大象传媒

This is Peter Goss鈥� story: it has been added by Ralph Lines (on behalf of the Fernhurst Centre), with permission from the author who understands the terms and conditions of adding his story to the website.

The training base was HMS Appledore in north Devon but before going there I was sent to the submarine base in Portsmouth HMS Dolphin. There I was attached to a newly formed unit to carry out a course on the Davis Submarine Escape Apparatus. This was used for underwater swimming in order to attach explosives to beach obstacles. It consisted of a breathing bag with an oxygen bottle attached. The breathing bag contained a canister of soda lime which removed the CO2. You thus breathed pure oxygen and no bubbles were discharged to give away your position. It had originally been designed for escaping from a submarine stranded on the bottom. The bottle gave you about forty minutes breathing time and there were two 鈥榦xylets鈥� or small bottles within the breathing bag which could be broken in an emergency to give you an additional seven and a half minutes each. There was a third oxylet which could be used to inflate a separate buoyancy bag in an emergency. An example of a DSEA set can be seen in the submarine museum at Gosport.

Later two new breathing sets became available. The first was the Dunlop twin bottle. The two bottles were of equal size but had no oxylet. It had flat lead weights in pockets which were almost impossible to jettison in an emergency. The second was the Seibe Gorman Mk 4 neck ring set. This was popular as it was the first set to have a reducer. This device provided a constant supply of oxygen whereas the other sets required you to 鈥榞uff up鈥� to give yourself additional oxygen from the bottle as you used up what was in the breathing bag. The sub aqua sets of today which used compressed air had not been developed would have been safer while the resulting bubbles would not have mattered in the conditions in which the obstacle clearance units worked.

After our initial training at Dolphin we were sent to HMS Volcano a small establishment in the Lake District where we learnt how to use explosives and the type of obstacles which we might encounter and how to deal with them. Generally speaking we used the naval general purpose charge. This was a 14 oz tin of explosive with a built in primer and a hole through the middle so that it could be strung on Cordtex which was a type of explosive line or else a number of tins could be made into packs of various sizes. The obstacles which were used in Europe to defend the German occupied coastline were posts with mines attached, hedgehogs 鈥� three pieces of angle iron welded together and 鈥榚lement C鈥� - a gate like structure of angle iron requiring a number of separately placed charges to collapse it.

After training at Volcano we went to our main base at HMS Appledore in north Devon. Here we continued our training with various exercises and diving training in the salt water baths of Ilfracombe. In due course I was given my own unit and took them through Dolphin and Volcano as I had done as an understudy. I had a CPO two Leading Seamen and eighteen ratings in No 19 LCOCU. Many of the men had seen action in Normandy in the RN Commandos. Other units were formed after mine and there were a few others more senior.

Our training continued at Appledore. We continued our underwater swimming training and slowly became confident in the DSEA sets. We did exercises on dummy obstacles and when things got too dull we manufactured our own excitement. One officer used to climb out of the back of the three ton truck coming back from Ilfracombe climb forward over the canvas cover on to the cab from where his face upside down would appear beside the startled Marine driver saying, 鈥淵ou鈥檙e driving much too fast!鈥�

During the winter of 1944/45 the German counter offensive took place in the Ardennes. It seemed possible that reinforcements would have to be landed on Ostend beaches and I was sent with No19 and 20 units to clear them of obstacles. We were sent to HMS Cricket which was on the Hamble river where we were provided with LCAs 鈥� Landing Craft Assault and an outfit of stores. We were taken across in a Landing Ship Dock which on arrival off Ostend discharged not only us and our LCAs but some dozen or so other minor landing craft totally without crews. However we started as many engines as we could and towing those we couldn鈥檛 were guided in to Ostend harbour by a motor launch.

The beach obstacles consisted mostly of wooden posts with mines attached or rails which were hinged so that on being pushed they compressed the detonator of a shell buried underneath. We cleared the northern beaches first working on low tides. I obtained some bolt staves from the army with ropes attached. We dragged these into the surf until they struck against an obstacle and then we blew it up. We tried one or two dives but the water was too dirty. The only incident of note on the northern beaches was the day we ran short of safety fuse. Instead of the correct drill when we were ready we pulled the pins on the igniters and sprinted for cover. No one got hit by the debris.

We then started work on the southern beaches which were more heavily protected. The hotels at the back of the beach were mostly derelict though some were used as headquarters. We countermined the Teller mines on the posts and did the same with the 11 inch shells buried under the hinged rails using a pack of four GP charges as a primer. This provided a very rewarding explosion each time although on one occasion we upset the army by collapsing their radio mast and on another I was sent for by the Naval officer in charge of Ostend who expressed his displeasure at having his office windows blown in. In the end no reinforcements were actually landed on the beaches.

One of the LCAs was damaged on a breakwater and the CPO rather cleverly repaired it using tea chests. We were returned to Portsmouth and were left to make our own way across the Solent to the Hamble river where our leaking LCA lay for many years. We made a further visit to Ostend when four of our units were deployed in case it was necessary to put landing craft ashore at Ijmuiden to help civilians starving in Amsterdam. Two units were to go by landing craft and then cycle and the other two including mine were to go in by glider. We were sent up to the small town of Oosterhuit in south Brabant. While we were there the Germans surrendered and VE Day was celebrated. Road transport was used to supply Amsterdam so our operation was cancelled 鈥� probably just as well.
When we returned to north Devon we expected that we would be sent to the Far East to the war in the Pacific. However the two atom bombs were dropped and with the coming of peace many of the units were disbanded and the personnel either released or sent back to general service. My own unit No 19 was the only one to be retained and I was quite pleased. We did a number of public demonstrations and displays at open air swimming pools. We also continued training and gave displays to senior officers of all three services who came down to Fremington Camp near Barnstaple for courses in Combined Operations.

We did some development work including the high speed recovery of swimmers. This technique had been used by the Americans in the Pacific with their Underwater Demolition Teams. The idea was for the swimmers to get into a line well spaced out and for the LCA with a rubber dinghy lashed alongside to come down the line at speed and pick up the swimmers one after another without stopping. This requires some nerve on the part of the swimmer since all he could see was the bow wave of the oncoming LCA. We tried three methods of recovery the first being a stick held out by the man in the dinghy. This was the least satisfactory and resulted on one occasion with the man in the dinghy being pulled into the water by the swimmer. We then tried lashing a net over the side of the dinghy which was grabbed by the swimmer as the dinghy went by. Finally we used a rope grommet or ring secured and held out by the man in the dinghy. This was the most successful system although it could result in some damaged arms on the part of the swimmers.

During the early months of peace we took part in a Combined Operations exercise in north Germany. We were transported up in the new Mk 8 LCTs which were longer and had bow doors. We went through the Keil Canal and up to a long inlet called Eckenf枚rde where we let off an explosion for the visiting senior officers. We also had the task of scooping the jelly fish out of the cooling water intakes of the landing craft.

In 1947 most of No 19 unit had been released back into civilian life. I volunteered to extend my time in the Navy by signing on as an EMVOL - a volunteer until the end of the emergency because I had heard that a few of us in the unit might be given one more clearance job. By this time Appledore Camp and Instow Barracks had closed down and we had moved to Fremington. We learned that Studland Bay in Dorset was to be returned to civilian use. The area had been used as a firing range for rocket firing landing craft and before the public could use the area we had to make sure that no unexploded rockets remained below high water mark. The army was to clear the beach above.

We started work at the southern end of the beach moving northwards towards Poole Harbour. We used a half hundred weight sinker which we laid on the sea bed at low water just beyond wading depth. The diver attached a length of light line called a stray line to the sinker and did a series of semi circular sweeps keeping the stray line taut looking for any signs of debris showing above the sea bed. If he found anything he reported it and the object was investigated. Normally it was metal debris but we did come across a complete rocket which we exploded on the beach. It took us weeks of painstaking work but the weather was favourable and we were earning diving pay so the half dozen or so of us left in the unit quite enjoyed ourselves. The only incident of note was a visit from the Chief of Staff to C in C Portsmouth. As the beach was closed to the public we didn鈥檛 worry if we had no clothes on in warm weather when we had just finished a dive. I was in this happy state behind the lorry towelling myself down when the jeep driving along the shore came to a halt beside me and the great man climbed out. I just had time to grab my cap from the back of the lorry and come to attention and salute!

I would have been able to apply to turn over to the regular Navy but our job was more or less finished and our 鈥榩rivate navy鈥� would not have continued long in peace time. There was a new life to lead and although I had regrets I also had memories and counted myself fortunate to have come through unscathed.

I took my release towards the end of 1947.

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