大象传媒

This story has been written on to the 大象传媒 People's War site by CSV Storygatherer U3A Callington on behalf of Sheila Reddicliffe Lightbody. They fully understand the terms and conditions of the site.

While Hitler was busy taking over the continent of Europe, his 'uboots' became a grave menace to our international contacts overseas. I had not gone back to London University when war broke out; instead entered the Postal Censorship in Liverpool. In early 1941 a group of us went out to Bermuda to the new Imperial Censorship which was targeting mail between occupied Europe and U.S.A.

No commercial air flights in those days, we sailed on the S.S. Georgic from Liverpool. I was horribly sea sick for the first two days, quite unable to appreciate the 'uboot' scares as we passed out of the Western Approaches into the Atlantic. From there we proceeded without escort the six thousand miles to Bermuda - and the first thing I saw there, apart from the coral reefs, was an old Mersey ferry boat which landed us at Hamilton.

My return home eighteen months later was very very different. Several weeks of 'waiting for a boat'. Then the one which anchored off Pembroke Dock was a New Zealand passenger liner bound for Halifax, Nova Scotia. It already had a handful of passengers, British service men finding their way home from the Far East the long way round the world. I boarded along with some British soldiers' families from the Bermuda garrison, and bade Bermuda a quite goodbye as we sailed out through the coral reef to the North Atlantic.

At Halifax we lay alongside for several days awaiting the loading of Canadian troops. I made friends with Brian the purser and his assistant, a young lad called Philip, and I suppose it was sheer boredom at our inactivity that inspired us to hire a car and drive off for a day exploring the hinterland of Halifax. This was not at all exciting (but then Nova Scotia is closer to Europe than to the Canadian West Coast), but we had a good time and it was the beginning of a three-year wartime romance for Brian and me.

Eventually other large ships appeared in the anchorage, our troops arrived, and we sailed out in convoy loaded with reinforcements for our allies in Europe. This was August 1942, and with the benefit of hindsight I know now it was the build-up towards 1944 D-Day, but at that time we felt we were backs to the wall against all all-conquering Hitler.

We were somewhere off Labrador when it happened. I was enjoying a drink with Brian in his cabin - probably a gin and lime in those days - when a sudden crashing noise ran along the bulkhead immediately behind me. Brian sprang up from his chair exclaiming 'this is it!' and much to my amazement began to clean his teeth. Apparently the sailor's philosophy is 'make sure your teeth are clean before the ship goes down'! Then we parted, he to his purser duties and I back to my cabin to find my life jacket. Half-way along the passageway I heard a more distant crash, the deck canted about thirty degrees and the lights came on and the deck slightly righted itself. I found my cabin, put on my life jacket and made my way back to the stairway, which was now packed with hundreds of Canadian soldiers coming up from the lower decks. I was still convinced the ship was going down - but there didn't seem to be any point in making a fuss, I think we all felt the same. An officer noticed me and two other females and down 'make way for the ladies!' and we sailed up as if in a cinema queue. At the top dead silence and in a whisper we were forbidden to speak at all or light up a cigarette. Then along with other women and children we were put into lifeboats; they were not lowered, however, we just sat there quiet as mice for four long hours through the night, horribly aware that the convoy had sailed on without us, that our US escort had vanished and we were left, a 'sitting duck' for any marauding 'uboot' in the vicinity. Hence the silence.

More than three hours later another crashing sound made us all in my lifeboat jump with fright. Apparently the captain had reckoned we were now safe from torpedoes and the ship's carpenter and his crew had got to work to shore up the water-line hole in our bows. We were told afterwards that the US corvette escorting us had cut across the convoy to attack a suspected uboot. It had run along the port side our ship, which had then hit the corvette's stem, causing the explosion of the depth charges stacked on it. All very very sad, the official report made much later told a very different story, blaming fog (but it was a clear night, we could see a good long way from our lifeboats), being wartime no mistakes could be admitted to the enemy. On our ship we accepted that the corvette had gone down with all hands.

Eventually, the ship was able to make some steam to move slowly back towards Halifax. That was when we moved into dense fog and the most frightening sound of the whole night was the regular hoot of our foghorn declaring to any prowling enemy our exact position and movement. But we made it back safely, the troops were dispersed to their transit bases and we civilians were given a holiday - without money - at a country hotel at Kentville. Eventually I made my third Atlantic passage in a very slow merchant convoy, in which I endured some autumn storms and saw with great horror the distant flash of a tanker being blown up.

That was more than sixty years ago, and I have never braved the Atlantic since.

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