Eventually the
Glenearn
arrived at the southern end of the Suez Canal and we
disembarked, fully expecting to find 1030 waiting for
us. There must have been a cock-up due to wartime
measures and in the meantime Glenearn carried
on into the Canal and steamed northwards to Port
Suez. So here we were, stranded in Port Teufic and
seemingly nobody knew anything about us and cared
even less. In the late afternoon somebody in
authority decided to put the crew of 1030 on
the night train to Port Suez. Before the war there
must not have been a night train in Egypt because
this one had strips of wood for seats and no windows.
Here we were in white tropical rig - white shirts and
shorts - stowing our kit in the flat-topped open
wagon and about to ride in an Egyptian train. Nothing
wrong with that, you might think, as you become
engrossed in this stirring episode, but as the train
slowly began its journey, night was falling and, as
is usual in desert countries, the land began to give
up its heat. From a high temperature, the thermometer
reading fell and in no time at all it was almost
freezing. All we had to keep ourselves warm were our
respirators; everything else was packed in the
kitbags on the rear wagon! Boy, it was cold and those
batten seats did nothing to alleviate the discomfort.
The train travelled so slowly we could have jumped
out of the coach and run alongside, except the night
was so dark we would have fallen over the railway
sleepers. The train frequently halted and out of the
darkness would come the plaintive cries of:
"Eggs and bread!" Young Egyptian boys
riding on the train took advantage of every stop to
sell very small hard-boiled eggs and pieces of bread.
We had no Egyptian money so they were satisfied with
a handful of our change for what could only have been
boiled pigeons eggs and bread. Initially, because of
the cold, we were glad to buy, but after a few stops
the need wore off. I can say that, up to then, I had
never been so cold. The train travelled so slowly
that it seemed the driver was not sure of which way
to go. When dawn eventually broke, he seemed to be
satisfied and the train picked up speed.
With great relief we arrived at Port Suez,
detrained and entered H.M.S. Canopus, a type
of barracks for personnel awaiting onward orders.
Remember those few lines previously about
‘buzzes’? Once we had completed the joining
routine and had our billets allocated the buzz was
that the transport bringing our Motor Launches had
been sunk and so we would be dispersed amongst an
ever-hungry fleet. This buzz persevered very strongly
for days and I was beginning to believe it. The
boredom, the heat and the flies began to tell; our
only relaxation was to go swimming at a place called
Ras-el-Tin, which was a beach below the King of
Egypt’s summer palace.
One evening I decided to go for a
walk alone and found myself walking into a bar, which
was empty except for an Australian soldier. I sat
alongside him at the bar and ordered a bottle of
Egyptian beer, called ‘onion beer’ - and
that handle wasn’t far from wrong. We began
chatting and after the usual questions: "Where
are you from?" and : "How long have you
been out here?" the Aussie asked me if I was
waiting for the fortune-teller bloke. After the New
Year’s Day haircut my fortune had already been
told so I answered in the negative. He seemed
relieved at this and went on to tell me how the
fortune-teller wallah by all accounts had dished out
some ‘pukka gen’ to the Aussie’s
mates. He had been to the bar on several occasions
but had not seen the old Egyptian. A couple of
bottles of onion beer later and in walked a small,
elderly, poorly-dressed Egyptian gentleman. The
Aussie sat up in expectation, but to his dismay the
old man came to the bar alongside me. He took from
his apparel the lid of a biscuit tin and proceded to
pour very fine sand into it, and shook it until the
surface was even. He took my right hand, opened it to
resemble a claw and told me to trace lines in the
sand in a sort of shaking movement. With this
movement completed, he took my hand from the sand and
gazed at the squiggles for some time. Apparently no
pictures appeared there for him to decipher, so he
shook the lid again until the surface of the sand was
once more even and gestured for me to make some more
patterns by just drawing my finger tips through it. I
obliged and again he studied the squiggles and began
to talk. "For you," he said, "plenty
boom, boom and then no more boom, boom for a long
time. You have a Father and a girl; you will go home
to them before the war is over. That will be five
piastres." In those days five piastres were
worth about one shilling, so I paid up, offered him a
beer, which he refused as he stowed his equipment
away and, without looking at the soldier, just walked
out of the pub. For a while after that the Aussie was
silent and then went on about wogs in general and
that particular wog, who came in for some verbal
abuse. I was included next, when he went on the tell
the world how he had waited for evening after evening
and then was ignored for a ‘Pommie
bastard’. I just laughed at him because by then,
in the war, that title was almost a term of affection
between us and the Aussies.
It was strange that the Westernised
Oriental Gentleman could tell me that I had a Father
and a girl, but gave no mention of a Mother; if it
was a shot in the dark, he hadn’t missed by very
much. About the boom, boom there was no doubt. After
all, that was the reason for my being there. Of the
remainder, … well?
Someone in authority laid on a
delapidated bus to go to Alexandria and return at set
times each day, which certainly served to lift the
monotony. Ratings in Canopus were coming and
going, according to the demands on the respective
branches, but we, like the three-badgemen in Drake,
seemed to be becoming barracks’ stanchions. A
run into Alex became a tonic. Of course I
shouldn’t moan; every day at Port Suez was a
safe day and it did seem as though the buzzes were
coming true. I even found my name down on a list for
emergency draft if a requirement for an Auxiliary
Watchkeeper turned up. Alexandria was a panacea for
boredom. A visit to the Royal Fleet Club took one
back to civilisation. The place was spotless and good
meals were obtainable. The favourite meal of steak,
egg and chips was always available - it could have
been well-prepared camel, I suppose, but no grumbles.
More about camel in a further episode. There was a
humourous side when paying a waiter in settlement of
the bill. Each of the recognised waiters - they all
looked alike - had to wear a large brass numbered
disk, suspended by a chain around his neck. When a
bill was settled and change was required, the waiter
had to hand over his disk, to be returned when he
brought back the change. Waiters had been known to
abscond with the cash; hence the introduction of the
brass tally. No brass disk, no work. There were
continuous shouts of: "Hey, Abdul, hand over
your tally." They were all Abduls and, as I have
written, they all looked alike.
After a satisfying meal and a
couple of beers in the large bar, where one often met
old shipmates and learned about others, the next stop
was the Barber’s Shop. Even a short back and
sides was a work of art. I was pampered like an earl,
escorted to a chair, towel carefully wrapped round
the neck. A boy unlaced my black shoes and took them
off to clean them. Knowing what the cut was going to
be, one was still asked: "How would you like it,
Sir?" "The usual": was the standing
reply. I went to sleep in the chair and awoke to find
one of them carefully trimming the hair from my
nostrils. Back went the chair to facilitate a
hair-wash and shampoo. Towel dried and a splash of
Brylcreem - the whole treatment costing about five
piastres. A one piastre tip and another piastre to
the boy who had returned with the shoes and fitted
them on my feet and I walked out feeling like an
earl.
There was a red light district in
Alexandria, the main area was called Rue des Soeurs,
which in English became Sisters’ Street - out of
bounds to all service personnel. It was worth a walk
to the street to see the British Army Redcaps
patrolling at each end, forbidding entry to
servicemen, and to see the ‘ladies’
parading, displaying and inviting, and cursing the
Redcaps, who were cursing in return, having to keep a
watchful eye under the never-ending hot sun. When
leaving the bus at Alexandria, the warning was always
read out about Sisters’ Street, with the
familiar lines of: "You can look but you must
not touch!"
Then, one day at the end of March,
the Motor Launches did arrive and were taken from the
transport to be put into the water. Tommy Andrews and
I set to, putting the engines in working order; first
job to work on the donkey engine, that good old maid
of all work. With that working efficiently we fuelled
and filled the fresh water tanks, then brought the
main engines into a working state of readiness.
Before continuing my story I will
list the names of those I remember finally forming
the crew of 1030. The skipper, Lieutenant
Cooksey R.N.V.R.; a new Sub-Lieutenant whose name I
cannot remember; Tommy Andrews, the P.O. Motor
Mechanic (MM), the MM also stood for ‘Mickey
Mouse’; the Coxswain, who was a leading seaman,
but whose name is forgotten; myself; Tommy Shiels, an
Irishman seaman gunner; Bill Sams, the telegraphist;
Lofty Newman, the senior Asdic rating, together with
his assistant, who was also the cook, and whose name
I cannot remember; and last of all, because he was
the junior among us, was Syd Pownall, an ordinary
seaman and understudy to the Coxswain and Tommy
Shiels. All in all we were a fairly happy bunch and
got on well together. My P.O. and I were usually left
alone to get on with coping with the mysteries of the
Engine Room.
The 1030 formed up with
the two other Motor Launches, 1011 and 1032, and
because much of the fleet was in Alexandria Harbour
the launches patrolled the entrance to the harbour to
prevent attacks by Italian boats. One of these
partly-submerged craft, armed with an explosive
device in its bow, bravely piloted by an Italian
naval officer, struck one of the battleships - I
believe it was the H.M.S. Warspite - and put
her out of action for some time. For such reasons we
formed a boom defence group. When the end of the day
drew near, the Motor Launch carrying out the night
patrol was fitted with a barrage balloon on its
stern. The balloon, something like a small airship,
was controlled by a wire hawser and set off to a
pre-determined height. Our nights, when on patrol
with this contraption, sometimes turned out to be
rather hair-raising. A sudden strong gust of wind
would cause the barrage balloon to veer off on a
course of its own, taking the launch with it as the
stern followed the pull of the hawser. As we
patrolled near the boom there was always the danger
that we could finish up on the boom. In those early
days of Asdic, the craft using it could only proceed
slowly for the set to be effective. So travelling at
a slow speed and towing a rather willful barrage
balloon meant that those on the bridge had to keep
their wits about them.
The war in Greece wasn’t
progressing favourably. As long as only the Italian
forces were in opposition the Greek Army could deal
with them, but when Mussolini shouted for help and
Adolph Hitler sent in crack German troops, the Greeks
had to fall back on the defensive. Churchill had
always held that Greece was the cradle of democracy
and detached British and Commonwealth troops from the
North African Force to assist the Greeks. By the time
those lads arrived the campaign was in a state of
collapse and the powers that be decided to evacuate
the Army from Greece. Seaborne conveyances were at a
premium, so warships were used to bring off the
soldiers and many thousands of them were landed at
Suda Bay, on the island of Crete. As in Alexandria
Harbour, where a battleship was holed by a bomb
conveyed by a partly-submerged craft, so in Suda Bay
was the heavy cruiser, H.M.S. York
(above - Navy Photos), similarly
treated. She sank and rested on the bottom of the bay
with a large part of her hull still above the
surface, so theoretically she could be repaired in
situ. The York was emptied of stores,
which were placed in a building in Suda Bay, which
became named York’s Stores. This information may
seem unnecessary, but it does have a bearing on my
story, as you will read later on. With the German
Luftwaffe able to operate from captured air bases in
Greece, the Fleet assisting the evacuation suffered
some heavy losses; that is why repairs to the York
were so imperative. So once again we, the flotilla,
were required to carry out the duty of guarding the
entrance to a harbour, this time the harbour of Suda
Bay in Crete. The three launches, 1011, 1030
and 1032 made for Suda Bay, carrying out exercises on
the way and eventually we arrived to begin boom
defence duties, protecting H.M.S. York from
any attack by seaborne antagonists.
Here we were at the end of April,
the weather very hot and dry and drinking water in
short supply due to the influx of evacuees from
Greece. To conserve water I agreed to grow a beard,
in Naval jargon ‘to discontinue shaving’. A
serviceman in the Royal Navy is required to shave
every day and to grow a beard had to request
permission to discontinue shaving. If granted, that
person’s leave was stopped until he could
present a suitable face fungus. If, after a certain
period of time, a presentable beard did not appear,
the order would be given to start shaving again; the
standing remark accompanying the order would be:
"You look like a rat peering through a bale of
cotton waste!" On the mess-deck would come the
shout of "Shave off!". This expression was
often used in conversation when a note of amazement
crept into the discussion. And so I grew a beard. In
the early days the face fungus itched like the devil,
but one day I had a presentable ‘set’, even
enough hair on my upper lip to wax the ends of the
moustache!
The harbour of Suda Bay soon became
a very busy place with ships of all sizes unloading
men and materials, while the Luftwaffe carried out
bombing raids. By the third week in May the bombing
continued non-stop. In Suda Bay was a merchant ship
called the Dalsman; she was soon on the
receiving end of the bombing and was hit and sank,
resting on the bottom. Our skipper was ordered to go
alongside her to take off the crew and we swarmed
aboard to give assistance. There were some horrendous
sights. We were able to take off the survivors and at
the same time we collected a number of machine-guns;
enough for me to have my personal 0.303 Savage
machine-gun. Together with the armaments we collected
a supply of tinned food and, to top it all, huge
pieces of frozen beef from the ship’s freezer.
The people from the Dallsman were landed at
the tiny stone jetty and after hacking away at the
frozen beef, taking what we could deal with, the
remainder was shared among the other small ships in
the bay.
German
map of Crete in 1941, showing
"Suda-Bucht" (Suda Bay) on the North
coast. The parachutes show where the German
paratroopers landed (click for Battle
of Crete Summary)
With the guns we were able to have
a go at German parachutists being dropped at Canea,
on the north coast, a few miles from Suda Bay. Many
of them were dropped short of their target, coming
over the sea. They didn’t have a chance when
they landed in the water, loaded as they were. One of
the first German words I learned was "Hilfe!",
as they cried for help before drowning. After the
German bombers had completed their tasks around the
bay, the pilots flew low over the harbour to prevent
the ack-ack guns from having a go at them, so it
became our turn to have a go with our machine-guns,
to strafe the planes as they flew out to sea. We
concentrated on the tail gunners and must have had
some effect because soon we were strafed in turn by
fighter planes. In answering back we were credited
with half of a fighter plane which was shot down near
where we were operating.
The proverbial ‘buzzes’
were flying thick and fast and it soon transpired
that a number of our warships had been sunk or badly
damaged while attempting to bring supplies to our
beleaguered forces or tackling the German seaborne
attempts to land more troops. Using captured
airfields, Jerry was able to bring in the airborne
troops; we had no fighters to oppose the Luftwaffe.
The end of April had seen the evacuation of Greece
and now towards the end of May crept in talk of the
evacuation of Crete. Just as the re-floating of the
cruiser York was starting, along came a large
number of Stuka bomber planes, each with a whistle
device in its tail and carrying one large bomb. The
pilot dived the plane vertically, pointing it at the
target - in this case the York. The screaming
whistle was frightening enough; the released bomb
couldn’t miss and that large number of Stukas
flying in single file soon sent the York back
to the sea-bed.
