大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War website by Sue Sedgwick from and on behalf of Madeline Roan and has been added to the website with her permission. M/s Roan fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I was in Singapore when war broke out. I was 5 years old and at school. My father was in the 2nd battalion the Loyal Regiment, CQMS. He died after a route march from heat stroke on 6th June 1941 in Singapore.
We eventually left after his death to return to England, in July 1941, on RMS Nestor of the Blue Funnel Line. The Suez Canal was closed so we came home via Durban and Cape Town, where we took on some Free French Forces that had come down from North Africa.
On leaving South Africa I noticed the wake at the bow of the ship and realised that it was taking evasive action.
Our next port of call was Newport News in Virginia. The United States was not yet in the war but they made a tremendous fuss of us and gave us lots us warm clothes, mainly in tartan as I remember. We were there for a week while they were loading tobacco and eggs and other food and gathering a convoy of 40 ships, which escorted us to Halifax Nova Scotia. Some of the American ships left and The Royal Canadian Navy ships took their place. We left Halifax after a few days in a convoy of more than 40 ships.
It took a month to cross the Atlantic because it was the height of the Battle of the Atlantic. Some days schools of porpoises and dolphins escorted us, usually for 2 or 3 days but the U Boats were constantly there and the ships were continuously zigzaging.
We used to have a small bag by our bunk. Mine was white with a design of anchors and ships in red and blue. Regular exercises to go to our lifeboat stations were carried out. One day I was in the W.C. and suddenly the ship shuddered and the side of the cubicle became the ceiling. One of the sailors grabbed me and took me to the lifeboat station on the top deck where my mother hit me for being missing.
It was dreadful but the strange thing is that at the time it was the height of the lifeboat from the water that really terrified me. We were lowered down but were not in the water very long.
A U.S. destroyer was sunk with the loss of 8 officers and 88 men, I was told by my mother. The sea was on fire in patches and bodies floated by, some without heads and one I remember particularly was screaming, having lost both his arms.
It came to an end and we diverted round Iceland and Ireland I was told, arriving in Liverpool on 5th November 1941. The journey having taken 4 months. We weren鈥檛 allowed to disembark until the next day and when we did I was land sick.

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