ĂŰŃż´ŤĂ˝

TOM KAY’S WAR

About the Author

Thomas (otherwise know as Tommy or Tom) Kay, a Lancastrian, was an ordinary sailor attached to the Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships (D.E.M.S.) service during World War II. He saw action in a number of theatres of World War II including the Mediterranean, in support of the North Africa campaign, on the North Atlantic convoys and in the English Channel after the D-Day landings. The story, which follows, is based on his recollections of aspects of the war as seen from ‘deck level’.

Sadly Tom passed away in 2002 having completed this book which he dedicated to all his shipmates and survivors of WW II especially the members of the D.E.M.S. service. Particular thanks are due to Mr Ronald. J. Gardner P/JX.334922 (ex RN attached to D.E.M.S.) and Mr Wesley Johnson (ex USN officer on the USN vessel PC564).

Mr Gardner was a founder member of the D.E.M.S. association and the author of work that has been used as a reference for this book. Mr Johnson was an officer on the USN vessel PC564 which picked Tom up after the sinking of the Leopoldville. He successfully contacted Tom through the good offices of Mr Gardner and later invited him to the USA for a reunion of survivors.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Plate 1. The author circa 1943 — Tommy Kay
Plate 2. D.E.M.S. badge (from a drawing)
Plate 3. North Atlantic maps/graphs
Plate 4. Convoy duties
Plate 5. HMS Aubrietia
Plate 6. The Mediterranean theatre
Plate 7. HMS Clan Ferguson
Plate 8. Front Line
Plate 9. Tommy Kay — Portland Maine
Plate 10. Tommy Kay at the Parthendon, the Acropolis, Athens. Late 1943
Plate 11. ĂŰŃż´ŤĂ˝ waters/Normandy operations
Plate 12. HMT Leopoldville
Plate 13. PC 564
Plate 14. Tommy Kay 1988

REFERENCES
1. ‘In which we serve’ — a personal record and account of life in the D.E.M.S. An unpublished work by Ronald J. Gardner.
2. The Times Atlas of World War II. Edited by J. Keegan. Times Books Ltd.
3. Total War — causes and courses. Vol. 1 The Western Hemisphere. P. Calvocoressi, Penguin.

PLATE 1.

THE AUTHOR CIRCA 1943

THOMAS KAY
1st July 1921 to 26th March 2002

TRAINING

I joined the Royal Navy in June 1941 and was sent to HMS Glendower in North Wales for three months basic seamanship training. While I was at Glendower on my course we used to go down to Criccieth for seamanship training in rowing and sailing. We had plenty of fun and a couple of the lads fell in or got knocked over when rigging the sails. When we got leave we had a way of smuggling our Ficklers tobacco out. We would spread it out onto an old handkerchief or strips of cloth then put it through the rubber rollers of the wringing machines in the washhouse. This made it nice and flat so we could tie it round our legs and bodies till after we had got through the customs checkout in the main hall. When we had our blue great coats on they couldn’t notice that you had got a little fatter since you arrive. After finishing my course I took two weeks leave before being sent to HMS Wellesby in Liverpool for a six-week gunner’s course.

Following this course I was transferred to Glasgow to a D.E.M.S. depot.
Plate 2.
D.E.M.S. Badge.
The D.E.M.S. service was formed from ranks drawn from the Royal Navy, Royal Marines, the Mercantile Marine and the Army Anti-Aircraft maritime regiment. Its function was to provide the gun crews for manning the guns fitted on Merchant Marine vessels for their self-defence.

When I was in Glasgow I used to go to a pub called Hunters Bar. It was the only pub I knew that had a piano, and we used to have a good singsong. There was a lovely girl singer who would sing ‘When you know your not forgotten by the one you can’t forget’. It was a lovely song and it’s the only one I can remember so I must have enjoyed it!

I recall all the different places we visited off the Clyde. Such as Gareloch, Inverary, Loch Fyne, Dunoon, Hunter’s Quay, Holy Loch, Loch Long and down to Ardrossan. I suppose they moved us around to keep the ships dispersed in case of air raids or air reconnaissance about convoys assembling. We would go ashore to a hall at Greenock or Courak and play ‘Housey-Housey'. It was a very big hall with rooms off it with microphones in so everybody could hear the numbers being called, they had good crowds and the money prizes were quite good.

On some of the ships that had Lascar crews we used to have a bit of fun with the cook in the ships galley. We would get a .303 cartridge and take the bullet from the end then shake out all the gunpowder. Then we would creep into the ship’s galley and then, when the cook wasn’t looking, we would stand the cartridge case on its end behind one of the large iron pots on the stove. We would then take a quick walk round the deck out of sight. The detonator left in the cartridge case would go off with a great bang and the empty case would hit the steel roof of the galley. The cook would go mad and go chasing round the deck with a cleaver looking for the culprit. You would make sure you kept out of his way for a few days.

We also had ‘ratting days’ when half of the crew would stand round the coils of rope with sticks in their hands at the ready. One of the crew would start uncoiling the ropes and as he got near the bottom of the coil the rats would come running out and all the crew would go mad, bashing at the rats with the sticks, what a racket it would be. We also set traps for the rats. We would get a five-gallon oil drum, cut the top out of it then pivot this to the top of the drum with a thin stick. Then we would fill the drum half full of water and smear the top with butter, cheese and breadcrumbs. When the rats climbed on top of the drum it would tip up and they would fall in and drown. If any were left alive we would tip them over the side of the ship.
ACTION ON HMS MUNCASTER CASTLE

From the depot, I joined the MV Muncaster Castle as a gunlayer on a 4.5-inch gun, the ship had around 250 ratings to man it. It was being fitted out to transport a complete boom defence assembly for Trincomalee harbour on the island of Ceylon (now called Sri Lanka). As part of the fitting out a troop galleys had been built on the deck for cooking for our passengers. One of these was to play an important part of my story a little later on.
PLATE 3.
NORTH ATLANTIC MAPS AND GRAPHS

PLATE 4.

CONVOY DUTIES

Towards the end of February 1942 we sailed as part of a large convoy, with a warship escort which included for a period the battleships HMS Rodney and HMS Nelson.

I first saw action in the Bay of Biscay when two FW 220 (Condor) aircraft bombed the convoy. The Condors stayed circling most of the day until one of our planes, a Catalina Flying boat, came on the scene. After a brief dogfight, the ‘Cat’ chased the Condors off. One ship was damaged but fortunately most of the bombs missed as the Condors had to bomb from a great height because the anti-aircraft fire from our escorts was so heavy.

The convoy sailed on and anchored in Freetown, North West Africa where we stayed a few days before continuing on our journey bound for Cape Town, South Africa. A day and a half after leaving Freetown our ship left the convoy and continued towards Cape Town on her own. Two days later, at around 6 p.m. on Monday 30th March 1942, a torpedo hit us midships. I ran to my gun, loaded it and looked through the telescope but couldn’t see anything as, by then, it was getting quite dark.

The ship was slowly sinking and you cold hear the cries of the ratings in one of the holds. I went to my boat station but the lifeboat was tipped up and hanging by one 'fall down' near the water. I tried to release it with men running all around when another torpedo hit the ship midships and the deck by the side of me split with a great 2 foot wide crack.

I jumped over the side and swam off as the ship went down very quickly. I had swum for about 200 yards when, finding myself in the middle of floating debris, I clambered on to what I found out later to be the side of one of the troop galleys that had formerly been built on the deck. My new ‘boat’ was about 20 feet long by 8 feet wide covered in nails, which were sticking up all round. In the centre was a type of Ascot heater about 3 feet long to which I clung for the rest of the night.

The next morning the ship’s main motor boat, which had been got away, came round picking up the survivors who were hanging on to all sorts of floating objects. The motor boat couldn’t hold everybody and so most of the survivors were put on to the more seaworthy of the floating objects which were then tied together and taken in tow. There were rafts, Carley floats, Boom defence tanks (part of the cargo which had been blown out of the holds) and all sorts of other floating junk, I was put on a Carley float.

Later on that day the U-boat that had torpedoed us surfaced and a request was made for the Captain of the Muncaster Castle to identify himself. The Captain, who was in the motor boat and had taken the precaution of removing his rank identifying epaulets, kept mum. After a while the Germans accepted that he could not be easily identified and they kindly gave us a course for the Ascension Isles, which they said was 450 miles away, and let us go on our way unmolested. I have no doubt that the Captain would have been taken aboard the U-boat as a prisoner if they had identified him.

I later learned that the U-boat was the U. 68. under the command of Commander Karl-Friedrich Merton RE of the Imperial German Navy. During the 1980’s I heard that he had written to the D.E.M.S. association expressing a desire to contact the survivors of ships he had torpedoed. A list of the ships was given him and this included the MV Muncaster Castle. I did not take up his offer.

During the time we were being towed, we took turns to do six-hour spells on each of the crafts, Carley floats, Boom defence tanks or a raft. The motor boat was used to transfer each group between them. The worst of these spells were those spent on the Boom defence tanks because these had only two diagonally opposite large rings on an otherwise smooth sloping surface. There was only room for one man to sit inside each ring and everybody else had to hang on as best they could! It was also very bad on the Carley floats as you had to sit with your legs in the water with a net underneath. The water washed up and down your back when the float rocked. Once in a while you got a spell in the boats of which there were two, one lifeboat and the main motorboat. During your ‘cruising’ spell you would have the luxury of a ‘peg of water’ and a couple of hard biscuits which had to last the whole day. As we were drifting around in groups on the rafts and Carley floats we could see small sharks about 4 feet long circling round within about 6 feet or so. I took a swipe at them a few times but it didn’t seem to bother them at all, as they would just roll over on their side, then roll back again and carry on swimming round and round. Matelots (a sailor) and soldiers who spotted mates on the other rafts would just jump into the sea and swim to each other but the sharks never touched anybody as far as I know. I spotted a lad (named Lawton) who lived in my street, I swam over and had a chat with him; he was in the RN going to Trincomalce.

On the Friday evening of that eventful week a Sunderland flying boat spotted us. The sea proved to be too rough for it to land so the pilot dropped a parachute with a few supplies in it and a message which said: “Sorry, unable to land, will send help as soon as possible”. The next morning we sighted a ship, identified as a Corvette (the Aubrietia), which was looking for us. We let off flares and she came and picked us all up. It was very crowded seeing as there were around 250 passengers plus the crew of the ill-fated Muncaster Castle.
PLATE 5.

Aubrietia in July 1941. This was the original configuration-short forecastle, mast forward of the bridge, now radar and minesweeping gear aft. (Ministry of Defence)

HMS AUBRIETIA
FLOWER CLASS CORVETTE. SOUTH ATLANTIC 1941
RESCUE SHIP OF THE SURVIVORS HMS MUNCASTER CASTLE IN MARCH 1942

The Aubrietia took the motor boat in tow but the drama was not yet over. The next day the hawser used for towing the motor boat got wrapped around the Aubrietia’s propeller and divers had to be sent down to cut it away. That left us all drifting for five hours like a sitting duck in the middle of the Atlantic.

I was put in the sick bay because I had been stung by a Portuguese man-o-war jellyfish. My feet had swollen to the size of watermelons and the flesh covered the straps and buckles of my sandals so that you could hardly see them. As you might imagine, in this state I could hardly walk. One day there was a submarine alert and the Aubrietia started firing depth charges. Well, walk or not, I was out of my bunk in sick bay and on the deck in about 20 seconds flat!

The Aubrietia eventually docked in Freetown from where I was transferred to the hospital ship ‘Edinburgh Castle’ for a couple of weeks. The medics had to cut the soles off my sandals and leave the straps in until the swelling went down. A few weeks later, a young Welsh lad and I were discharged from the hospital ship. I was fitted out with temporary kit and put on a merchant ship bound for Glasgow. After reaching Glasgow I went home on ‘survivors leave’ for 21 days.

HMS CLAN FERGUSON

PLATE 6.

THE MEDITERRANEAN THEATRE

Following my leave I returned to duty and was sent to Greenock where I was first kitted out and then joined the ‘Clan Ferguson’ as an Oerlikon gunner. We sailed from Greenock at the end of July around Northern Ireland before joining an escorted convoy. The Clan Ferguson’s cargo was explosives. There were 800 tons of block TNT in the forward holds plus gunnery shells, ammunition and explosives (including, it was rumoured, poison gas shells). We also had petrol tanks on the decks. All in all the ship was a floating bomb! Just before we left Greenock, a Commodore came on board and gave us a lecture warning us that if we got hit it would be every man for himself as there would not be much time for a proper abandon ship routine.

The convoy sailed south skirting the Bay of Biscay with no trouble this time. Eventually we reached the straits of Gibraltar where our arrival had been timed to take place just after it had gone dark. We then passed though the straits in darkness without incident.

PLATE 7.
HMS CLAN FERGUSON

The next morning we joined a major convoy ‘Operation Pedestal’ with escorts that included a cruiser squadron, aircraft carrier and numerous destroyers plus other craft. The convoy was assembled just south of Ibiza with the Clan Ferguson somewhere in the middle surrounded by lots of other ships so we felt pretty safe.

At around 9 p.m. on 12th August 1942 we were entering the Sicilian channel just off Cape Bon in Tunisia when the convoy was attacked by both aircraft and submarines. Our ship was attacked by aircraft; one of these fired a torpedo that hit us near the number one hold where the TNT was stowed. The TNT was set on fire and, no doubt remembering the Commodore’s advice in Greenock, I wasted no time in jumping overboard and swimming for it! I had got a fair distance away when the ship blew up with debris flying everywhere. I remember looking round and seeing her bow sticking out of the water with a man right on the tip just before she went down.

It seemed like a few minutes after the explosion when debris started falling all around me and hatch cover planks came shooting up out of the water and leapt 6 feet in the air. The thought occurred that if one came up under me I would be speared! The effects of the blast had caused the skin to be burnt off my legs and my stomach to be crushed so that sick came out of my mouth and excrement out of my bottom at the same time. I was covered in oil and petrol and felt very sick.

I was in the water for about an hour before being picked up by what I think was a Motor Torpedo Boat and put in the sick bay. I must have passed out because the next thing I knew I was in a hospital in Malta with my legs and back in bandages. I spent about a month in hospital followed by another month in rest camp. I don’t know where the camp was but it was on high ground and we could see out to sea.

Later on I was transferred to a small D.E.M.S. gunnery school where we had small arms, machine guns and two Oerlikon guns. Whenever there was an air raid we had to run up a hill with the guns, put them on stands, and then start firing. Sometimes by the time we had got the guns mounted the planes we were supposed to fire at had gone.

We had one sailor who had been a wrestler and weight lifter. He was so strong that he could run up the hill with a gun under each arm, whereas it used to take two of the rest of us to carry one gun up. One day he received a letter telling him that his girlfriend had had a baby by someone else, at this he got so depressed that he drank a full bottle of rum on his own. Later on he seemed to go mad smashing up the inside of his hut and flinging one of the Oerlikon guns straight through its side. Following this incident he was arrested and I never saw him again.

There were also more peaceful times when, in between air raids, we could go swimming in a small bay which had a net across the end to keep the sharks out. On another occasion, I was walking down the ’gut’ in Valetta when an air raid started. I ran into a shop that had no front or roof on and found three cameos. I later fetched them home and gave one to my mother, one to my aunt and one to my grandmother.

I was stuck on Malta for nearly six months because no ships could get in and it was around the middle of January 1943 when I finally came home on a liberty ship whose name I can’t remember. We docked in Greenock and I was sent home on ‘survivors leave’ again for 21 days.

During the time I spent on Malta, the tide of the war in North Africa turned when the British Eighth Army, under its new commander, General Montgomery, struck a vital blow at Rommel’s Afrika Korps at El Alamein. The battle of El Alamein started on the night of October 23rd 1942 and the two sides slugged it out until Rommel began his long retreat on November 4th pursued by Montgomery. It was to be some three months later before Rommel’s retreat would end when, on February 4th 1943, he finally reached the relative safety of the Mareth line in Tunisia some 1600 miles to the West.

On my next trip we sailed first in a convoy round the north of Ireland and then turned south for Cape Town on our own. From Cape Town we went first to Durban, loaded up with South African Air Force personnel and then back to Cape Town from where we set off, still on our own, across the Atlantic to Halifax. At Halifax we discharged the South Africans and reloaded with RAF ratings and sailed for the UK. We eventually docked in the Clyde from where I went home on leave.

After leave our ship was loaded up with army personnel and we took on extra gunners with their own Bofors gun. I was the gunlayer on a 6-inch gun on the stern. We sailed in another large convoy, first out into the mid-Atlantic, then through the straits of Gibraltar in the dark this time beading for Algiers. During the first part of the Anglo American invasion of North West Africa ‘Operation Torch’, which took place in November 1942, a destroyer had smashed through the boom defences across Algiers harbour. Our ship, with its cargo of no doubt reinforcements for Operation Torch, just sailed in and unloaded with no trouble at all.

PLATE 8.

FRONT LINE

After docking in Algiers I went ashore with some other D.E.M.S. gunners together with a Royal Marine sergeant. We wandered through the town and along the main street, which was the only place we were allowed to go. The place was crowded with British and American troops who were queuing up in some sort of side street to get into licensed brothels. Anyhow, five of us wandered into a bar and, as we didn’t know half of the names of the drinks on show on a shelf behind the bar, we decided to start at one end and have a drink out of each bottle. Well there was ‘Muscatel’, ‘Anrice’, ‘Calvados’, ‘Lacrima Christi’ plus lots of other names we had never heard of. You can imagine the state we were in by the time we had got to the other end of the shelf!

I paid the waiter in occupation money and when he came back with his tray there was a pile of money at one end plus another at the other end. I, being well oiled, scooped up both piles and put them in my pocket. At this his face went white and he rushed behind the bar and came back with a card about two foot square which had written on it in English ‘Tips are not included in the price’. At this I gave him another handful of change. I haven’t a clue how much, but it seemed to shut him up and he was quite pleasant afterwards.

We were all quite merry when we came out of the bar and got split up. I was rolling down the road to the docks with a basket full of oranges and lemons that I’d acquired from somewhere. I dropped the lot and they rolled all over the road. Later I was told that two MP’s picked me up when they found me in the road slinging the oranges and lemons out of the basket and picking up stones and rocks and putting them in their place! They thought I’d had my throat slit because I was covered in red wine and my white shirt was blood red. They told me I was lucky to have got back in one piece as some of the locals would cut your throat for a few francs. I was taken back on board and was sick for two days so that was the end of that shore leave for me. Later I had to go before the Captain who gave me a good telling off but otherwise let me off. Following Algiers I vowed never to go on the booze with wine again!

We had spent about a week Algiers before sailing for the Clyde again. After some more leave I returned to Glasgow where I joined the ‘Clan MacNeil’ as a gunlayer on a 4-inch gun. This time we sailed as part of a convoy bound for Halifax, Nova Scotia. This convoy was attacked by submarines off Greenland and we lost three ships. Part of the convoy, including us, was driven into ice fields to try to get away from the submarines. We were in fog when two of the ships with us ran into icebergs and sank. Also, during the dense fog, an old ‘lease lend’ destroyer came flying through the convoy, shot across our bows, and hit the merchant ship travelling inline ahead of us. The destroyer blew up immediately knocking off about 60 feet of the merchantman’s bows in the process. All that was left of the destroyer was a bit of wood left burning on the water but they said later that the merchantman made it to Newfoundland.

During this period I took some gunnery practice and fired a 4-inch shell at an iceberg at point blank range, it just clipped a little piece of ice off, as through I had hit it with an ice pick!

After reaching Halifax we sailed on down to New York where we had to kill all the sheep we had on deck for the Lascar crew. Next we sailed back up the coast to Portland in Maine where we loaded up with wheat. During this time I got a job building ‘tuns’ on the holds, as I was a joiner. Filling wheat in sandbags and throwing them into the top corners of the hold to stop the wheat shifting was a nasty job, as you stood in wheat up to your hips, and your legs and bottom were frozen. However the pay was good, at more than three dollars an hour, which was worth about one pound at that time. In addition we also got our ‘sabotage pay’.

PLATE 9.

TOMMY KAY (1ST on the left)
PORTLAND MAINE MAY 20TH 1943

I had a couple more trips across the Atlantic to Halifax, Nova Scotia, before, after a spell of short leave, I joined the ‘Strathmore’ on the Clyde. Nothing I can recall happened during my time on the Strathmore then, following another short period of leave, I joined another Clan boat, I think it was the ‘Clan McAlpine’ but I can’t be sure, and we sailed off again.

We called in at Bone (now called Annaba) in eastern Algeria close to the Tunisian border where we were bombed and the ship sank in the docks. That was a short trip from which I returned home on another merchant ship! However, even the return trip had its incidents. Whilst on our own, crossing the Bay of Biscay, we lost an army gunner who we were taking home. He was doing his ‘dobying’ on the top deck when his bucket of washing started to roll across the deck. As he chased after it the ship gave a sudden lurch at the end of its roll and he shot between a gap between a lifeboat and the ‘davits’. I threw a lifebelt after him and, although we stopped and searched for two hours, I never saw him again only his hat floating near the lifebelt.

Later on, (probably after D-day) I did another trip into the Mediterranean on a Clan boat to Naples and Athens. When I was in Greece we docked in Piraeus the port for Athens. I went to see the Acropolis and climbed up to the Parthenon and went all round it. It was very interesting. While we were in port we kept ‘sabotage watches’ and now and then we would let a few Greeks on board to trade with.
PLATE 10.

TOMMY KAY AT THE PARTHENON, THE ACROPOLIS ATHENS. LATE 1943

I was in my cabin one day with one of the Greek traders. I was rooting through my things for something to sell when the Greek trader spotted some brass shoe tacks, about 2 doz., which I had in a tobacco tin. When he saw these he started bidding for them and I realised they were valuable to him. I kept haggling and the price kept going up. We started at about 1000 drachma and ended at about 20,000 drachma. This was quite a lot of money considering that I had previously bought a lovely German watch for 10.000 drachma. In fact I flogged my boots, my white canvas tropical shoes and all sorts of other stuff to the Greeks, as such items as these were valuable to them. In return I bought two ball point pens. They were also German, the first I had ever seen, and everybody marvelled at them when I brought them home.

Another experience I had there was the day my mate and I met two girls who had lived in the North of Greece. They had lost their homes and parents and were each about eighteen. They had set up house in a bombed building on the road to Athens. It only had half a roof on it and one wall was missing but there was a bed and small cupboard in one room. The girls scraped a living as prostitutes and told us that the price was 2,000 drachma a night for ‘Inglittera’ and 5.000 a night ‘Americano’. Anyway we told them we couldn’t afford that and left them.

There were six of us gunners on this Clan ship and the steward used to give us a tin of pilchards each for supper nearly every night. We rarely ate them instead we put the tins away in our cupboard. When we got to Greece we must have had a hundred tins of pilchards saved up. Considering the odd sorts of things the Greeks found valuable, I decided to try a couple of tins on these girls. Well blow me, they nearly snatched my hands off so my mate and I had a few nights with them paying in pilchards! Later the rest of the crew found out and started buying or borrowing tins of pilchards from us. The first mate and chief officer even had a go. We were only there about ten days during which we ran out of both pilchards and shoe rivets! Things were getting a bit out of hand towards the end of our stay in Athens. We had to point machine guns at the Greeks to keep them off the ship and fire into the water to stop them climbing up the ropes to get on board.

Our next stop was in Naples where we were only allowed to go on one main street as everywhere else was out of bounds. There were MPs flying around in jeeps as there was still fighting going on further north near Rome. Anyhow my mate and I were looking in the shops on the main street when this young urchin came up to us. He was about eight or ten and told us we could go with his sister or have a ‘song and vino’ which we couldn’t otherwise get on the main street. The song and vino cost about 300 lira each (of course for Americans the cost was 500 lira each). Anyway we went with him and he took us, dodging down alleyways and along the balconies of flats, keeping a lookout for MPs all the time. Eventually we went in a flat with two rooms a bed in each and a table in one. We could have a bottle of wine or, for another 200 lira, go with his sister.

We didn’t fancy the sister option so stayed in the room with the table and bed. There were about five people in the room his father, mother, youngest sister and brother. We were drinking wine when this young lad got on the table and started singing. Could he sing he was marvellous! He sang about ten popular Italian songs through the night like ‘ Ave Maria’ and ‘Oh my Papa’ etc. Every now and again a soldier would come in from the other room, pickup his jacket and disappear, so his sister was obviously doing good business as well. Anyway we had a good night for our 500 lira each (in occupation money this was worth about one pound twelve shillings).

Afterwards, it must have been about 2 o’clock in the morning, the young lad took us back through the alleys and side streets and along the balconies of flats stopping at the end of each one. If he saw a light of a patrolling jeep he signalled and we crouched down then he would signal us on. We eventually got back to the main street and we gave him a tip. He left with a cheery wave. It was all in a days work in those days. I think we got back to the ship about 4 o’clock in the morning, well oiled and happy.

Around May 1944 I joined a 500-ton coaster sailing from Barrow-in-Furness, round the Shetlands to Tyneside, with a 200-ton gun from Metro Vicks lashed to the deck. I did two of these trips, the worst I’d had, as the ships rolled so badly and I was sick all the time. Once in a storm I was sick for three days.

Whilst I was on the 500-ton Coaster running from Metro Vickers yard in Barrow-in-Furness we called at a port in Northern Ireland for some provisions. I had an extra job or two other than a gunner. The captain of the five man crew had promoted me to be the cook for a couple of weeks. I also had the job of cleaning his cabin out once a week, for this he gave me £2.00 a week, which was pretty good pay. Anyhow with the provisions we had bought in Northern Ireland we had about six crates of eggs. I wasn’t much of a cook but I could make plenty of meals with eggs. I poached, fried and boiled them, I mashed them up with onions, sometimes with potatoes or carrots or swedes. We had them with steak or corned beef. After a couple of weeks we were all fed-up with eggs, myself included, so the next time we came into Barrow I went to see the Commander at the D.E.M.S. base and complained about the food as we were nearly all getting ‘egg bound’. Anyhow he took us off the ship, that is my mate and I who were the gunners. Incidentally I didn’t tell him who the cook was!

I later joined a coaster in Middlesborough taking coal from Newcastle to Ipswich and on to Battersea power station. Following one of these runs we were tied up to another ship in the Thames and I was dressed up for going ashore. We had to cross to the other ship to get to a ‘jolly boat’ which would take us ashore. Instead of going on the gangplank to cross to the other ship, I tried to jump from ‘gunnel’ to ‘gunnel’ to save time. That gap was only about four feet but, just as I jumped, a tug passed. The ships parted and I fell in between the two ships and was swept down river in a 13 knot current. I thought I was going to be squashed but my mate who was following me threw me a lifebelt with a line attached and they pulled me up. That was a near miss. When they got me on deck I could see the fur hat that I had bought in Greece floating miles down the river. I tell you it put the wind up me and I wouldn’t try that trick again.

From Ipswich, I next joined a 300-ton Dutch coaster and we sailed around to Southampton. I found out later we were part of the preparations for ‘Operation Overlord’ — the D-day landings in Normandy.
PLATE 11.
HOME WATERS NORMANDY OPERATION
We stayed in Southampton for a few days after the landings. The city was packed with American troops. There was a Dutch crew of five men plus my buddy and I as gunners. We had a couple of machine guns for the crew to use and an Oerlikon gun as armament. One night we all went ashore together and the Dutch blokes started a fight with some Americans over some girls. Unfortunately they had picked on the wrong ones. One of the Yanks stood in the middle of the street looking like a giant with our crew bouncing off him like flies. He flattened all five of the Dutchmen and they spent the next day lying in their bunks nursing black eyes and split lips. The Mate who was called Jan had a broken nose. My mate and I had kept out of the fight watching it all from a shop doorway. We later heard that the big Yank the Dutchmen had tried to take on was called ‘Max Bear’ or ‘Max Schelling’, I can’t remember which!

From Southampton we made a couple of runs across the channel and unloaded stores on a breakwater near Deauville then we picked up a cargo of dead Americans kit. We next made a trip near Le Havre and later up the Seine to Rouen. We stayed in Rouen about a week. It had been badly damaged and we were not allowed to go far but I saw the Cathedral.

Whilst in Rouen, my buddy and I picked up two girls who were about 18 to 20 years old. They had lost their parents and home and were hanging around the docks begging for food or chocolate. We took them on board ship and promised them we would take them back to England, which of course we couldn’t. They worked very hard, cleaned the cabins up, made the beds and cooked for all of us and really made themselves at home.

The time came when we had to sail and the Captain came to me and said, “It was you who fetched them on board so you will have to get rid of them”. He conveniently forgot that the whole crew had been using them all week and they had cooked for him and cleaned his cabin up as well. They had even put curtains up at the portholes! Anyway my mate and I made them up a parcel each with some tinned food, cigarettes, soap and chocolate and I ended up with the job of coaxing them off the ship. I can still see them now standing on the quayside crying and wailing as we sailed. It seemed a bit cruel to leave them like that with their little parcels in their hands crying away.

We docked in Dover harbour and spent a hectic few days there. The Germans shelled the town for a couple of days before their big guns were overrun on Cap Gris Nez. Most of the shells landed on the top of the cliffs above the town but it was weird to hear 16-inch shells screaming overhead.

HMT LEOPOLDVILLE

I left the Dutch Coaster in Dover, took a spot of leave, and then went to a RN Depot in Southampton. When I returned I joined the ‘Leopoldville’ on the 12th December 1944.

PLATE 12.

HMT LEOPOLDVILLE
On HMT Leopoldville I was a gunlayer on a 3-inch HA gun. There were about 25 of us gunners with a Naval Sub Lt. in charge. On the fateful night of Christmas Eve, 24th December 1944, I was on watch on the bows. I didn’t know the time properly but it must have been about 6 o’clock in the evening when there was an explosion aft of midships and the ship shuddered, lost speed and came to a near stop. I knew right away that a torpedo had hit us as I had had the experience a couple of times before.

There was a garbled message over the tannoy system but I don’t know what was said and I didn’t hear any more messages, I think it had been said in French. The well deck below me had already had a large number of American troops on it before, but now as more men came up from below, they were packed in like sardines. A number of high-ranking American officers came up the stairway onto the poop deck where I was and kept asking me what they should do. The ship was quite steady so all I could say to them was wait and they would get some orders soon.

I was expecting the rest of my gun crew to close up but none came. I didn’t know if they had orders for boat stations or just couldn’t get across the well deck as by now it was jam packed with soldiers in full pack with Tommy guns on their backs.

Later, a destroyer passed down the starboard side and over a tannoy or load hailer told the Captain to drop both anchors bow and stern because the ship was turning and moving with the current. Two members of the crew came on the bows and slipped anchors. I hardly saw them with all the excitement around me and I didn’t know where they went to afterwards.

The destroyer, which I learned later was HMS Brilliant, came back alongside and stayed quite a long time taking men off. She got a couple of lines aboard, aft of midships, and we could see men jumping for her, many missing and falling between the ships and some landing on the deck. The destroyer was rising and falling with the swell of the sea. At one second the decks were level and the next had moved 20 feet vertically and 15 feet horizontally apart. It was no wonder so many men were lost between the ships or crashed on the decks.

More American officers kept asking me what to do and I could only tell them to wait for orders. The men packed on the well deck below were well disciplined, as they did not try to come up to the fo’c’sle as it was out of bounds. Only at the last minutes before she went down did the officers come up even though they were so packed below.

After what seemed like an age the Brilliant cast off and we were left on our own. I could see the lights of Cherbourg and twinkling lights of ships around us lying perhaps half a mile off.
Later a deep rumble travelled through the ship and I could feel the bows lifting underneath me. I was watching the mast and when it seemed to be about 45 degrees, I shouted “right lads, time to go”. It developed then into one mad scramble with top packs and Tommy guns flying everywhere. I don’t think half the troops had life jackets on them since with all the gear they were carrying, they had them in their hands.

I ripped off my balaclava and threw off my duffel coat and kicked off my sea boots. I rushed to the bow with men all around me climbed over the guard rails and slid down the side of the bows tearing the backs of my legs and buttocks on the rough plates as I slid down the bow. I hit the water and swam away as fast as I could go. There were men on floats and debris all around.

When I hit the water the red light on my life jacket lit up and I kept on swimming as hard as I could go. I stopped once to look back, there was a crowd of men near and behind me. I saw the bows of the Leopoldville sticking up in the air and men dropping off her like flies. I turned away and kept on swimming hard for a while, then as I looked around me I seemed to be quite alone.

I must have been in the water about 15 minutes or so, I really couldn’t tell, when a PT boat came alongside me. I later learnt it was the PC 564. It had a scrambling net hanging over the side and I grabbed hold of part of the net but I could neither climb up or let go of the net I was so exhausted. I was rising and falling with the swell on the sea and the rise and fall of the ship. Two American sailors came down the net and somehow dragged me up it. I was so exhausted I collapsed in a heap on a canvas on the deck and one of the sailors said to me "don’t’ lie there buddy" and lifted the corner of the sheet up and I could see two or three dead bodies underneath in army gear.

They half carried me to a short steel ladder, took me down and put me in a bunk. I thought it was a sick bay at the time but later learned it was an officer’s cabin and I had been put in the bunk of Lt. Wesley Johnson, an officer on the ship. My mind goes completely blank from this moment. I don’t know how long I was on the PC 564 or when or how I was put ashore at Cherbourg.

Plate 13.

PC 564

My next memory is that I was sat around a large oil drum with a fire in it and there were three or four other men as well. I don’t know if they were crew or not as we did not speak much. We all had a couple of grey blankets round our shoulders and we sat there for a long time. Much later, an American army sergeant came up to us and asked who was in charge of the group and after some muttering it was decided that I was.

He told me to follow him and we went to a storage shed further down the docks. He issued us with a couple of packs of cigarettes, some chocolate and army field packs, a large tin of frankfurters in brine, a tin of ice cream and a large tin of peaches. The last thing I remember of Cherbourg was sitting huddled round this fire eating peaches and ice cream out of tins and toasting frankfurters on pieces of wire.

My mind is almost a complete blank from then on. I presumed it was Christmas Day but I really didn’t know what day it was. Who took charge of us and how and when I got back to England I don’t know. I have a slight recollection that I was issued with some new kit at a naval store in Southampton, then given a railway warrant and sent home on 21 days survivors leave.

I returned back to base at Brownlow Hill in Liverpool and was transferred back to the Royal Navy and sent to the submarine depot ship HMS Forth at Dunoon on the Clyde.

I was bosun’s mate in the wire and rope stores where I did rope and wire splicing on ship’s riggings and torpedo press wires. We were the mother ship to the T class submarines and the funny thing was I most certainly worked on the submarine Tamir, which sank the German U-boat U-486 that had sunk the Leopoldville on the 24th December 1944.

Whilst I was working in the bosun’s store on HMS Forth I used to make things out of any old bit of wood that I could find. I had fetched some tools back with me when I was on leave. A few chisels, a small plane, a wood scraper and brush and French polish and I made spoon-racks shaped like different countries, England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales and other small things like jewellery boxes and serving tea trays. These I exchanged for tots of rum from the lads, which I bottled. I also exchanged them for steaks of meat from the butchers plus lard or potatoes from the other stores. We used to go in the wire stores in the bow of the ship and close the watertight door. There we had an electric fire, which we would lay on its back and have a good fry up of steak and chips and bread. When the officer was doing his rounds at night I am sure he could smell it cooking, he would knock on the door but we didn’t open it. We would keep quiet till he had gone away, that steak and chips was like a banquet to my mate and I.
I came on leave one time from HMS Forth and I brought two bottles of neat rum home with me. My sister Sheila was getting married to a Canadian soldier named Allen MacAndrew and there were quite a lot of service men and women at the wedding as Sheila was in the WTAS and my sister Pat was in the WRAF. We had a good party afterwards and I was dishing out tots of rum and a few of them got well oiled, as they didn’t know how strong it was.

One of my last jobs was to fix the Christmas tree to the mast of HMS Forth just before Christmas 1945. I was discharged on the 24th January 1946 and sent down for my demob suit in stores in Oldham. Then I went home with my trilby and brown suit to start civilian life again after my spell in the Navy.

I know my story is a bit patchy and there are many missing episodes but my memory is not too good after 44 years. It was an episode in my life that I had intended to push to the back of my mind until it was rekindled by Ron Gardner and Mr Wesley Johnson when I learned he was looking for me. Now when I look back I realise that all in all I enjoyed the life and though I had the wind put up me a few times, it was an experience to remember.

PLATE 14.

TOMMY KAY 1988

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