大象传媒

Within weeks of surviving the sinking of H.M.S. Lawford, I found myself in his Norwegian Majesty鈥檚 Ship Tunsberg Castle engaged on escorting convoys to and fro across the Atlantic. She was a castle-class corvette manned mainly by Norwegian s with just half a dozen or so British signals personnel including myself and two other coders working in three watches.
By this stage of the war, the Battle of the Atlantic had been largely won by the combined efforts of the Royal Navy and RAF Coastal Command, so the three trans-Atlantic trips which I experienced were largely uneventful. I could happily have spent the rest of the war in Tunsberg Castle although there are more comfortable places to be than a corvette in rough weather in the Atlantic.
It was not to be.
In November 1944 our ship was ordered to join a convoy forming in Loch Ewe on the west coast of Scotland bound for Murmansk in North Russia. We were to be part of a flotilla of four small ships -- our castle-class corvette, a flower-class corvette Eglantine and tow minesweeping trawlers -- all Norwegian manned. We were to be part of the convoy escort until we reached the Kola Inlet where our flotilla detached and made for Polyarno, a Soviet base 10 miles from Murmansk. The plan was for us to remain based at Polyarno for the next six months to carry out operations under Soviet command.
Our first mission as a Norwegian flotilla was to visit a place called Batsfjord on the northern coast of Norway. We were to take food supplies to the local population who were believed to be staving, and to generally 鈥渟how the flag鈥�. We were also required to engage any enemy shipping we might encounter on the way. There was a slight snag, however. Norway happened to be occupied by the enemy at the time. According to the official history of Norway鈥檚 part in the war, the operation 鈥渨as considered hazardous鈥�.
At about 10.00 a.m. on the morning of December 12 鈥� during those few hours of twilight that pass for daylight in those latitudes at that time of year 鈥� we were called to action stations. My action station was the auxiliary wireless transmitter housed in the ship鈥檚 carpenter鈥檚 tiny cabin/workshop. It was accessed by one steel door in the after superstructure leading off the quarterdeck. My post was shared with a Norwegian telegraphist, Thorvald (Tony) Andersen. We hadn鈥檛 been closed up at action stations long before we felt the vibration as the ship increased speed. Almost immediately afterwards, there was a loud explosion; the steel deck came up beneath us and we were both flung sprawling.
The steel door that provided our only means of escape was jammed tight shut. It was due largely to the efforts of Tony Andersen, who was older and much stringer than I was, that we were eventually able to force the door open just sufficiently for us to get through. It remains the most frightening experience of my life.
It is remarkable that our only casualties were the five men of the depth charge party who had been on the quarterdeck. Eglantine was able to come alongside and take off the survivors before Tunsberg Castle slipped beneath the icy waters. With the loss of our ship, the operation was abandoned and we returned to Polyarno in the Eglantine. After some days ashore, we Brits took passage back to UK in a homeward bound=d British frigate. I arrived home on survivor鈥檚 leave early on Christmas morning.

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