大象传媒

Ths story was submitted to the People's War website by Susie, on behalf of Robert. Robert fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Whilst on duty in the Pacific Ocean we were one day given the signal to break off from the fleet and go to the assistance of a submarine which had lost the ability to steer and had had to surface. It had been attacked by two Japanese aircraft and was in a very vulnerable position. We weren鈥檛 told the name of the submarine, we were just given the co-ordinates and our excellent navigator pinpointed the location.

When we arrived it was sitting on the surface. The Japanese aircraft who had attacked it must have known they had damaged it and it was only a matter of time before they came looking for it. We sent men across and attached a hawser. Unfortunately The Whelp was then struck by a thirty or forty foot high wave which lifted the two ships together, and the bow of the submarine went right through the hull of our ship.

Everyone was at action stations and we were all a bit concerned and looking at each other in worry, wondering what had just happened. We weren鈥檛 using the radio as we didn鈥檛 want to give The Whelp鈥檚 position away, as we were now two sitting ducks instead of one. The telegraphists were still working though, receiving signals from the UK. I was looking through them, checking the headings and putting them aside if they did not apply to our ship.

Then the door to the office opened and two chiefs came in, one of whom was my superior, Reginald Benford. He looked at me and said: 鈥淛ock鈥�.
I replied 鈥測es chief鈥�.
He said: 鈥淲e know that you were a joiner in the building trade. You know how long we鈥檝e been sitting here.鈥�
I agreed and added that we were all starting to get worried as we had families at home. It transpired that he wanted me to go and look and the work that was being carried out to fix the hull, see what the hold up was and if there was anything I could do to help. I was happy to do that if there was anything I could do to help us to get moving so I went down to look.

The was a hole in the exactly the shape of the bow of the sub, similar to the shape of an axe, knocked through the steel of The Whelp鈥檚 hull at water level. I started to show the men in there where to put things to see if we could get enough timber to shore the hull up like you would a building. This done I went back up to the wireless office, annoyed as there had been no officer down there and that was not right. I told the bridge they could start the engines as I had done all I could, as it was a difficult job with the wrong tools.

We heard the rumble of the engines starting up and we started to move. I was in the wireless office so I could not see what was going on, but the cable tightened and we started to tow the sub. We had to crawl or we would have opened up the hole in our hull again. near port, a cruiser came out to meet us, and the petty officer didn鈥檛 even come back to the office to say thank you to me. The cruiser then took over the tow so it looked like they were the heroes!

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