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The Second World War began for me as a fifteen-year-old lad just after Dunkirk, when I joined the ‘LDV’ Local Defence Volunteers.

I then became Private P. W. Croft, No 3 Section, 15 Platoon, D Company, 12th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment. Our Platoon was based in a sports pavilion at the top end of Woodcock Lane in Kenton, Middlesex. We were first issued with a thin denim type uniform and a pike and were drilled by First World War soldiers in the evenings after work. Later that year we were issued with proper khaki military uniforms, a greatcoat, boots, leather gaiters, gas masks, tin hat, a heavy American Springfield rifle, bayonet and sixty rounds of live ammunition, which we kept at home in case the ‘Balloon went up’ — German paratrooper landings. We were trained in all types of weaponry with the Army at weekends and became known as the Home Guard, not at all like the rather derisive force as portrayed to us today.

I left the Home Guard in March 1943 to join the Royal Navy, doing ten weeks intensive training at H M S Ganges, the Navy’s Training establishment in Harwich, as an ordinary seaman, before being sent to my depot in Chatham, ready for sea duty. We were trained in navigation, gunnery and they made sure everyone could swim. If anyone couldn’t swim they were thrown in the water, until they could! They had a very large mast there (about 75 feet high) and before the training session finished everyone had to climb up onto the first ‘elbow’ of the mast and go down the other side. Some people including myself went right up to the button at the top and putting the lightning conductor between our knees you could stand up and see all around the harbour at Harwich and out to sea. Life was a lottery there with the regulating officer’s power to draft you to any branch of the service. I was put onto minesweepers, so off to Canada we went.

We were issued with a rail travel warrant to Liverpool and embarked on the Louis Pasteur. This huge liner was taken from the French and used as a troop ship crossing the Atlantic on solo runs, relying on its speed and zigzag course to out-fox the u-boats. On board were RAF personnel going across to be trained as pilots and aircrews. Also, prisoners of war from Rommel’s Africa Corps still in their desert uniforms, caged in on the third deck. Naval personnel then became ‘prisoners of war sten gun party’, guarding them on their daily hour of exercise on the upper deck.

We docked at Halifax, Nova Scotia, disembarked and made our way by rail to the Toronto Ship Yards to commission a brand new Algerine Class Fleet Minesweeper, built in Toronto under the American ‘lease and lend’ programme, called HMS Gozo, pennant no: J287. After sea trials and working in Bermuda, we proceeded to Newfoundland and on the 19th December we sailed as an escort ship for convoy HX271 across the Atlantic to Londonderry. HMS Gozo became part of the 6th Minesweeping Flotilla seeing service as convoy escorts across the Atlantic and North Sea before its main task of minesweeping ready for the Normandy landings.

On the 5th June 1944 the 6th Flotilla with others, sailed out of the Solent in the late evening to sweep and clear Channel no 5 ready for the British landing on Gold Beach on the 6th. The 6th Flotilla did much minesweeping in the English Channel and the North Sea area to clear the minefields to open up the Ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam ready for the army to liberate them. We had our area to sweep and each flotilla had its own method of sweeping. Most of the sweeps were for contact mines but during the Normandy landings there were also a lot of magnetic mines dropped by aircraft at night. A different sweep was needed to clear them; we used an electrical pulse in the water to set these off. It was a battle of wits really because once the naval people had conquered the problem of one type of mine, another one would be produced which would require a new method of finding and destroying. In the very shallow waters of Normandy they had what was called an oyster mine. In fact the water was so shallow most of the minesweepers couldn’t even get in there. They solved this by going back to Portsmouth and taking on board a big tube, like a drain pipe and a couple of boxes of hand grenades. They then proceeded to push the hand grenades through the tube so that they dropped into the water, exploded and set off the oyster mines.

There was a friendly fire incident off Normandy after the D Day landings. The ports of Le Harve and Cherbourg were still occupied by the Germans and our flotilla (the 6th) and the 5th Flotilla were sweeping in that area. There was a mix up in communications with the naval people and the air-force. They thought the flotilla that was sweeping the area in front of Le Harve were German ships escaping and they sent the air-force in. Many ships of the 5th Flotilla were hit in this incident. We actually went to the rescue of these ships, taking people on board. I always remember that I spent the whole of the first dog watch, the time between 4 and 6 doing nothing else but stitching up dead bodies in hammocks for burial next morning. However, at reunions I still speak to some of the survivors that I pulled out of the water that day.

On the 8th April 1945, the 6th Flotilla sailed from Falmouth to join the East Indies Fleet based at Colombo, Ceylon. On the 2nd July the Flotilla sailed from Tricomolee to carry out Operation Collie. A minesweeping air and surface bombardment of the Car Nicobar islands, in preparation for the landings on the Malaysian mainland. In the event this did not take place, thanks to the dropping of the A bombs.

3rd September 1945 — led by the 6th Flotilla sweeping ahead, the cruiser HMS Cleopatra carrying Admiral Power, Commander in Chief, British Pacific Fleet and other ships entered the anchorage of Singapore. Thus the 6th Minesweeping Flotilla became the very first ships of the Royal Navy to enter the harbour of Singapore since the disastrous evacuation in 1942.

As we came into harbour a lot of small boats came out with people, cheering and trying to sell us pineapples and other fruit. One of the most sought after things in Singapore was a bar of soap; it was like gold dust to them. But we could tell that they had been ill treated by the Japanese, because many people had limbs missing. They had been using Japanese currency but that was abandoned overnight, so the only way you could buy anything was by barter. We took soap and chocolate and bartered in the shops for goods in return.

We evacuated some of the ex POWs, most of whom were Australian. We had no room on board our ship to take them to sea, but while we were along side the jetty we took some on board and gave them food and comfort. They were in such a bad state medically there wasn’t a lot we could do for them. It wasn’t until the hospital ships started to arrive that they could be treated. All the Japanese soldiers were rounded up and put to work clearing the streets and given other menial jobs.

My ship was still out in Singapore when we were transported on a tank landing ship to England and eventually I wound up in Chatham. There were so many people waiting to be de-mobbed that they put me on an old World War I Monitor. It had been used at D Day for bombardment but had lain in the dock at Chatham. I had a nice little number! I was the Master of Arms, Mess Mate. I was there for some weeks and saw our ship HMS Gozo arrive back from the Far East before being de-mobbed. They gave us a very basic medical, a suit of clothes and away you went back to Civie Street.

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