Written by James Hammond
The last person I wish to mention I did not meet. Arnold S. had been the Principal Officer in the Marine Office having retired a few years before I became a staff member there. He was still very active in social circles involving other staff members and his name cropped up often, in files and in conversation. From the latter it was clear he was very well regarded but back then, in the early 1990s, I assumed it was because of his role as a boss.
Only a few years ago I read his obituary and it contained a detail from his wartime service. He was, if I remember correctly, an Australian and may have served in the Australian Merchant Navy. Arnold was Second Engineer on a merchant vessel which was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. Orders were given to abandon ship. Having secured the engine room and evacuated the personnel Arnold exited the engine room and was incensed to see the submarine stationary on the surface just astern of the ship. The ship carried a gun on the aft end and what angered Arnold was the two Australian gunners just waiting to jump into a lifeboat. He asked why they did not shoot at the submarine (I think you can imagine the language used) and was informed that the submarine was too close and they could not depress the barrel of the gun sufficiently to bear on it.
Arnold ordered the gunners back to their gun, re-entered the engine room, started the main engine and immediately put her full ahead. This was sufficient to trim the ship and bring the gun to bear, and they succeeded in disabling the submarine. I have no knowledge of subsequent events. Presumably they were rescued as Arnold lived a long life afterwards.
Those mentioned in this article are the only people I knew directly or indirectly who took part in the war, but there are many others of course who played different parts and all of them vital. It is one thing to read or hear of accounts but quite another to actually know or have met those directly involved. For example it was only a few years ago that my wife’s aunt, when talking about nothing in particular, told us how she was invited as the works foreman (and some would scream at that term now) to witness the loading into a ship of the flexible pipeline that carried petrol across the Channel after the D-Day landings. But for a chance moment when she decided to relay that information we would never have known.
Similarly there is in our small town a memorial laid in 2001 to the officers and men of the 1st SAS led by Lt. Col. “Paddy” Mayne, one of the British Army’s most decorated officers, stationed here during the war. Although I have passed the memorial many times it was only a chance discussion in the street with a man I only knew by sight, who told me of the history of Paddy Mayne. From his manner it seems that he knew him personally if not served under him. What a difference that close personal knowledge makes.
During the writing of this article my wife purchased a recently published history of our small valley. In it is a list of the names of those fallen in WW1 inscribed on the War Memorial, as there is in all villages and towns in the land. Although I have walked past the Memorial many times in the thirty years I have lived here and read the names on occasion, it was only when I looked closely at the list I realised the devastation caused. Rows of next door neighbours suffering losses, quite a few instances of brothers being lost, obvious because of the names and addresses given. For such a small town/village it seems that it was not possible to walk more than 20 yards, anywhere, without coming to a place that had suffered loss. When called upon 20 years later, as in the rest of the country, they responded again.
Will we see their likes again? I don’t know. I hope we never have to, but that hope is shrinking almost daily.
(You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.)
Lefty Lies ..Last nights TV repeated a distortion of the Blitz story. In short how the Toffs failed to provide bomb shelters for poor East Enders.
But no mention of Peace Pledgers, pacifists who refused to think of re arming , leaving Nev Chamberlain to pinch from the Road fund to finance Spitfire development .
Foremost amongst the commies and conshies were the editor and writers of the daily herald : Lansbury of Labour Party and Ritchie Calder …portrayed as the hero of the hour .
The guilty men ?? look no further than the authors
My Father was an age such that he was not called up until well into the War. He was posted to REME, and joined the fray crossing the Channel a few days after D-Day.
At the end of the war he was in Palestine, and a Staff Sargent. One day he was crossing the Parade Ground when an officer passed in the other direction, who turned on his heel and asked my Dad if he fancied a trip to Petra. This was to be a self-supporting adventure of several days, and I guess the officer reckoned my Dad could be relied upon to keep the vehicles moving.
Dad thoroughly enjoyed the trip to Petra, and I think was one of the high points in his life. As with others’ tales of the war he was very unforthcoming as to his experiences.
Back in England and a civilian it was hard to ear a living. But I suppose you just got on with it. Along with what others have said, you do have to wonder how today’s younger generation would cope faced with the challenges of earlier times.
James article has been stimulating.
I second that sentiment Jack. They will start by whinging “ mental health”. Actually I’m getting Pissed off with hearing that nonsense!
OMG, it`s apologies to James Hammond, I have only just got round to reading all three parts of his interesting article in one go.I am particularly apologising because this is the first time I can recall anybody has ever referred to my name in print in the opening line.
Probably proves I have a NIL attention span!.
I say interesting and relevant to me too as although I am probably from an earlier era (born 1935) than James I am an ex merchant navy man mysef and should have a few similar WW2 tales to tell.
However, in all the time I was at sea 1953/1962 and 2 years pre-sea training, there was rarely even any mention of their involvement.
At training school I do recall we knew one of the navigation instructors had been torpedoed in I think a BT tanker and suffered with oil polluted lungs, survived the war but passed away early in life due to the effects.
There was the Chief Steward on one of my company ships, who told me he was a sick bay attendant in the Royal Navy during the war and how he sang to one of the injured lads under his care, as he approached death – sorry can`t remember the song, he did tell me.
But my best story is reserved till I married my wife – a Scots girl and met her Uncle John.
Briefly he served in the first World War in a Highland Regiment, but enlisted in WW2 as a Sergeant in the Pioneer corps.
He was sent to North Africa on the P & O troopship “Strathaird” in convoy where they sailed virtually across the Atlantic and back again to Freetown in Sierra Leone, where they stopped briefly, then on to South Africa, another short stop and then round the Cape and on up the East African coast, the Red Sea, the Suez Canal and docked in Alexandria on New Years day 1940 (? I think, I`m not at home so I cannot check his Journal – Oh yes he kept one and very descriptive too, apart from fighting the war, I think he treated the whole episode as a travelogue)
Anyway, he with his detachment of 70 men was sent `up the line` from Alexandria, to take their part in the war. I have not got a clear idea of their duties but I guess it was actually providing services to the fighting men.Water, Fuel to advanced positions,Railway construction or damage repair, concrete gun emplacements and unloading ammunition trains.etc, etc.
I cannot give or remember all the details of the North African campaign, but there came an episode where we lost Torbruk and the British army was pushed back nearly to Alexandria and from where the El Alamein recovery under `Monty` and the 8th Army began.
Uncle John and his men were cut off and left in Torbruk, eventually it fell and many died or `went into the bag`.Uncle John didn`t
Torbruk was a harbour and supply ships were unloaded there.
Uncle John and his men were ordered to leave on what turned out to be the “Last ship out of Torbruck” before it finally fell
Somehow, they got aboard with most of their kit and sailed on the “City of Calcutta” an Ellermans ship.late at night
Unfortunately it was unable to sail at full speed as one screw had been damaged in a previous run to Malta.
But they evaded everything and got to Alexandria unscathed.
Subsequently Uncle John was sent to Syria to train East African troops, he eventually came home on leave in 1943 and we have a cutting of an interview he gave to “The St.Andrews Citizen”
Thanks James Hammond for a great yarn
Apropos of nothing, there is a story of Scottish Seamen Heroes, who never sailed the 7 seas “Para Handy
It angers me intensely that those people responsible for our freedoms today, perhaps more precisely yesterday’s freedoms, are so disrespected by the woke mob and probably ignored by the majority. Heaven help us if we were to rely on that woke mob today; they are more likely to support the enemy.
Brave men and women indeed – an example to us all.
I still struggle to understand how people of that era who gave so much in defence of liberty, freedom and democracy could be so easily misled by the political class into a programme of nationalsation of industry and the establishment of the welfare state. What folly! We had not even ended rationing in this country before the Tories were already plotting to join the European project with the loss of sovereignty that that project entailed. Giving more power to the state created the career politician and may have contributed to setting in motion the gradual decline of many of the values of those selfless people.
80 years ago there was no hesitation about fighting for a country that most people felt as their own. Today, I only have to travel 10 miles to see a once proud prosperous, entrepreneurial engineering town that could raise enough money in an afternoon to buy a new Spitfire for the war effort reduced to a high immigrant, impoverished welfare town. How that generation were badly let down by the greed, incompetence and skullduggery of the political, corporate and academic class that brought us to this sorry state.
Many are good people, many are not many ere competent many others not. Many fought in spite of their instincts, many were not allowed to fight due to their jobs and were returned forcibly in many cases because of a skill or ability…
No there were many with diferent agendas who found other activity, usually lucrative. Conscientious objectors they sometimes called themselves, and they were certainly a nuisence.
No, the terror has to be faced and ignored, and the body has many ways of finding excuses for survival. and many never have t face it, and many turn to money as compensation.. And politics is a handy avenue.