Cruiser

by Mike Carlton

  His mate was one of the nine soldiers who had been killed – blown to pieces.5

  The upper deck on the starboard side was a slaughterhouse. Strangely, one soldier who had been asleep on a camp stretcher died without a mark on him. Others were dismembered in a sickening obscenity of flesh and gore – a torso here, limbs there. Rivulets of blood and entrails ran into the scuppers to drain over the ship’s side. Jim Nelson and another rating, Able Seaman Alex Creasy, of Narrabeen in Sydney, were given the hideous job of gathering what mortal remains they could collect. Gagging, retching, they shovelled lumps of flesh and bone into potato sacks, to be identified as best they could. In the naval tradition, they wrapped the bodies in canvas hammock covers weighted at the bottom and stitched them together with sailmaker’s twine.

  There were two more raids that afternoon, by JU88s coming in from the north, but they were successfully beaten off and no more damage was done. Then, in the evening, with the sun setting in a brilliant orange glow astern and a crescent moon rising on the port quarter, Perth buried her dead. The Captain brought the ship back to 14 knots at a slow zigzag – the safest possible speed with the risk of enemy submarines in the area. Sailors and soldiers mustered quietly on every vantage point. White Ensigns were lowered to half-mast at a word of command. In a sad silence broken only by the familiar drone of the fans forcing air down to the remaining boilers, and the wash of the sea below, Chaplain Ron Bevington read the age-old words of the naval burial service over the 13 shrouds lined in a neat rank along the quarterdeck:

  We therefore commit his body to the deep, to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body, when the sea shall give up her dead, and the life of the world to come, through our Lord Jesus Christ; who at His coming shall change our vile body, that it may be like His glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby He is able to subdue all things to Himself.

  Even in death, there was no peace. In the midst of the ceremony, four more enemy aircraft swooped low towards the ship and released a brace of bombs off to port, happily with no damage. They were chased off by Fulmar fighters, which had joined the convoy from Alexandria. One by one, the bodies were tipped overboard, to the crack of four rifles fired in final salute. Jim Nelson was the duty bugler that night:

  As the bodies were committed to the sea, I had to sound the Last Post and Reveille. When the Chaplain nodded to me to sound off I was overcome with emotion, my lips went dry and for a moment I could not raise a note.

  I closed my eyes and by mind transportation took myself away from the ship and played as if I were back in harbour at a routine Sunset. I played as I had never played before. Every feeling in my body went through that instrument. I made the strident bugle tones as mellow and sweet as I could and lost myself in the production.

  I am only nineteen years old! What is expected of me? How much more can I give?6

  Perth made it back to Alexandria at two o’clock the next morning, slipping along the cleared channel, past the Ras el-Tin light and through the boom to tie up at her familiar berth alongside Shed 46, where the rescued troops were put ashore. But there was more for Jim Nelson to give. Assigned to hose down the starboard well deck that forenoon, he and Alex Creasy were sickened again when the jet of high-pressure water washed a man’s head out from beneath the loading simulator. It was a shipmate, a face they recognised, although, in decent respect, they never revealed who it was. Another man, Petty Officer Charlie Garside of Port Melbourne, found the upper half of one of the dead soldiers. The funerals had already been held; there was nothing for it but to quietly dispose of these tragic remains over the side into the harbour. The dockyard workers were already swarming over the ship to patch up the damage. Perth’s diarists wrote of their anguish and their deliverance, with Roy Norris reflecting:

  Black Friday for us indeed and I, for one, am lucky to be alive. I have this day looked upon death in its most horrible form and thank God with a very humble heart that I am spared.7

  Reg Whiting recorded:

  The least I feel like saying is a prayer. We are safe, by the Grace of God we got through, but only just … you cannot fight against dive bombers. They were everywhere. How we got through is beyond me. God is with us. I am feeling very forlorn and like everyone else, just about done in. The number of ships hit and sunk are too numerous to mention. Thank God we got off so lightly, but what is there to look forward to? Providence I hope will help.8

  The flight from Crete wrought a devastating toll on the fleet, as Admiral Cunningham had known it would. The first evacuation squadron sent to Heraklion in the north of the island suffered far greater losses than Perth’s group. Two destroyers were sunk. HMS Orion, the cruiser Perth had met so long ago in happier times in the Caribbean, staggered in through the boom at Alexandria and up harbour little better than a floating wreck. Bombs from a Stuka attack had destroyed A-turret, her bridge and her stokers’ mess, killing her captain and another 260 ratings and soldiers on board. With her internal communications destroyed, she had been steered by helm orders shouted along a chain of men from the emergency conning platform to the After Steering Position. Dido, another cruiser, was stained and blackened by fire, with her B-turret guns pointing drunkenly into the air.

  As the month of June 1941 began, the Mediterranean Fleet had been all but crippled. The arithmetic was appalling. Three capital ships – Warspite, Barham and the carrier Formidable – had been put out of action. Three cruisers – Gloucester, Fiji and Calcutta – had been sunk, along with six destroyers. Six more cruisers, including Perth, and seven more destroyers, were damaged to varying degrees. In all, 1828 sailors of the fleet had been killed.

  On the plus side, the navy extracted 16,500 men from the disaster. But 12,600 were left behind on Crete. Most became prisoners of the Germans, including 3102 men of the Australian 6th Division. Some were sheltered by the Cretans and managed to escape from the island later in small boats, or in two submarines sent to get them. A still smaller handful stayed on, to fight as guerrillas in the hills.

  Cunningham summed up the catastrophe in his final despatch to London:

  It is not easy to convey how heavy was the strain that men and ships sustained. Apart from the cumulative effect of prolonged seagoing over extended periods it has to be remembered that in this last instance ships’ companies had none of the inspiration of battle with the enemy to bear them up. Instead they had the unceasing anxiety of the task of trying to bring away in safety thousands of their own countrymen, many of whom were in an exhausted and dispirited condition, in ships necessarily so overcrowded that, even when there was an opportunity to relax, conditions made this impossible. They had started the evacuation already over-tired and they had to carry it through under conditions of savage air attacks such as had only recently caused grievous losses in the fleet.

  There is rightly little credit or glory to be expected in these operations of retreat, but I feel the spirit of tenacity shown by those who took part should not go unrecorded.

  More than once I felt the stage had been reached when no more could be asked of officers and men, physically and mentally exhausted by their efforts and by the events of these fateful days. It is perhaps even now not realised how nearly the breaking point was reached, but that these men struggled through is the measure of their achievement, and I trust that it will not lightly be forgotten.9

  The next few weeks were a time of rest and recovery for Perth’s ship’s company. They could afford to relax a little as dockyard workers swarmed over their cruiser yet again to patch up what they could. The damage was heavy. A-boiler room was a wreck, as were the main galley, the Blacksmith’s Shop and the incinerator room where the bomb had passed through. There was a yawning black hole in the starboard deck, and various electrical systems had been knocked out. The 4-inch Fire Control Table was unworkable. More serious still, leaks had opened up in her hull again and the starboard inner shaft had been bent out of alignment. Later at sea, they found out that this would cause a heav
y vibration at full speed. Oxyacetylene torches flared as the twisted steel was cut away and piled in a heap on the jetty. Meals and hot water were supplied from a maintenance ship. Yet the guns had to be manned and fired day and night, for Alexandria was still under unceasing attack from the air.

  Bowyer-Smyth did what he could to give his men leave. They went to the pictures and drank in the bars. Some got away to an army rest camp for a few days. Roy Norris and a mate trekked across the desert for a look at the River Nile. Jim Nelson and three of his mates – ‘the Quiet Four’, they now called themselves – had a couple of swims at Stanley Beach, and Jim took the opportunity to get an Egyptian driver’s licence as a souvenir. On 7 June, there was an unexpected thrill when the ABC war correspondent Chester Wilmot arrived on board lugging his recording equipment – an imposing contraption of dials, wires, needles and wax discs, to do interviews with the men for broadcast back home.

  The script – heavily stamped with the words of the censor: ‘NO NAVAL OBJECTION’ – began with some opening words from the Captain:

  It is a great pleasure to introduce the story which these clever people of the ABC have been making of our life on board. All too often today the best products of men’s minds are being used for destruction and for discord. But these ingenious instruments that they have brought aboard are going to allow us to speak to you with our own voices and to tell you something of how we live and so to cement the good ties of home and affection which mean so much to men when duty takes them far away.

  We have not been here in the eastern Mediterranean for very long – barely six months. There are other Australian ships that have been here much longer and have borne the heat and burden of the day more than we have.

  Nevertheless, we ourselves have always been occupied and have filled many an unforgiving minute with its full sixty seconds’ worth of distance run. Since the Germans arrived in these parts they have made the pace pretty hot. But we mean to see that they, like other conquerors before them, will wish they had never ventured into this historic corner of the world. In the last few days we have all had a good spell and above all a good sleep. I know that the story these good men have made will show us all to be in good heart for whatever the future may hold for us, while looking forward to our return to Australia when our work has been finished and well done.10

  Bowyer-Smyth can be forgiven for gilding the lily. And the ship’s choir did its bit for the show with a stirring rendition of an old shanty, ‘Sons of the Sea’:

  Sons of the sea, bobbin’ up and down like this.

  Over the ocean, bobbin’ up and down like this.

  You can build a ship, my friend, bobbin’ up and down like this.

  But you can’t beat the boys of the bulldog breed, bobbin’ up and down like this.

  Every few days, inevitably, the buzz would go around that they were bound for home. Their sister ship Hobart was rumoured to be on the way to replace them. In the mess decks, men talked longingly of comforting things: family, mates, sweethearts, a cold beer, a surf at Bondi. And then the rumours, unfulfilled, died as quickly as they sprang up. But there was some truth in them. Back in Canberra, the government had begun to plan Perth’s withdrawal, in a note stamped ‘MOST SECRET’, from the Navy Office to the Department of Defence Coordination on 4 June:

  At a meeting of the War Cabinet today it was approved that HMAS Hobart should be placed at the disposal of the United Kingdom government forthwith in lieu of HMAS Perth, which ship has been damaged by bomb, providing the repairs to be effected to HMAS Perth are within the capabilities of Australian dockyards.

  It is, therefore, requested that the following cablegram be sent to the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs from the Prime Minister:

  In view of the damage sustained by HMAS Perth in operations in Crete, Commonwealth Government propose that ship should be returned to Australia for repair, provided necessary work is within the capabilities of Australian dockyard. Subject to this proviso Commonwealth Government places HMAS Hobart at your disposal forthwith in lieu of HMAS Perth.11

  Relief was on the way. But there would be a seismic shift in the direction of the war before they sailed through Sydney Heads again. Perth had more fighting to do in the Mediterranean.

  In the second week of May, Hitler had been at first flabbergasted and then enraged by the defection of one of his closest henchmen, his deputy as Nazi party chief, Rudolf Hess. Driven by some mad idea of brokering a peace with Britain that would see both countries turn on the Soviet Union, Hess, a trained pilot, flew secretly to Scotland by night in a Messerschmitt Bf110 fighter and parachuted from its cockpit just south of Glasgow. There, he asked to see the friend of a friend, the Duke of Hamilton, who, he believed, would help him achieve his diplomatic masterstroke. Hamilton, a serving RAF officer, contacted Churchill personally. Hess was swiftly despatched behind the bars of a military hospital. The Führer, given the news at Berchtesgaden, turned white with fury. Hess was one of the alte kameraden – the old comrades from the early years – and the cellmate in Landsberg Prison who had taken down the dictation for Mein Kampf, no less. Hitler feared his plans to conquer Russia would be laid bare.

  In fact, the interrogators found that Hess, a mystic who fed on the lunar extremes of Nazi fads and fantasies, carried little worthwhile information. The British, through ULTRA intercepts and other intelligence sources, were already well aware of Hitler’s intentions. They knew, in considerable detail, of the massive build-up of German forces on what would become the eastern front for Operation BARBAROSSA. Churchill cast about for subtle diplomatic ways to inform Joseph Stalin of the mounting threat without revealing the ULTRA secret. In essence, he failed. Suspicious to the point of paranoia, and despite corroborating evidence from Soviet intelligence agents, one of whom had penetrated the German Embassy in Japan, Stalin refused to accept that Hitler would attack him.

  On the summer morning of Sunday 22 June, he was rudely disabused. Four hours before dawn, on a line winding nearly 2000 miles from the Black Sea to the Baltic, 6000 German field guns opened up to begin the most mighty invasion, and the greatest strategic miscalculation, in all the history of warfare. It was a titanic clash between the world’s two greatest armies and two absolute dictators. Three German Army groups, each commanded by a field marshal – a staggering total of about 4.5 million men – lunged forward ferociously. Their objective, like that of Napoleon Bonaparte’s Grande Armée before them, was nothing less than the capture of Moscow and the subjugation of the entire Russian people. The Greater German Reich would have lebensraum, living space, in the east. ‘When the attack starts, the world will hold its breath,’ Hitler bragged to his generals. ‘We have only to kick in the front door and the whole rotten Russian edifice will come tumbling down.’

  In the beginning, it seemed that boast was coming true. The Red Army, more than three million men, reeled back in bloody disarray as the German panzer tank divisions smashed through. In the air, the Luftwaffe destroyed nearly 4000 Russian aircraft on the ground in just the opening three days. At seven o’clock on the first morning, with the invasion already four hours old, Goebbels went on national radio to read the Führer’s proclamation:

  Weighted down with heavy cares, condemned to months of silence, I can at least speak freely. German people! At this moment, a march is taking place that, for its extent, compares with the greatest the world has ever seen. I have decided again today to place the fate and future of the Reich and our people in the hands of our soldiers. May God aid us, especially in this fight.12

  Winston Churchill, too, saw the apocalypse. On the BBC that night, he addressed the British people and the world in inspired flights of oratory that also invoked God:

  We have but one aim, and one single, irrevocable purpose. We are resolved to destroy Hitler and every vestige of the Nazi regime. From this, nothing will turn us – nothing. We will never parley, we will never negotiate with Hitler or any of his gang. We shall fight him by land, we shall fight him by sea, we shall fi
ght him in the air until, with God’s help, we have rid the earth of his shadow and liberated its peoples from his yoke.

  Perth was still at her buoy in Alexandria when the dramatic news of Russia’s torment came through. Her repair job was almost done – makeshift, but enough to see her fit for action. Three days later, on 25 June, she raised steam and left harbour once again. The vast battle in Europe now dwarfed the contest in the Mediterranean and North African theatre, but there was still a war there to be fought.

  Cunningham and the remains of his fleet had a new front to contend with. In addition to denying Rommel his supplies in North Africa and the hazardous business of sustaining the besieged Australian 9th Division holding out bravely in Tobruk, the navy was now required to join a battle that had opened up to the north and east of Egypt in Syria – a territory that included what is now modern Lebanon.

  To all intents and purposes, Syria was a French colony, granted as a mandate under the League of Nations. The fall of France in 1940 had brought Syria under the control of the Vichy Government, which was nominally neutral but in practice a German puppet to the point where many of its senior ministers were traitorously pro-Nazi. In 1941, as the war in the Mediterranean grew hotter, the Vichy High Commissioner in Beirut, the elderly General Henri Dentz, commanding some 45,000 men of the French colonial Armée du Levant, was pressured from both Paris and Berlin to throw in his lot with Germany.

  Dentz was not keen. But the possibility that he might succumb worried the British, who controlled the rich oilfields of neighbouring Iraq, where there had been a pro-German uprising. A turbulent German presence in Syria could disrupt British access to that Iraqi oil. And the Commonwealth forces locked in battle with Rommel to the west of Egypt feared that Syria would be used by the Germans as a platform to harass them from the east.