´óÏó´«Ã½

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Matthew from Dover Road C.P. School and has been added to the website on behalf of Mr Welch with his permission and he fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

Mr Joseph Welch’s story from the Royal Corps of Signals — Costa Rica

I went abroad on 24th June 1940, on the SS Maurentia out of Liverpool (two other liners went out with us. One went out of Liverpool (The Aquitania) with us and one from Scotland (The Queen Mary.) We went out into the Atlantic to start out journey to the Middle East, we disembarked at Colombo, Ceylon (now called Sri Lanka) and the liners carried on their journeys to New York and Australia.

We joined some smaller ships and journeyed on to Bombay, disembarked and stayed a short period there and re-embarked on a different ship to travel on to the middle east. We finished that journey at Port Said. Then we travelled back down the Suez Canal to El Kantara to Palestine[Israel].

I came back from Burma 15th March 1945. Went abroad again to Belgium and Holland 15TH July 1945. I had 8 years of service to complete in the Royal Corps of Signals.

We were being evacuated from Kalamata in Greece on a Royal Naval Destroyer H.M.S. Defender. We were due to return to Alexandria , but we were forced to carry on to the Isle of Crete. At 04:00 the German aircraft were able to attack us ferociously
on the journey to Crete.

A troop ship, called the Costa Rica, was attacked and damaged by a bomb, and was letting in the sea slowly. The navy evacuated the troops from the ship. The ship was still floating when we resumed our journey, so the Navy torpedo it and eventually it sunk. The aerial attacks stopped at approximately 16:00. We arrived in Crete at 17:30.

Two days later we returned to Egypt and we boarded the City of Canterbury troop ship which took us to Alexandria, where we arrived later that day.

We rejoined our Unit in the Middle East and then we travelled onto the Far East on the 23rd of April 1943. We returned to the U.K. On 15th March 1945 then we went from Tilbury to Ostend in Belgium, and after that we crossed to Holland.

We went to Walcheren Island near Flushing at the town of Middleburg. We were being shown round our billet and on the wall was a poster depicting the Costa Rica troop ship. We explained to the lady that the Costa Rica had been sunk in the Mediterranean sea. The lady knew the ship as she had been on it herself as a passenger before the war, she was very shocked to hear of the sinking.

I was a regular soldier and had three years to serve at the end of the war and so following VE day when I was in Egham, Surrey where I was billeted at the Egham Hotel near the station and I believe the officer in charge was connected to the Heinz 57 family. I then went off to Holland and Belguim to recover equipment and help restore some sort of order. Whilst working in Holland I had an accident and broke my femour and so finally returned home to the UK in 1945.

My family home in the UK was at Montrose Avenue, Welling, where I lived with my parents and my brothers Fred and Stan and my sister Josephine.

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