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We went over to the French coast because the Germans had sent a ship up from Brest with supplies for the German Army. Our clever sailors decided to go and sink it.

On 23 October 1943, our ship, the HMS Wensleydale, was part of a flotilla of ships sent into the English Channel to intercept the German ship. They also sent HMS Charybdis, which was really a cruiser, not suitable for an operation such as ours. Charybdis had come up from the Med where she had been doing Malta convoys. She’d been sent from there to Plymouth where she really should ave stayed.

We were a motley crew — a mix of light and nippy destroyers and this slow, heavy cruiser. Charybdis was leading because her captain was the senior officer and so was in charge fo the flotilla. We were sailing in a long string, easier for the Germans to pick off than if we’d been in close formation.

The weather was very rough and just after midnight some German Elbing class destroyers beagn firing torpedoes. HMS Limborne and HMS Charybdis were hit at the same time. The torpedo blew away the Limbprne’s bow completely and most of her crew died. A torpedo went right under our ship — I saw it go under from my station at the ship’s side. I asked the sailor beside me ‘what was that?’ He was a Glswegian with a very strong accent so I didn’t fully understand his answer but the gist was that if we’d lain any lower in the water, that torpedo would have hit us.

Our captain was a man called Goodfellow, a wonderful man and well named. He said ‘I want us to help as many men out of that water as we can. I radioed to Plymouth for air cover and told them we’ll stay to help until 6 or 6.30am’. We did not dare stay longer because the German destroyers were still nearby and would attack any ships that came to rescue the Charybdis’ crew.

As an aside, it surprised us that Charybdis, like many other ships in that flotilla had US soldiers on board. They were getting used to being a sea (D-Day was only just 6 months away you see).

Anyway, the men were in the water and we were trying to help them out of it. We lowered scramble nets down the side of the ship for the men to climb up. They were slippery with oil and it was hard to haul them up. In fact there was oil and blood everywhere. I could see a man in the water, too far from the nets. I ran and got a line and threw it to him in he water but it was waving in the wind.

‘I can’t get it!’ he cried up.

‘Hang on’, I said and ran to the store where I grabbed a bucket, tied it the the end of the line and dropped it straight down to him. He grabbed it and put his arm through the bucket handle. I dragged him then to the scramble net and he clambered up. He was covered in oil and as soon as he got to the deck he ran away for’ard and I lost sight of him.

We saved 70 or so men that night, but then it was too dangerous for us to stay and we had to leave. The thought of the men we had to leave behind, calling for our help, breaks me up even now. Every surface was covered in oil and blood. We laid the wounded men on the decks, tables, everywhere. Many sailors who died that night were washed ashore on Guernsey. The islanders defied their German occupiers to give those men a full military burial. 5000 islanders attended the funerals.

Later, we sank two of the Elbing class destroyers that were responsible for the sinking of HMS Charybdis and HMS Limborne. You could say we got our own back. Captain Goodfellow was awarded a DSC.

50 years later, I attended a reunion of the HMS Charybdis Association at the Apollo Hotel in Hagley Road, Birmingham. I was going around the tables to show the diners a plate that had been slavaged from the wreck of one of the Elbing class destroyers, when a chap asked me:
‘Were you on Charybdis?’
‘No, I was on Wensleydale’
‘I owe my life to a man who threw me a bucket from the Wensleydale’
I was astonished — ‘That was me!’

This chap, Gerald Evans, was the man I pulled out the water that night. He told me how, after I’d pulled him out and we reached port, he washed himself for a long time, but couldn’t get all the oil off. He dried himself using a Petty Officer issue towel — something he wasn’t entitled to do because he was an ordinary seaman — and ruined it with all the oil. Despite all he’d gone through, his pay was docked 1 shilling & 6 pence for the towel!

Gerald still lives by the sea now, on the south coast. After the war he served for many years in the Merchant Navy. We have become great friends — it is really a beautiful friendship. The chaps call us ‘the Bucket Men’.

We go to Guernsey every year to attend the memorial service and to meet up with the other survivors who have gained another 60 years because of Captain Goodfellow’s decision that we should stay and help.

This story was told by Ernie Moseley to Jenni Waugh, ´óÏó´«Ã½ People’s War Outreach Officer, on Remembrance Day, 2005. Mr Moseley accepts the site’s terms and conditions.

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