大象传媒

This story was submitted to the people's war site by Sophie Chapman from St George's school, Broadstairs and has been added to the website on behalf of John Moreland with his permission and he fully understands the site's terms and conditons.
I was a member of the landing craft repair unit number 10 and there were 24 ranks with 2 officers of a variety of trades who were used to repair landing craft.
Our ship had a Canadian army on board and in the afternoon we would play cards out on the mess deck but one afternoon the ship was hit on the Starboard side by the engine room. My battlestation was to release the landing craft which, i did in shorts and a cap only. I had to navigate buckloy decks to get to my station and once i had achieved this the call came out 'all hands abandon ship'. I saw troops diving into the water grabbing on to floats.
I remember hearing the screams of the troops below decks who could not get out as the ship was sinking fast but i was powerless to help. Myself and a few navy colleagues managed to get overboard onto a float. One of the landing craft had crashed around the deck but myself with some navy crew managed to salvage the landing craft and get people aboard, including the Commodore of the convoy who was badly burnt. The ship had sunk in 11 minutes. I was rescued by a convoy destroyer but ordered to take the landing craft ashore which, i did. On the way there was an aircraft scare but it turned out to be a Spitfire to everyone's relief. A coastal patrol destroyer off the North African coast found them and they were led ashore by an Raf rescue boat. 77 of the 300 aboard my ship were lost in those 11 minutes. I had to live on a city boat until they were transferred to a desert camp where the conditions were terrible and everyone caught dysentry from the thousands of flies covering everything. We were rationed to one bottle of water a day.
I was transferred back to Liverpool after a few months and eventually ended up via Scotland and a few other places to the preperations for Normandy.

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