大象传媒

My father spent most of his life working at sea, serving as Chief Engineer on merchant ships. For the first 2 years or so of the war he crisscrossed the Atlantic Ocean bringing much needed supplies to Britain. This was the time of the Battle of the Atlantic, so he witnessed the sinking of many other ships but was lucky to survive unharmed, apart from the stress of the 10 鈥� 14 days of very little sleep and constant alertness which each crossing caused.
Later my father鈥檚 ship was engaged as a supply ship for the Eight Army in Egypt. As a result of this, his ship became part of the attack force for the invasion of Sicily. The ship was loaded with a mixture of tanks, lorries, artillery and ammunition. 400 soldiers were also on board, sleeping on the deck. The destination was the Port of Syracuse. He was due to be the second to enter the port but the first ship hit a mine that the minesweepers must have missed and blew up. My father鈥檚 ship was successfully docked and started unloading. There were 2 memorable events in the few days the ship was in the dock.
My father鈥檚 ship was nearly fully unloaded, when a jeep and a lorry drew up alongside the ship and General Montgomery climbed out of the jeep came on board and told me father, who happened to be near the gangplank, that he had come to commandeer all the cigarettes on the ship as his troops were running short.
The second event occurred on the evening before they were due to sail back to Alexandria, when the Captain and my father decided to have a look at Syracuse town. As they walked through the damaged town they heard the sound of a Church Organ. They walked towards the sound, which was coming from a slightly damaged church. They went inside and found the place nearly full of a mixture of troops and Italian civilians. My father recognised some of the music as Bach and Handel along with popular hymn tunes. The audience sat and stood listening quietly and eventually the organist turned a hymn tune into what my father described as 鈥渁 blaze of glorious sound鈥�. After this the organist stood up and said that he had to go. He was an Army Captain.
The final part of my father鈥檚 war concerns a voyage to Russia with supplies for the Russian Army, the journey there, as far as my father was concerned, was relatively quiet and the reception by the Russians was overwhelming. Part of the reception was a celebratory dinner, where most of the Russians finished under the table.
The return trip wasn鈥檛 so good. North of Norway my father鈥檚 ship was torpedoed in the engine room, so that all the engine staff were killed. My father鈥檚 task in this situation was to start the lifeboat engines, but there was only one useable, the others being too badly damaged, so my father filled the boat with half the surviving crew and went over to the rescue ship, let off the crew and picked up 3 men from the rescued ship and went back for the rest of the crew, so all the survivors were successfully rescued.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.