大象传媒

The following is a transcription of My great grandfathers experiences aboard the HMS Plinlimmon during 1942. My grandmother and her sister (Sylvia and Christine Davies) called him Popeye The Sailor Man.

P/O, E, Davies
H.M.S Plinlimmon
c/o, G.P.O. London
Friday

Dear Sylvia and Christine

Thanks very much for your letter, I think your writing is very good indeed., yes I am alright and I'll soon be coming home with a bit of chocolate. How did our Christine go on when she fell in the brook? I'll bet your Mummy got her hair off and smacked her didn't she? I hope she hasn't caught cold from it.

If you want to know what happened to my ship and me I'll tell you. We were with a lot of merchant ships that had come from all over the world bringing food and other things for you and every one in this country. We were there so the Germans couldn't sink them with bombers and submarines.

We drove a lot of bombers off all the way down from high up in Scotland. It took us three days to come all that way. Anyhow, when we had nearly got the last of the ships safely home, it was very late at night when you would be fast asleep in your beds, a German E boat attacked the convoy.

These E boats are only small but very fast. Two of the convoy were hit and sunk with the torpedoes she fired. Anyhow she fired at us with her guns, and hit us with the first shot, in the engine room. Other shots hit the bridge and stern of the ship, and we all had to get off her because the boiler room, (that's where I work) was filling up with water, and the engine room was on fire.

We all have our own place to go when anything like that happens, and you have to go to your own boat, or like myself a raft. The raft that myself and three other sailors had to go on had been thrown over when I got on deck, because I was about the last man to know what was happening.

I had to peer into the dark water to look for any raft afloat. When I happened to see it, I took off my clogs that I stoke in, and saying my prayers, jumped into the icy cold water. I seemed to swim hard to reach it, although it couldn't have been far from the ship at the time. However I did reach it at last and clung to it for dear life, I remember nothing more, for I was that cold, until I woke up in bed still shivering.

Some one gave me a drink of rum and whiskey and I felt nice and warm in a while and I was alright. I still am, and am on the Plinlimmon again. She is in dock getting repaired, when daylight came it seemed the ship hadn't gone down and a destroyer had been sent out with some of our crew to tow her right up the river Thames almost as far as London, where I now am. Get a map now and get your mummy to show the way I came and where I am.

Let Mummy read you this letter or you read it out to Christine, I'll be coming home in two weeks now.

So long Popeye

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