大象传媒

I was born in February 1938. When the war broke out my father, a furniture manufacturer, found himself in a reserved occupation, making ammunition boxes along with his normal work, which was much curtailed. Furniture was not one of those necessities people felt they needed to replace when bombs were falling.
In mid-1943, however, my father learned that he was likely to be called up to active service, and decided to volunteer before he was drafted. There was some advantage to this, as volunteers had slightly more say in what they did and where they were posted. After some negotiation my father found himself posted as Deputy Naval Stores Officer to the dockyard of HMS Malabar, Bermuda; a civilian post with a rank equivalent to Commander 鈥� as good a posting as one could get under the circumstances. He left home in January 1944 and sailed from Sheerness in March.
My mother was (and is still, even at 92) a stubborn and determined woman, and she decided to find a way to follow him. The search for a visa, and then a ship, is something I am currently reading about in the many long letters which passed between my parents from the time Dad left to the time we met him again, 7 months or so later.
Enough to say that in October 1944 my mother and I left Southampton aboard the French cargo vessel 鈥楽S Indochinoi鈥�. The ship was modest in size even to my six-year-old eyes. I have no idea of the nature of the cargo (assuming the ship was not crossing the Atlantic empty). As well as the crew quarters there were a couple of cabins for passengers.
Our cabin had four bunks, and we shared it with two elderly women. If asked about them, Mum still rages at what she perceives as their selfishness in 鈥済rabbing the best bunks and life vests 鈥� and you just a young child with all your life ahead of you鈥�.
We crossed the ocean in convoy, from which several ships were lost. One day I鈥檒l research its number and details. To my eyes it seemed an endless array of ships. It travelled, I was told, at 8 knots (about 10 mph) which proved too slow for our greyhound of the seas. At least twice, and perhaps more often, I would awake to find the ship wallowing and alone save for a circling protective corvette, while bangs and French curses below indicated the engineers at work on the engines. Eventually, they would get the ship going and it would race to catch the convoy, then slowing down to a matching speed which again threatened the engines.
At six year old, only a few things stay in one鈥檚 mind, but these are vivid. I can recall the crew firing the anti-aircraft guns which were the ship鈥檚 only protection (I suppose it might have had a gun forward, but I don鈥檛 remember any such). The noise was indescribable. I recall meals in a dining-room-cum-lounge fitted with rather fine light polished wood table and chairs. Whether the food was of French culinary quality I have no idea.
I also remember boat drill, when we had to gather near one of the lifeboats and stand there in any weather, for what seemed like an age to me, but was probably only 20 minutes or so.
The crossing took three weeks and I think we docked at Halifax, Nova Scotia (it could have been St John, New Brunswick). From there we caught a train to New York. Of this I recall the 鈥� to a child 鈥� marvellous pull-down bunks placed longwise along the train, and also, as this was early winter, running between walls of snow for much of the journey.
We met my Dad in New York and flew to Bermuda on a Sunderland Flying Boat which took off, I think, from the Hudson River.
We spent 15 months in Bermuda. After the war my father went home first to get the house ready, and we followed three month later, returning across the Atlantic in under a week on the old Queen Mary, still a troopship. The whole experience left me with an urge to travel which I have never lost.

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