大象传媒

David Forbes, Donemana

Service in the Royal Navy during WW2

Following early primary schooling at Earlsgift I was sent to 1st Derry Presbyterian for my finishing school and cycled the 11 miles there and back every day. Many a day I spent down at the docks and this extra curricular activity fired my imagination about ships and life at sea. Following my years at 1st Derry I was sent to Strabane Technical College and must have been one of the group who enrolled on the opening of the new building in 1937 with Mr Carroll as principal. I was doing a course in mechanical engineering but found it less than satisfying so I left before completing the programme. On the outbreak of War in 1939 I was keen to join up and slipped off to Belfast in early 1941 to get enlisted. Either I had a young face or the officials were taking no chances but I was rejected as too young and told to return with a birth certificate the next time. A number of other local people were enlisting and there was considerable interest in the war especially after Dunkirk and the near disaster there. This first rejection was disappointing but my interest in the navy didn鈥檛 change, so early in 1942 I made another attempt. Armed with the birth certificate this time I was accepted and was sent to Skegness for initial training. I made firm friends with another recruit from Derry, Jackie Stirling, and we were great support for one another during the war years. From Skegness we were sent to London for Wireless Training and then moved north to Ayr before finishing off in Plymouth at the Crown Hill Signal School.

Having finished training we were sent to the Clyde and from there sent on our first mission to patrol the south Atlantic along the African coast. Our role was to protect merchant shipping by providing escort and my ship, the Wellington, was engaged in anti submarine patrols all along the coasts from Freetown to Lagos and Dakar. My role as radio operator was to take down the coded messages and pass them on for deciphering while I had also to send out the coded reports. Ours must have been a fairly submarine free area and we were rarely in direct conflict with the Germans. Life on board could be pretty monotonous and we would be out at sea for days at a time ensuring that the merchant ships arrived safely in port. Shifts were four hours long and there was little to do when off duty. In good weather we could sit on the deck but the temperatures were often too hot for sunbathing. Each team had their own mess deck and there was little common activity.
Shore leave was available but with restrictions. Freetown had no harbour and shore leave meant being taken to land on a small boat. It returned at a set hour and waited for no-one. Conditions in Freetown were not very attractive and the natives were quite ready to rob a lone seaman of his money and goods and dump the body in the woods. Lagos was better for shore leave and the town had more to offer but it still was not a big part of our lives. Perhaps we were too young and shy to be the typical amorous sailors of the story books.

There was no home leave during this spell in the south Atlantic and news from Ireland was very limited. Sometime in later 1943 we moved to Gibraltar and the Mediterranean. There was one scary day when it was reported that a large number of German submarines were approaching a convoy that we were guarding and every preparation was made for a major confrontation. Nothing happened, however, and everyone heaved a hearty sigh of relief. While home on leave shortly after this episode my father told me of another local man, Ambrose McGill, and his near shave in the same merchant convoy that had been under major threat. It was certainly a bit of a co-incidence that two people from the same little village could be in the same convoy without knowing of the other鈥檚 involvement.

Sometime after D Day in 1944 our ship was decommissioned and we were sent back to signal school near Plymouth. This provided the opportunity for home leave and gave me the chance to catch up on some of the gossip and news from the area. There was a growing feeling that the worst was over and that the war would end shortly. In the meantime we had to continue with full alert and I was sent on a new destroyer, the Zambesi, to carry out depth charges in the north of Scotland. The war had officially ended by this stage but we still had routine patrolling in the north Atlantic and we were frequently into Derry port for and minor repairs and maintenance.

I had hoped to stay in the navy for another few years but was demobbed in early 1946 despite my pleadings to be retained and so it was back to civilian life. Coming home the prospects were not too bright and work was still scarce and poorly paid. The dole seemed a poor reward for years of danger and service and even then officials tried to find every loophole to prevent the payment of assistance. I had played with my father and sisters in a danceband before the war and had been very much into music at the time. Following demobilisation I went back on the road with my father to earn a few shillings and the dole official insisted that my part time earnings had to be declared before I was entitled to any benefits. I refused to make any such declaration and was denied benefit. Anyway I went into full time work in the post office for a period and spent a few years pushing a bicycle round a hilly route from Liscloon Post Office near Donemana delivering mail. This was counted a secure job if not greatly paid and I managed to make enough to get married and settle down. The mechanization of the rural postal service and the introduction of post vans made everyday life less subject to weather conditions. But the wander lust hadn鈥檛 left me and in 1967 I emigrated to Canada and stayed there for 21 years, returning home in 1988. I have lost contact with many of those who were in different branches of the armed forces in the period ands would like to see a public memorial in Donemana to the memory of those who gave their lives in the major wars of the 20th century.

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