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OUR JOUNEY HOME 1941

My husband, George Thomas, was sent by his company out to Turkey to work in August 1939, just before the outbreak of the war. Soon after the war broke out he asked me to travel out to Turkey to marry him. In November 1939 I set out with one of his work colleagues to join my future husband in Istanbul. I was 26 years old.

We travelled to Paris and then on the Simplon Orient Express from Paris to Istanbul. This was the days of the ‘phoney war’ so the journey was uneventful and took 3 days.

I arrived on 18 November 1939 and we were married straight away on that day. However because the ceremony was all in Turkish and I had not understood a word we had another ceremony at the British consulate on 20th November. We spent 5 days in Istanbul and then travelled to Karabuk to the steel works where my husband was a metallurgist.

We stayed in Turkey until April 1941, relatively unaffected by events in Europe. However we were worried as to whether Turkey would stay neutral and so in April 1941 we decided to begin the long journey home.
Our first part of the journey took us by train from Istanbul to the Turkish border. Our intention had been to go through Syria, but we were advised by the British Consul to get off the train at Adana on the Turkish border. He was concerned that George, being of military age, would be interned by the Syrians.

We stayed a few days in Adana and then travelled by train to Alexandretta in Turkey where we hoped we would be able to get on a ship to take us to Port Said in Egypt.

We stayed in Alexandretta for 3 weeks and had to be ready at short notice as the day the ship would leave was to be kept secret. The ship we were to travel on would be a troop ship which would face bombing off the Syrian coast.

After a 3 week wait we were told to go to the ship. There were 2 ships and we were to travel on the second one, the Raby Castle. There were guns all around it as it was a troop ship.

We left in the middle of the night. It was a dangerous journey with guns going off and the ship shaking about. In the middle of one night we faced Syrian bombers. The other ship was sunk but our own ship managed to shoot down one of the planes. We were lucky to arrive safely at Port Said where we were able to get a taxi to take us the 200 miles to Cairo. We had no money to pay the taxi, but were lucky to get money which had been sent out from the UK to a bank in Cairo.

We then faced a 3 week wait in Cairo before being told we would be able to get a ship from Alexandria. We then travelled to Durban. The sea journey was fairly uneventful, although we had to zig zag to avoid u-boats.

At Durban we then had to wait 2 days for another ship to take us to Cape Town and from there we were lucky to get on the Franconia, a very large troop ship that had to zig zag all the way to Trinidad. There we had to drop off a family whose child had contracted typhoid.

Once again we faced another wait of about 4 days during which time we were not allowed to leave the ship.

We finally left Trinidad in secret in the middle of the night and crossed the Atlantic to reach Madeira where we faced another 5 day wait. We were able to go ashore during the day, but had to be back by 6 pm as we did not know when we would be able to leave.

Eventually we were able to leave Madeira and finally travel back to the UK. The danger of u-boats was a continual worry and all the men had to take turns on the bridge as lookouts.

We were so pleased and relieved to get back into our own country, arriving at Liverpool on 10 August 1941.

It had taken me 3 days to travel out to Istanbul and 4 months to get home.

Mary Thomas

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