大象传媒

On VE Day I can vividly remember what I had been doing. At that time I was an 18 year old apprentice aboard the M.O.W.T. EMPIRE CAPULET. We had recently taken part in the sea-borne invasion of Rangoon: our job had been the transportation of troops, tanks, vehicles, ammunition and fresh water.
On this trip we were now at anchor awaiting orders to berth; the time was about 6P.M. and I had just been watching the sun, glinting on the gold leaf of the SHWE DAGON pagoda, as it set. I was alone on the bridge & my duty involved alerting the officer-of-the-watch if anything untoward happened.
About dusk,as the mosquitoes commenced their nightly predations, the signal station started "blinking", and gave notice of a long signal to come. This entailed getting the O.O.W. up as our means of communication was somewhat primitive;
the portable signal lamp & its heavy 12 volt battery had to be lugged around to whatever was the best vantage point.
As soon as the officer (his name was Drake & he claimed ancestry to the earlier one) arrived, I was assigned to the message pad & he started clicking away on the lamp.
Mr Drake had hardly got going when he started dancing around to such a degree that it was interfering with his ability to read the signal-the mosquitoes had taken a fancy to his bare legs! Mr Drake swore a lot & ordered me to stop writing and begin swatting the mossies with my pad. The gist of the message involved berthing orders and ended with "and by the way peace has been declared in Europe & Mr Churchill is to address the nation tonight".
This momentous news caused little stir in my ship. There was still plenty of war going on in Burma. At 8p.m., when my watch finished,I went to my cabin where I found my fellow apprentice sitting on our only chair, surveying 2 bottles of beer. Our generous captain had sent the steward along with them. It was the first and only time that had occurred during the 9 months we had already been on board. It had not been one of our most memorable days and we still had many more months to go before our return to the U.K.. Some of us spent more than 2 years on board that ship going on to Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia and S.Africa before finally arriving back in Liverpool from where we had sailed in August 1944.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.