大象传媒

This is Michael Charnaud鈥檚 story: it has been added by Pauline Colcutt (on behalf of the Fernhurst Centre), with permission from the author who understands the terms and conditions of adding his story to the website.

An unusual and true story of a young boy who with his mother became a prisoner of both the Germans and the Japanese May 1942 - August 1945

CHAPTER 6 ALFIE ROUND鈥橲 STORY.(PART THREE)

Instead in due course I joined Capt Emerson on the 鈥淩oyal Crown鈥� for a couple of trips, until I took another short breather and decided once more to go to sea, after Christmas ashore, this time I signed on the 鈥淜irkpool鈥� 4,842 tons. The winter that January 1942 had really set in with a vengeance. The bitterly cold streets of North Shields on Tyneside were heaped with slush and ice amidst all the rubble from the constant night time bombing and the yellow coal smoke from hundreds of chimneys added to the gloom of the usual overcast skies. However the ragged kids still played in the narrow lanes and in the evening the same tired workers hunched up against the cold, would trudge home to the promise of food and warmth. The war did not seem to have had any effect on most of us youngsters anyway. Night after night there were the German air raids, that came in droves as the planes unloaded their bomb bays full of destruction and death on the helpless civilians, who felt the awful horror of indiscriminate bombing. Our ship the S/S Kirkpool 4,842 tons lay alongside Dunstan Coal Staithes bunkered with coal and ready for sea. The crew were all on standby, but some of us still lingered on in the local pub by the quay finishing off our beers till at last we tumbled out of our stuffy smoke filled bar into the crisp cold night air. It had an immediate sobering effect and then laughing and shouting we staggered up the gangway. Shortly after when all had made it on board on the 31st January 1942 a voice from the bridge bellowed out loud and clear:

"Let go the main spring鈥�, followed by 鈥� let go fore and aft鈥�. The lines gave a loud splash as they hit the water giving a sense of being severed from ones own Motherland and then the tugs pulled us into mid stream.
There was a light hearted squabble amongst the sailors as we flipped a coin as to who should be first on the helm. The lot fell to me and I felt it a great honour to steer the ship from our home port. Though the visibility was poor I picked out in the moonlight the familiar landmarks as we glided down the Tyne. Away to Starboard the groyne bell tolled out the sombre warning of rocks. On the Port bow situated high on the rugged cliffs was the towering statue of Admiral Lord Collingwood its base flanked with four ancient cannons. These had once adorned HMS Sovereign (Collingwood鈥檚 ship and it was during the Battle of Trafalgar Lord Nelson exclaimed:
鈥淪ee how well yon Collingwood handles his ship鈥�.

Often as kids we had scrambled over these guns and fought our Trafalgars. All these familiar places, the rocks and the coves where I had played, I took in for the last time and then a gruff voice jolted me back to the present: 鈥漈en degrees to Port鈥� he called, the bow responded and began to lift to the increasing swell. 鈥� Steady she goes鈥� he continued, whilst the North and South piers slid past, and soon we were off leaving nothing but the cold grey sea. The pilot shook hands with our Captain Kennington and wished us all good luck and a safe passage and then turned and eased himself down the Jacob鈥檚 ladder into the waiting launch and headed back to shore. Now we were on our own! The skipper gave a brisk command to alter course to North East by East, and then he slammed the telegraph to full steam ahead, with chief Engineer Burley answering with his bells in reply. The vessel shuddered and began to forge ahead and our destination would only be known once the Captain had opened his sealed orders which was to proceed to the west of Scotland. Ten days later we arrived safely with no sight of enemy planes, mines or U-Boats at Oban on the West of Scotland from where we joined a convoy heading down the west of England into the Atlantic heading South. Some days later The Cape Verde Islands appeared and the rest of the convoy suddenly turned starboard towards North America but we just continued all alone Southwards. How lonely it felt to see all those ships disappearing over the horizon whilst we were all on our own. Then amazingly a German U-Boat that had been waiting for a kill, miscalculated and surfaced dead ahead of us and then had to suddenly crash dive as we passed over where he had been minutes before. It was a near thing and very frightening! We released a series of depth charges from our stern and altered course. When darkness fell the Captain turned the ship about and retraced our path and so avoided a second meeting. The new course was held throughout the night until dawn and then corrected again to head for Capetown. An old gramophone purchased from a second hand shop for the great sum of half a crown blared out the latest hits of 1942. A favourite pastime of mine was to just watch the dolphins criss- crossing within inches of our bow. The records played on and we crossed the Equator with the usual ducking with King Neptune present played by the Bosun who did not need to dress up as he looked a natural Father of the Deep and even he was finally tossed into the pool. I thought how different all this fun was here in the bright sunshine, and the deep blue sea from the dark foggy streets and the sleazy pubs at home.

We reached Capetown safely and dropped anchor in the Bay beneath Table Mountain. Huge basking sharks cruised around the vessel but the Bosun, Alf or 鈥淟ugs鈥� Larsen鈥� a Norwegian assured us that they were quite harmless. On the night of the 23rd March we left Capetown and headed for Durban where we reloaded with cargo. I went ashore to see the sights and was intrigued with the two wheeled rickshaws drawn by Zulus in ostrich feathered head gear and sea shells around their ankles to give a rhythmic sound as they trotted . The poor natives here are treated as something just above the level of an animal by the whites and are strictly segregated. South Africa is a lovely land spoilt by the harsh slavery imposed by the Africaaners and I have no wish to see it again whilst such conditions prevail. In the night some of our crew were attacked by some rough whites, possibly Nazi sympathisers and our carpenter was badly kicked and had his denture broken.
At last hatches were battened down, and finally on the 31st March we were once again back in the South Atlantic this time heading for Montevideo in South America to load a cargo of food to take back to England. Some were worried as these waters were notorious for German Surface raiders. But the days passed and our fears were unfounded, and no-one could have wished for more beautiful style of life. The hours passed and everything went like clockwork as shipboard life usually does. We performed our watches and other duties, ate, slept, and played cards. During the day we splashed around in our home-made swim pool, whilst tanned bodies lay spread-eagled on the hatch tops soaking up the sun and flying-fish flew off and away from the bows. Indeed this voyage was nothing less than a millionaires cruise and we joked with each other: 鈥� to think that we are being paid for it鈥�! Here we were six thousand miles from England a little speck on the bluest ocean, and it looked as though we would make it safely as we were already half way across sailing in calm seas, and we sat with our mugs and talked about the River Plate which was now only a thousand miles away. The SS Kirkpool was just one small part of that vast Wartime Battle of the Atlantic that was bringing food and other cargo to form a life-line across the ocean to sustain our beleaguered England during the worst days of the War.

But then shortly after on the 10th April the weather changed, it got rougher, followed by a very black night with neither moon nor stars to be seen. There was now a stiff southerly and steadily rising seas that seemed to mark the end of our fantastic run of good weather. The inside of the wheel- house where I was on the helm, was dark and quiet except for the usual creaks and groans of a riveted ship labouring against the Atlantic swell. Suddenly 鈥淜irkpool鈥� heaved and shuddered violently from stem to stern as a torpedo blasted into number one hold. We were under attack from an enemy that we could not even see. Heavy shelling followed, pounding the helpless steamer as broadside after broadside was poured into her at point blank range causing untold havoc and confusion. Above all the crescendo and chaos, our Captain could be heard shouting: 鈥淎bandon ship! Abandon ship! Every man for himself鈥�. On hearing this I scurried out of the apparent safety of the wheel house and joined the mad rush for the lifeboat deck. Another salvo struck us blasting the bridge that I with others had just left moments before. The ship was now burning fiercely out of control and lighting up the surrounding sea. We could see the carnage and the deck strewn with wounded and dying shipmates. Powerful searchlights shone from nowhere and swept over the ship. I got caught in their glare and stood momentarily paralysed. They struck more fear into me than anything else knowing that these eyes of the enemy exposed us to yet more destruction. They were suddenly switched to the life boats which some crew were working frantically to launch. Another salvo burst demolishing the stokehold ventilators and part of the funnel, but the most sickening sight was to see the blasting away of the life boats and the brave men who in the face of such withering fire, had been trying to launch. Such merciless and systematic shelling could only mean one thing I thought, that the enemy intended to wipe out the crew completely as well as the ship. It was a if all hell itself had been loosed on us. The whole mid-ships was now ablaze and the shattered steam pipes let out a deafening hiss of escaping steam. The 鈥淕allant 鈥� Nazi commander who was we found later to be Korvette-kapitan Gumprich had executed his attack with such cold bloodedness on a helpless tramp steamer that he could now surely lay claim to the much coveted Iron Cross for such a glorious victory for the Third Reich. This was my first close glimpse of the real spirit of the enemy, and from what I saw all around me it seemed to be the very embodiment of evil.

During a lull in the action seventeen survivors some seriously wounded took shelter on the forehead well-deck. The chief engineer took command as our Captain was missing, presumed dead. What a sorry sight we were, with one engineer wounded in his right kidney his insides exposed, and his right arm shattered at the elbow. The Bosun with head wounds was now just regaining consciousness. An Indian clutched a broken arm and nearby two young ratings lay dead. A radio officer had shrapnel in his lung and the galley boy was shell shocked and out of his mind; (we had been at school together). I passed a first aid box to Sid Powell the steward who quietly set to work bandaging his mates. To cap it all, over a dozen crew were missing either killed or drowned. Several Indian firemen were standing in a group and wailing and calling Allah! Allah! They were giving themselves up to their fate and mourning their own funeral. The scene imprinted itself on my mind and I began to prepare myself, and repeated the only Prayer that I knew: "The 鈥滾ords Prayer鈥�. The ship meanwhile was only just managing to keep her nose above the waves, but an occasional roller would come over, and so we all began as one to grab at anything that would float, hatch boards, a long ladder, anything. These we now lashed together with an ample supply of rope from number two derrick. What a splendid team we made as we grasped at this last chance of survival offered us by God to whom we had prayed only moments before. Meanwhile our attacker was getting impatient at the time the ship took to sink, because they started to open fire once again which was a signal for us to take to our crude rafts, and so along with our wounded mates we jumped into the sea and committed ourselves to God and the Deep.

The prevailing cold current carried us away from glow of the burning wreck, and I felt safer as the night came to swallow us up, but then the fear of sharks took over. A couple of hatch-boards supported three of us. One was a wireless operator called Paddy 鈥lso known as the Mad Irishman, why I don鈥檛 know, as he was the most placid man imaginable and in spite of shrapnel in his chest he never complained but clung grimly to the boards. The other companion was the Indian fireman with a broken arm and he too bore up well under the trying ordeal. The larger raft supported the other survivors and whilst they were close by we felt some comfort but slowly we drifted apart. On abandoning ship our galley boy had drowned, the wounded engineer had died a little while before, and one Indian Fireman had refused to leave with us. He was obviously shell shocked and kept calling 鈥淎llah, Allah鈥� as he clung tenaciously to the Forehead mast stay. The night dragged on with no sign of being picked up. A little red light then began to bob up and down about fifty yards away. Someone had managed to get their distress light to operate. The most puzzling feature of that night was that most of us had lost our distress lights that were fitted into a small pocket of our life jackets. We soon discovered that this red light belonged to Sid our chief steward, a generous brave little man who worked untiringly during the action helping the suffering wounded and dying. He had already miraculously survived being torpedoed four times before, and knew well what it was all about. Sid had passed his light to Mickey who had clipped it onto his tin helmet and cheered him up. Soon a strange sensation of drowsiness took hold of me and it was getting difficult to stay awake. I could see members of my family at home sitting by the fireside and the scene seemed as vivid as though I was watching a cinema screen. It was now getting very cold and our teeth chattered non- stop and only the occasional wave that doused us stopped us from slipping into a sleep of death. My world and its horizons were rapidly diminishing, and only the dark outline of the oncoming waves held my attention hoping against hope for a ship to pick us up. I felt an inner peace within, and the roar of the sea became music to my ears. Each breaking wave glowed brilliantly with tumbling phosphorescence spilling millions of tiny sparkling diamonds into our path and all around us. This was a beautiful sight amidst the horror of all around.

Then suddenly I heard voices coming from the other raft that sounded full of excitement as a great giant black shape loomed up ahead of us. A dazzling streak of light stabbed the darkness creating a beautiful scene and illuminated the green water around. Someone got frightened that they would now machine gun us. The light switched off but then the whole port side of the raider was suddenly lit up and became alive with dark uniformed men. The decks hummed with life as they threw rope ladders over the sides and prepared to receive us on board. New life entered into all of us as we surveyed the situation and anticipated the acrobatics needed to escape from our watery grave. The rise and fall of the swell along the ship must have been seven foot or more. As we drew closer there was a heavy dull thud! In a split second a deep silvery streak flashed beneath us at an astounding speed. It was yet another torpedo speeding towards the Kirkpool which was still afloat and blazing. I listened for the impact but suddenly the blazing hulk vanished, and our home and our last link with England took her final plunge. Soon the painful ordeal of the long climb was over as hands reached out to drag me off the ladder and over the final hurdle onto the firm deck. I collapsed but pride and anger made me struggle to my feet refusing any Nazi hands to support me.

Cont/鈥︹�ee A Child鈥檚 War part Fourteen

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