大象传媒

I served in the Navy from 1943 to the end of the war. My service was rather unique in the Navy because I trained to be a signal man in the Navy and I was eventually drafted out to Gibraltar shore base for about a fortnight and then I picked up a ship down in the harbour, they told me it was a corvette laying alongside in the harbour

We proceeded in a marine jeep down to the harbour and couldn鈥檛 find it.

Eventually we found it lying on the outside and it turned out to be a Royal Yugoslav corvette. Apparently, as you all know, King Peter of Yugoslavia was in this country and for some unknown reason, Churchill allowed King Peter to have his own Navy which consisted of one corvette and six MTBs. In order that he had could serve with the fleet, he had to have liaison staff aboard, that is where we came in, there were eight of us, eight royal naval ratings and an officer on this corvette with all Yugoslav officers and ratings.

We did some escort duty out in the Atlantic; we were escorting convoys, meeting them half way across the bay and bringing them round into Gibraltar. On the final occasion, the U boats had been lying up under the coast of Spain, waiting for the convoys to come round and then they just nipped out from under the coast of Spain, whipped out a few torpedoes sunk whatever ships they wanted and whipped back in again. We couldn鈥檛 get them; we couldn鈥檛 touch them because we couldn鈥檛 go inside the 3 mile limit. Well, I was out there with the fleet on the occasion that Mr Churchill gave the order 鈥淕o in and get them鈥� and we all turned in broadside and we went in the three mile limit. The Spanish guns opened up over the top of us, I should think about a dozen rounds, then they realised the game was up and they couldn鈥檛 do any more and we went in and we plastered the area and we got three U boats.

Then we moved up to our base in Malta, they were pushing them back in Italy. We were escorting convoys up to the different ports in Italy so they could supply our men pushing them back... I was in Bari, we were tied up in Bari and I know it was bang on 12 O鈥檆lock because I had just been down to the mess to get our meal. Suddenly a terrific bang and Geri had come over and dropped a stick of bombs. I forgot to mention that Bari harbour was stacked with ammunition as high as this hanger, all round different types of ammunition, the whole lot went up and the whole harbour was destroyed. We had our hallsers on the ship as you can imagine and the whole thing just rolled and snapped the hallsers and the whole ship was rolling and of course when you鈥檙e lying in harbour you鈥檝e got your ports open to get as much air as possible and the water poured in. It was panic and everybody trying to get up on deck they thought the ship was sinking. Anyway, I got up eventually and fought my way up and don鈥檛 ask me why, I am not a hero I think it was the way we had trained. Having got up I thought well what I should do, I am supposed to be up on the bridge. I made my way up to the bridge and found that the radar dome had crashed across the bridge, smashed. So I got the halyard around the radar dome and that is where I got my only war wound, I cut my wrist on the radar dome. I started to heave the radar some off the bridge so that we could dump it over the side or something and then the others came up and we eventually we got it off the bridge

In all this chaos in Bari harbour, I mean it was chaos, the one that took over was a little Royal Naval Tug, what we would call the lowest of the low and he started calling different ships and different people ashore because a whole establishment was wiped out. He called us up and asked, 鈥淎re you sailable?鈥� and we said yes but we were going over to Yugoslavia in about four hours time.

There was a blazing tanker in the harbour, just blazing away, he said, 鈥淐an you get a rope over to this tanker?鈥� So we did. We got a rope over to this tanker, he said, 鈥渏ust tow it out to sea and leave it鈥�, and that is what we did. We went on our way over to Yugoslavia, continued what we were supposed to be doing.

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