大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site Three Counties Action, on behalf of William Bain, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I was a stoker on HMS Marne there was five destroyers Milne, Muskiteer, Maratta and Matchless. We went to Scapa Flow and on to Russian convoys from 43 to 45, being down in the boiler room it was like being in a Sub you could hear depth charges going off.

Sadly we lost the Maratta and the signal was we have got the Sub oil, blood and guts on the water. Out of 200 only seventeen got picked up a chap who I new was lost.
We hated a slow convoy 11 knots but 12 knots were better. We had a wolf packe of subs waiting for us so we diverted, we got to Arkangel nothing lost.

On the last run we had four Subs following us back to Scapa we were all glad to finish up in the Med but that was just as bad following German convoys along southern France and firing on them and we captured a German landing craft. When we tried to tell them the German ships were sunk but they would not take it in. When we got home we met nobody. One of my mates had a hand of bananas and a little girl said to her Mum what! Are those? She told her and he gave her one, and you should have seen her little face.

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