A Sailor in WW2

The Story

My father has mostly not been very forthcoming to me about what he did during “the war”. I should mention that to my generation and to his, “the war” is always WW2. Anyhow, knowing that many who served in the war and were in combat are often reticent about their experiences, I was reluctant to broach what might have been a painful subject. He does occasionally suddenly mention bits and pieces however and I have and am putting together some kind of essay from what he says.

He joined the royal navy in 1942 when he was 17. His reason for volunteering was that if he waited until being called up he might well have finished up down a coal mine and he suffers from claustrophobia.

Beginnings

He initially served on HMS Malaya, a veteran battleship that fought at the Battle of Jutland. He would have started his officer training but missed the intake because someone dropped a piece of armour plating on his foot and he had to spend some time in hospital. That was why he was on HMS Duke of York rather than in HMS Alfred at the time of the Battle of the North Cape.

Battle of the North Cape

I had picked up hints that he had been on board the HMS Duke of York during the Battle of the North Cape in 1943 and that he had eaten bully beef sandwiches for Christmas dinner as nothing else could be got to the men in that compartment through the flash proof doors through which the shells arrived.
He had in fact been in the 5.25 port forward gun magazine passing shells to the gun with 3 other men. He hadn’t known much of what was happening as he was locked down under three 6″ thick watertight doors and only felt the ship vibrate as the big guns fired. He said the noise was tremendous. He is now rather deaf.
It was the sort of situation where, if you won, you came up again, and if you lost, you wouldn’t see daylight again and probably wouldn’t know much about it. As I mentioned, he is claustrophobic and so his position during the battle could not have been a very comfortable one.
There is a very good book on the Battle of the North Cape by Angus Konstan ISBN 184415856-x.

Officer Training

He spent 6 months at sea, and then went to HMS Alfred for officer training passing out as a "snotty" or midshipman. Officers were urgently required as D-day was fast approaching and they needed officers for all the boats going across the channel. The training lasted only 3 months as all the basic stuff was covered during basic training rounded off with sea experience.

Minesweeping

He missed out on D-day. He spent the rest of the war on a variety of minesweepers on the East coast of England starting out in a converted trawler, the HMS Oystermouth Castle, built in 1914 with a crew of 20, then moved to the HMS Speedy with the rank of Temporary Sub Lt. With a crew of 140 and a much larger vessel, this was quite a step up for him.
I asked him about the sweeping. He explained how they swept for acoustic mines with a sort of big bucket on the front of the boat with a mechanical hammer making a loud noise to detonate them. They used twin sweeps out of the back generating a magnetic field to detonate the magnetic mines. They used a .303 rifle fire to blow up the contact mines after cutting the tethering cables when they floated to the surface. He said they went up with quite a bang.
He later told me how they used to deal with the new German oyster (pressure) mines planted off the Dutch coast and before the Normandy beaches. They were supplied with a tube with a slot. Into the tube went hand grenades. These hand grenades had come from the desert after the allies had defeated the german army there. They were old and very unreliable. The minesweeper would set out at a particular speed and the grenades would be dropped to explode beneath the water to mimic the pressure wave of a ship. The mines would then go off. This was a very dangerous procedure and is described elsewhere by a sailor who witnessed what could happen when things went wrong. He mentioned that after VE-day, he was transferred to the Far East and (I think) the HMS Wave to sweep for mines around New Guinea, but the Japanese were defeated before he arrived, so he was not there for very long, being demobbed in late 1945.
In the early 1960’s, he served briefly with the RNVR as a full Lieutenant in Singapore during the undeclared war between Indonesia and Malaysia during which the British backed Malaysia.

Hero?

The newspapers seem to make a great play of “our heroes” who serve today. I don’t think my father or any of them thinks of themselves in that light at all. It was just where he was when he was and it was what you did. I guess I am proud of him.
All credit to all the men and women who worked towards our final victory over terrible enemies. Many of whom were killed, or worse in some cases, injured often in ways that left no physical scar. Not many of them left now.
All credit too to those today who put themselves in harm’s way for us.

Footnote

The old man died in February 2021 at the age of 95 after a bout of covid. My sisters and I were with him when he passed. I have miniatures of his medals: Hard earned he said to me and not much to show for it.