´óÏó´«Ã½

One Man’s War
Ronald Ernest George Hooper

I was called up in January 1940 at the age of 20, and joined the Royal Navy at Portsmouth, to be trained as a radio telegraphist. However, the first thing I had to learn on arrival was how to put together and sling a hammock in order to sleep on my first night. My training took longer than it should have done because I contracted pneumonia and spent several months off duty in naval hospitals and on sick leave. My training completed, I returned to the barracks at Portsmouth to await orders.

In February 1941 I was finally drafted, along with many others, to the naval base at Alexandria, Egypt. We travelled by train to Glasgow in Scotland to embark on a troopship, a ship adapted to carry men instead of cargo in the holds, in the River Clyde. It was called the Salween, the name of a river in Burma, and in peacetime sailed between Glasgow and the Far East.

At that time it was too dangerous to sail non-naval ships through the Mediterranean because of the Italian Navy there, so the only way to reach Egypt was to sail right around Africa. We sailed from Scotland with many other ships, heading into the Atlantic in a convoy, that is, a group of merchant ships in close formation, escorted and protected by naval ships. Convoys never sailed in a straight line because they could be followed and attacked by enemy submarines, but zig-zagged, that is, sailed to the right and then to the left of the true course, changing frequently.

Our convoy headed west through storms and rough seas into the North Atlantic for about two weeks to get well away from the seas around Britain where the German U-boats were, and then turned south in to better weather and calmer seas. After another week or two we reached Freetown in West Africa, where the ships refuelled, ours with coal, not oil.

Then we sailed on southwards towards South Africa. On the way we crossed the Equator and held the ‘Crossing the Line’ ceremony, when ‘Father Neptune’ the sea god, played by an old sailor, threw into a pool of sea water all those like myself who had not crossed the Equator before.

At length we reached South Africa and rounded the Cape at night, not to be seen. At the end of March we reached Durban, where we stopped for a few days and enjoyed much hospitality from the local people who were mainly of British descent. The effects of the war had not then reached South Africa and there was plenty of everything, no rationing or blacking out of lights. It was just like peacetime and I have always thought that it was the last glimpse we were to have of the pre-war world, soon to vanish for ever.

From Durban we sailed north through the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea to Suez, where we disembarked. We had taken eleven weeks to get there.

A number of us were sent to a naval aerodrome just outside Alexandria on the edge of the Western Desert, where aeroplanes and air crews from the aircraft carriers went for rest and training. Our job was to maintain radio contact with them when they were flying. It was there that I flew for the first time, as a passenger in a ‘Swordfish’ torpedo bomber on an exercise.

Six of us lived together in a tent on the desert sand. We became close friends and still keep in touch today, nearly sixty years later. We went into Alexandria when off duty and explored the city and its historic places. Two of us sometimes hired a car and explored further afield, into the Western Desert and the Nile Delta. French was the first European language spoken in Egypt then and I took French lessons - from a Greek lady!

This life came to a sudden end and our group of six was broken up in June 1942 when the German army under Rommel invaded Egypt from the west. As they approached Alexandria most of us on the aerodrome were ordered to leave at an hour’s notice. We went to another naval aerodrome at Ismailia on the Suez Canal. The German advance into Egypt was halted at El Alamein, about fifty miles west of Alexandria. After a few weeks at Ismailia I was sent to a French aerodrome in Syria where there were some naval planes and then soon afterwards flew back to the aerodrome at Alexandria.

I was there when, on 23 October 1942, the allied offensive under Montgomery began at El Alamein. So heavy was the gunfire that we could hear it, 50 miles away, and the ground and buildings shook. That was the nearest I ever came to actual fighting.

By January 1943 the Germans were cleared from the former Italian colonies of Libya and Tripoli, and I was sent to join the naval party occupying the port of Benghazi. I travelled up the coast in a small ship called a corvette, named H.M.S. Gloxinia. ´óÏó´«Ã½ at Benghazi was to maintain radio contact with naval headquarters in Alexandria, sending and receiving information, instructions and orders, because there was no other means of communication. I was there in June 1944 when the D Day invasion of France began, but we were far away and knew of it only from news bulletins, like the rest of the world.

Whilst there, I went back twice to Alexandria on leave, travelling variously by road, rail and air. On my leave I visited Cairo, Upper Egypt, staying at Luxor and Jerusalem to see the Holy Land. This started my interest in Ancient Egypt and the Middle East, which I still have to this day.

During almost all this time in the Mediterranean area I wore khaki-coloured army uniform, but with naval cap and badges, because it was much more practical in those conditions than the white naval uniform. So I looked like a soldier but was really a sailor.

Finally in December 1944 my tour of foreign service was completed and I was sent back to Alexandria for repatriation. I came back in another troopship called the ‘Duchess of Richmond’ which in peacetime sailed between England and Canada. By now the war in the Mediterranean was over and ships could pass safely through it and the Straits of Gibraltar, so we were back in about ten days instead of eleven weeks, just in time to be sent home straightaway on leave for Christmas. I shall never forget the moment when, after four years’ absence, I arrived late at night without warning at my home and my parents opened the door to me.

After my leave I returned to the naval depot at Portsmouth. Parties were being made up to occupy the German ports as we captured them, and I joined the one to go to the naval base at Wilhelmshaven. We crossed the Channel in early April and followed the army as they advanced through Belgium and Holland into Germany. We reached Wilhelmshaven on May 7, the day after the German surrender, and took over the docks, ships and buildings. Again, our job was to maintain radio communication with our headquarters and ships.

There was little to visit or do there because most of the buildings had been destroyed by the bombing, but I did have a few days leave in the Harz Mountains near the border of the Russian zone. I also began to learn German in classes which were set up for us.

By the autumn of 1945 the demobilisation of the wartime conscripts began, and in December I returned to England, travelling in a German minelayer which was being sent to Rosyth in Scotland, and in January 1946, thankful to have survived and not be wounded or disabled, I was demobilised at Portsmouth just six years after being called up there.

My war was over.

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