us that the effect is produced by a combination of damp conditions and static electricity, but it must have driven many an early sailor to his knees in prayer. I saw, at different times, in different latitudes, whales and porpoises, flying fish above the waves, phosphorescent fish and seaweed just below, pack-ice, and icebergs, and millions of stars, for our ships sailed without lights. There are some wonders of the deep not seen by cruise-line passengers.

One incident may be compared with my "injured leg" telepathy, though this time there could have been a straight-forward explanation. While our group was on patrol, not convoy duty, we received a signal that a Sunderland Flying Boat had crashed near the west coast of Ireland, and we were to search for survivors. Our Captain stationed the ships in line abreast, and headed for the Irish Mainland. As darkness fell, he decided that it would be imprudent to venture inshore, among shoals and rocks, and he had just ordered an about-turn when a light, a flare, was spotted, two or three miles ahead. Caution still prevailed, so we stood off, noted the position, and, at dawn, steamed slowly in, towards the spot, allowing for the drift of wind and tide. Once more, Inman won the "sharp eyes" contest, and we picked up a single airman from a small dinghy. But when we congratulated him on burning the flare at just the right moment, he told us that he had no flares, or other means of attracting attention. Of course, it could have been lit by other survivors, but they should have been in the vicinity, and we found no-one else, although we searched.

In the winter of 1944 our Captain was promoted, and another Commanding Officer came aboard. He took over a well-run ship and, though not as experienced or as charismatic as the departed one, he soon fitted in well. Before long, he decided to put me in charge of the Asdic (submarine detection) team, though I had not taken the specialist course. By now, also, there had been a change in German tactics. Having failed to turn back the invasion fleet in June, Admiral Donitz decided to withdraw most U-boats from mid-Atlantic and harass our shipping in coastal waters. At one time this would have been suicidal, but the U-boats were being fitted with "schnorkels", breathing tubes to take in air and let out exhaust gases. The U-boats could thus stay under water most of the time, and the schnorkels were very difficult to detect by radar. In addition, the electro-boats, silent and fast, with high underwater endurance, were expected to be ready soon.

From our point of view, it was difficult, in shallow waters, to differentiate between submarines, wrecks on the sea-bed, tide-rips, and even shoals of fish. I was soon in trouble for classifying a contact as "submarine" Other ships in the group hurried over to search, but found nothing; having received a gentle reprimand himself, the Captain passed it on to me, with the order that no Asdic contact was to be classified as higher than "possible submarine", unless there was indisputable backup evidence, (“such as a torpedo hitting us!”, I thought ... but wisely kept my thoughts to myself). The mistake, if it was a mistake, was attributed to youthful enthusiasm, and I remained in charge of the Asdic team.

Pr-BR

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