This had left Loch Ewe, where the Nelson had been mined exactly three years before, and following the usual winter route steered north until reaching about latitude 71°. Then shaping parallel to the Norwegian coast it kept 600 miles off to give the Luftwaffe as little chance as possible. ‘Turtle’ Hamilton’s responsibility was to cover the convoy across the top of Norway while it gradually closed the coast— past the enemy’s lair at Altenfiord—to arrive at a point whence it could drop due south to Kola Inlet in Russia. Of course the convoy was keeping W/T silence and when it was located the three cruisers found themselves a little astern, exactly where U-boats tended to congregate before attack. Most of us in Bermuda were unaware of this latter gem of intelligence as we sped across behind the lines of squat, stoical ships, in company with, I think, Glasgow. But we nearly learnt the hard way because, when German records eventually became available, it was found that U-625 had fired a salvo of torpedoes—with every prospect of success—at both of us.
With good radar showing up ships for many miles one was not as blind as previously in these waters; but against this there were only some three hours of darkness. The long periods of watchfulness provided an added strain, and though the enemy obliged, surprisingly, by doing nothing unpleasant, the thermometer hardly conformed.
The cold was intense and became steadily worse until we reached our zenith of 73° 30’ N (950 miles from the North Pole). There had been an issue of good arctic clothing, including a Russian-type hat with descending flaps, but one’s face had to be in evidence. The cold of my Douglas’ experience was nothing to this, as ice appeared all over the ship’s upperworks. It transfigured rigging and boat’s falls to fairy-like trails, jammed the smaller guns which had to be perpetually freed with low pressure steam jets, made walking dangerous and life generally miserable. Poorly protected against cold by nature, and not being long out of the tropics, I felt the conditions more than most. The temptation to crowd round an electric fire on coming off watch was irresistible and gave everyone terrible chilblains.
Instead of the usual about-turn when the convoy had reached a safe position, we went right through to its destination. The white hills of Russia were to starboard on January 27 as a posse of Soviet destroyers came out to shepherd us in to Vaenga, a small port on the Kola Inlet, not far from Murmansk. A Russian liaison officer came on board as soon as we had anchored and remained for our three-day stay. He was a smart, upstanding fellow who spoke good English and had a sense of humour. I asked him where he came from and he said Siberia. Rather facetiously and regretting it at once I said ‘I thought that’s only where people are sent to’, but he smiled, ‘Oh, we do come from there sometimes!’
There were two macabre incidents. A British submarine was in and one of her officers told us, apparently truthfully, that they had been berthed alongside a Russian boat and had invited her Wardroom over for what ended up as a very convivial party indeed. One of the Russians somewhat disgraced himself Next morning both boats were waiting to slip and the British CO shouted across to the Russian conning tower asking how the miscreant was. There was no response but when he persisted the other CO replied grimly ‘We shoot him’. The general impression was that indeed they had.
The other incident concerned the hospital ashore, whence a party of us repaired to borrow skis from the resident RNVR doctor, lent to deal with casualties from convoys. The hospital, bare stone inside and out, was spartan in the extreme. As we toiled up a spiral staircase laid with straw, bloodcurdling screams came from nearby. Someone asked the doctor, who had taken no notice, what on earth it was. ‘Oh, a minor operation’ was the casual reply, ‘they are short of anaesthetics.’
He duly provided several pairs of skis and we took them through the snow to a gentle slope on the outskirts of the town, passing log houses and lines of disembarked Martin Maryland bombers and Hurricane fighters. Some of the locals wore snow-shoes but not skis and when we started fooling about under a Canadian expert in the party, a curious crowd of flat-nosed Eskimo-like peasants gathered to watch with deadpan expressions. We enjoyed ourselves hugely, roaring with laughter and of course falling all over the place, while the spectators surveyed the mad foreigners without the flicker of a smile. There were no contacts that I remember, nothing to be bought and a generally depressing atmosphere ashore so that we were not sorry to depart.
The next westbound convoy was picked up and covered on its return voyage. Again there was surprising lack of enemy action, only one ship being lost to U-boat attack. Instead, as far as the Bermuda was concerned, there were undoubtedly friendly encounters. En route for Scapa we put in to Hvalfiord in Iceland; making oneself understood to the blonde shop girls of Reykjavik was in hilarious contrast to our Russian experience.
HMS Bermuda
6/1/43
We are back again after quite a good trip. A Colonel Kennedy wrote to me about Colonel Warren saying would I go and see him when convenient as they wanted to make some recommendation for him. Mrs Warren has been officially informed that he is a prisoner of war. I will thank Aunt Emily for the sheepskin cuffs; I needn’t say they’re too small. Perhaps they will fit better on another part of my anatomy! The cold is certainly no respecter of locality. The temperature on the last trip was 29°F.
When I did visit Colonel Kennedy in Baker Street it was to find a number of Army officers in a nondescript house and somewhat clandestine atmosphere, discovered later to be the Special Operations Executive HQ (the SOE, to which Warren, Lyon, Campbell and the others belonged). Surprised to learn this was the first they had heard of the Sumatran operations, I wrote reports on Colonel Warren, Colonel Dillon and Major Nicholson (all survived and I was to meet the latter eventually). Warren (actually Ferguson-Warren, I found) ended up with the CBE and DSC; I hope I was able to repay him in some measure by having a small part in one of these.
Meanwhile misfortune had struck the ship a dreadful blow:
HMS Bermuda
1/4/43
… We had an awful tragedy last week. The Commander and Gunnery Officer were washed overboard in a gale. The Gunnery Officer was picked up all right but not the Commander. The saddest part about it was that he was due to be relieved on the very day he was lost, and his relief was waiting when we got back. He was an awfully nice man and it is so dreadful for his wife.
This came about when recovering paravanes. The sea was rough with a short, steep swell coming from right ahead. The Commander, who was not happy about the conditions, went down on to the fo’c’s’le to give moral support. The work was virtually complete—they were ‘stopping’ the paravane towing wires to the guardrails—when the ship went ahead and turned back into the sea. The Gunnery Officer, who was in charge, was just abaft the port hawse pipe, the Commander and the ratings on the other side a little further aft.
As she gathered speed the ship’s bow rose and fell two or three times and then suddenly dropped right into a mass of oncoming water. This surged ‘green’ over the fo’c’s’le. Most were able to hang on to something but the Commander, Guns, a Petty Officer and, I think, another, were washed over the side. The last two were swept back again at once—as sometimes happens—but to everyone’s horror the Commander and Guns were seen to be struggling in the rough water and dropping quickly astern. A Petty Officer called Scott, who happened to be painting a carley float in the waist with a couple of men, quickly threw it over the side. The Captain brought the ship round in a 360° turn and thanks to the float—visible from time to time on the crest of a wave—was able to bring the ship back to the exact spot, skilfully putting her across the sea to make a lee for the luckless two. The Commander was just visible for a short time floating face down and then he disappeared. It was much too rough to lower a boat. A scrambling net had been thrown over the side but stopped well short of the water.
Guns, who had been shouting to the Commander to keep him going, was now in a bad state himself Thrown a heaving line he grabbed it, wound it round himself and tried to tie a bowline, but his fingers w
ere frozen and all he could do was to take a turn and hang on to the end. He was pulled towards the ship through huge waves and they lowered a lifebelt to him on a light grass hawswer. Managing to get into the lifebelt, he was hauled up and lifted over the guardrail—unable to take any part himself—and collapsed on the deck. Under a cloud of depression—hundreds were on deck by now—the ship got under way again. The water was icy cold and Guns frozen stiff when taken down to the Sick Bay; if he had not been of powerful physique he would probably have succumbed. He owed his life to this, the quick thinking of Petty Officer Scott, and the actions of the First Lieutenant—he was directing those on the spot at the culmination of this sad affair. With hindsight it is easy enough to conclude that the accident was caused by an error of judgement on the part of Captain Back. But one should remember that things are not so easy in the stress of the moment and the Captain was responsible for the safety of the ship and for every life on board; we were at the time a sitting target for a submarine and it was his duty to be on a steady course and at reduced speed for the minimum time possible.
We learnt later that Commander Griffith was considered in high places to be a near certainty for flag rank. There was one satisfactory postscript in that Petty Officer Scott received the DCM for his vital action.
A remarkably sudden and unpleasant development for me was a bad attack of haemorrhoids. Doctors in the hospital ship where I was sent for a second opinion insisted on the knife and it was decided that I should be landed at the next mainland port of call. The operation was no picnic in those days, but there would be sick leave to follow and I looked forward eagerly to reunion with John Persse and combined operations concerning the London night-life in which I knew he revelled. Leaving Bermuda when she put in to Plymouth after escorting an Atlantic convoy, I was sorry to say goodbye to Guns, Torps and other friends, not forgetting my 6-inch turret. The Captain thoughtfully discharged me to HMS President (London) as this would mean a hospital nearer my home, but arrival was marred by the news that John had in fact sailed for the Middle East only a few days before. Our monumental ‘run ashore’ was not to be.
From North Africa his letters became, if anything, more full of fun than ever. Always seeing the humorous side, he enjoyed regimental soldiering and must, I knew, be a wonderful ‘shipmate’ to his brother officers of the Rifle Brigade and without doubt the men too. Our circumstances were now reversed, he was roughing it and I, if not in the lap of luxury, was at least getting all night in.
Brand new, the Royal Masonic Hospital was under a famous surgeon who practised the excellent principle that young men convalesce best surrounded by pretty faces. This was explained by the three other inmates of my ward as I arrived, goggle-eyed at the VAD pulchritude passed in the passage. ‘Ours is a redhead’ said one, ‘but it’s no use trying anything on, she’s got a boyfriend in the RAF.’ The redhead came in, well up to scratch, and exclaimed on the cleanliness of my feet as I was getting into bed. ‘Oh we wash our feet in the Navy’ I said, ‘not like the RAF,’ which took some time to live down.
When the hour for the operation arrived there was no sign of the offending piles, reduced by the unaccustomed rest. ‘Now you’re here’, said the surgeon, ‘is there anything else the matter with you?’, and without an inkling that it would keep me ashore for many months I admitted to a painful knee. This was diagnosed as cartilage trouble and an operation performed. After sick leave over-eating with relatives in Ireland the piles returned with a vengeance and I was back in hospital again. Appointment to HMS St George in the Isle of Man followed. This, the RN Boys Training Establishment (evacuated from those at Shotley and Gosport), was enjoyable except for the invariably rough crossing from Fleetwood (spent by me in ignominious solitude lest my seasickness should be observed by my 16-year-old charges, not all of whom were afflicted!) and an incident shared with another divisional officer, a young Lieutenant Commander called Errol Bruce.
We took away the establishment’s entire complement of cutters and whalers for a weekend’s circumnavigation of the island, got into trouble off a lee shore and wrote off the lot on breaker-lashed rocks. No one was killed but on return the two ‘admirals’—we were divided into fleets for exercise purposes—were most apprehensive as to how the Captain was going to take this. Actually he just laughed (‘Hooky’ Bell of the Exeter, he was no stranger to misfortune himself, having conned the ship from aft with a boat’s compass when the Graf Spee wrecked his bridge).
HMS St George
We had a very good show last night and I took care to look after the blonde acrobatic dancer when they came into the Wardroom afterwards. The Commander is an expert billiard player and is usually to be seen with some other expert studying the line of a shot. I got a life out of him by asking if it would be in order for the dancer to do the splits for us on the billiard table.
Why don’t you take on the Chairmanship? I think it would be a jolly good idea. Nobody deserves it more than you or knows more about it so why hold back, as Uncle Atty would say?
Well done Henry getting the MC. What a good show. Uncle Basil and Aunt Essex must be pleased. I hope to goodness Bill Buckhurst wasn’t one of the Arnhem group was he?
How annoying about the ducks, the drake had better be run in for failure in execution of his duty! The invasion seems to be going extraordinarily easily, it must have been wonderfully planned. I went to a big “Salute the Soldier” dance and in the scrum for coats and hats at the end a two badge AB came up to me wreathed in smiles and said ‘You’re Lieutenant Brooke, aren’t you, Sir? The last time I saw you was in the Prince of Wales just before it sank and you sang out to some of us to stand up and not be such damn fools, it was only a few small bombs dropping—I’ve always remembered that, Sir, I’ve always remembered that!’ and, giving me a hearty handshake, disappeared into the crowd before I could open my mouth!
It would suit me to leave at the end of this term, but I must say I hope not before as everything is going OK.
PS. Such a big bomb landed in Hyde Park the other day that it blew all the ’ats off the American soldiers!*
Having run a large part of the Sussex Women’s Land Army since the war began, my mother had received feelers about her taking over the whole from Lady De la Warr, who had done a long stint. She did, in fact, take over and run the county with distinction until the WLA was disbanded. Bill Buckhurst was the De la Warr’s eldest son, a parachute officer. He survived the war but at this time it was one of the strains on his parents that their second son, Harry, was missing. Slight and fair, he was a most attractive character—not unlike John—who could charm anyone and anything; we had been on several evenings together and I still have an evocative piece of paper that introduced me to the ‘private parties’ held at the 400 Club on the recommendation of the Hon Harry Sackville. I had last seen him on a recent leave, when he came over with his mother and we strolled about in the garden. The outlook was black at the time and I said so. ‘Oh, I don’t let it bother me,’ he replied with his quick smile; ‘I ignore the radio and the papers and just get on with my job.’ I marvelled at the steel core that had been just beneath the rather playboy exterior all the time. His job was flying the new American Mustang fighter at zero feet on sweeps across France. One day he simply did not come back. There never was any news of him, which was, I think, the hardest form of tragedy for families, and sorrowing friends, to bear.
Meanwhile, my knee was behaving no better than it had before and, after X-rays and acrimonious messages had been exchanged between our PMO and the Royal Masonic Hospital, I found myself being ushered into a ward yet again. This time it was the naval hospital at Sherborne. One day an entire aircrew came in, all bad, and one of them died. I felt a terrible impostor with my miserable knee.
All this took time and it was mid-1944 before I was back in circulation, plus a stick. On June 26 I ended a letter home: ‘John is evidently seeing a good deal of fighting. I see his regiment and the 16th Lancers were the first into Perugia’. It was only too true t
hat John had been seeing a good deal of fighting. It never entered my head that anything was wrong when I was told there was a telegram for me. It said he had been killed on the 20th.
I could not believe it, staring at the form quite numb. Surely there must be some mistake; other people got killed but not John. I told myself I would not see him again, but it just did not seem possible, his laughing face kept coming between me and anything I did. The thought of him lying buried in some Italian hillside was just a bad dream that would somehow come right and, clutching at any straw, I read again his last letter, full of life if ever a letter was. Soon I began to receive letters from others in the family and these seemed to really bring it home. Then, crowning misery, there arrived one from John himself, written a few days before he was killed. It said ‘The going is hard’ and I knew it must have been very hard.
A light seemed to go out of my life from that day.
Enquiries to Keith Egleston, who I know was a great friend in the Regiment, eventually brought the following reply:
The attack that Johnnie was killed in was a memorable one, for the Battalion captured that night a hill that dominated the whole of the ground north of Perugia, and held it against all counter attacks. We were personally congratulated by the Army, and Corps Commander, and unlike so many casualties that happen in war, through odd stray shells, mines, etc, Johnnie’s was met in the most gallant fashion possible, and was not in vain. His Platoon was attacking a house that was held by German snipers, and they had to cross a flat piece of ground to approach it. The Germans brought down very heavy mortar fire and wounded several men in his Platoon.
Alarm Starboard!: A Remarkable True Story of the War at Sea Page 29