Blitz Kids, page 47
After two weeks in New York, the boys left for home. They had enjoyed their time, but were eager to get back to sea to earn some money and to see their families again. As they left New York they had no idea they would be back within days. Shortly into the voyage they were torpedoed off the coast of Florida. Safely ashore, they went through the now familiar routine of replacing all their clothes. At first they chose old clothes from a pile of cast-offs. However, this was just temporary: they were immediately taken to a store and outfitted in a new suit, shoes and hat. Then, within a couple of days, they were off to the railway station and back to New York on the express train: ‘Peter had already cabled New York to tell the girls to be there to meet us. And they were at the station waiting. I went back to the seamen’s mission to get a new suit. They said, “You were only here the other day!” So I had to explain what had happened.’
Waiting for the next available ship, the boys stayed in New York for another four weeks:
We had one month’s money from the shipping company, so there was plenty for going out. And the girls paid their own way, their fathers told them they had to. We went out like all groups of teenagers: we went out to Coney Island and did all the rides, went on the boardwalk. We would never normally have had the chances to do things like that, but of course you had to go through the hard times first!
As he got friendlier with the girl and her family, Bernard received a tempting offer: ‘Her dad wanted me to stay there and marry her. He said he’d set me up with a job on an American ship, then in three years I’d be able to get American citizenship. But I wasn’t that keen on my girl and I don’t think she was too keen on me.’ So, despite the attractions, the two boys returned home.
In 1943, seventeen-year-old Arthur Harvey was sent to the United States as part of a crew to collect a newly built ‘Liberty Ship’, the Sampan. Once in New York they had to wait for two months before their ship was ready. He moved into a hotel on 54th and Broadway and, since he was being paid both his normal wages plus board and lodging, he could enjoy everything the city offered:
We all got jobs. Some of the lads were store detectives at Macy’s. I was an oiler at the Knickerbocker ice cream plant down on West 67th Street. I was earning bloody good money for a kid. I was working on shifts oiling the planks that were used for making blocks of ice. My expenses were all being paid, so what I earned was just pocket money. We’d walk down to 42nd Street, go to the stage door canteen and get free tickets for all the Broadway shows. I’d do the two to ten shift, go back to the hotel, have a shower, then walk down to Times Square, see all the films and watch all the top bands. You name them, I saw them: Cab Calloway, Harry James, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Duke Ellington. There was Radio City, every Thursday night it would be full of bobby-soxers who were there to see Frank Sinatra. So I saw him perform. I was seventeen: a Portsmouth boy in New York.
From New York the crew was sent across the continent to San Francisco to pick up their new ship. Once again, they had a delay before she was ready:
We had to wait there for two weeks. For beer money, we’d go to the railway station and unload mailbags for a dollar an hour. We’d do an eight-hour day to earn beer money. The next day we’d spend it in a bar. Then we’d work the next day. That went on for two weeks.
After a fortnight combining work and leisure, Arthur and the rest of the crew returned to the docks, the Red Ensign was raised on the ‘Liberty Ship’ and, loaded with 10,000 tons of cargo and twelve US Army officers, they headed off across the Pacific.
For teenager Alan Simms, too young to drink when ashore in the United States, life was a precious commodity that had to be enjoyed whenever possible. He and his fellow apprentices had to ‘fiddle’ their papers to ensure they could get served in bars: ‘We used to worry – you never knew if you’d get torpedoed, so we used to spend our money on drink. We thought we’d better enjoy ourselves in case we got torpedoed on the way home.’
While the young British sailors enjoyed life in port cities, some ports were more violent than others. Big cities were a great adventure but sailors were often confined to areas populated by other seafarers and dock labourers, and trouble often brewed. Bill Ellis witnessed this violence whilst waiting in Baltimore for his ship to be repaired:
We’d go down to a cafe near the docks where the bosun liked to sing. One day some Americans had put money in the Wurlitzer jukebox when the bosun started singing. A fight broke out with the boys who’d put the money in – and me and another young lad dived under a table, where we stayed till I was kicked in the ribs. The Americans were all big men – dockers – and we were just boys. I ran to the door to try to escape but the police were called – and all our shore leave was stopped after that.
Whilst in Gibraltar Boy Bugler Robin Rowe received good advice from a shipmate. He was warned to avoid fights with American sailors. It was not the sailors themselves he should worry about but the US Navy shore patrolmen who carried heavy nightsticks and lashed at anyone connected to fights, even bystanders.
Bill Ellis had similar experiences in a Scottish port: as well as feeling like outsiders in overseas ports, the boys of the Merchant Navy had to get used to British ports in places they might never have seen had it not been for the war. While it was easy for men and boys of all nationalities to blend in among the crowds in London, some of the smaller ports were more insular. Bill remembered his time based at Greenock in Scotland:
We used to go to dances in the town hall. My mate was a brilliant dancer and, when he started jiving, crowds would form to watch him. One day we were at a dance and the galley boy got into an argument with two Scots blokes. They had him pinned up against the wall. I tried to intervene, telling them, ‘Let him go – there’s three of us – and just two of you!’ They let him go and I thought I’d done a good job. I told the galley boy to get back to the ship. They gave me a few pushes. I said, ‘What you going to do?’ Then my mate Hazeldene – who liked a fight – came over. Next thing, there was the sound of marching feet and eight of them appeared – and a fight started.
After the fight had broken up, a soldier approached Bill and asked him if it was him who had punched the ringleader in the back of the head. Bill denied it and the soldier replied: ‘That’s my brother. But we’re not going to do anything now. We’ll be waiting outside for you.’ Bill asked a local girl to help him get out without being seen. She put on her long, loose-fitting coat and he crouched down behind her, hiding in the folds of the coat, walking through the crowds past the gang who were looking for him. However, she soon betrayed him to the gang, who chased him up the street. Eventually, he got away and returned safely to the ship.
The next week Bill returned to the dance hall, this time with a larger group of men from his ship:
One of the blokes with us was a hard nut – he’d worked in the circus before the war. They announced someone was going to sing ‘The Bluebells of Scotland’. So my mate stood up and shouted, ‘You can keep your “Bluebells of Scotland”. There’ll always be an England!’ We had to go out through the fire exit – running for our lives.
After being sunk by a submarine in the Atlantic, Christian Immelman landed at Cape Town in South Africa. The crew’s rescuers sent them by launch to the quayside where they expected to be met by a reception committee from Shell. There was no one there to meet them and not a soul to be seen:
There was a light away up the road so we went there and discovered it was a Flying Angel club [seamen’s mission]. Luckily for us the volunteer duty man that night also worked for Shell. He took control of the situation, ordered a couple of taxis and took us all to the biggest drinking establishment in town, Delmonico’s, settled us there with a few beers whilst he went off to make further arrangements for our stay … After a couple more drinks he piled all thirteen of us into cabs and took us to the Ritz hotel for the night. At breakfast the next morning I found we had to leave the Ritz because the crew had caused a commotion during the night, chasing chamber maids around the corridors.
The next morning he took the opportunity to send a cable home to his parents: ‘Ship sunk. Arrived Cape Town OK.’
When Albert Riddle arrived in Cape Town in 1941, he was stunned by the reception received by British sailors: ‘The people were wonderful to us. They lined the dockside with hundreds of cars and the people grabbed us as we went ashore and took us out for the day.’ The best part was that the South Africans were able to write home on behalf of the boys. Albert knew his parents would appreciate some knowledge of his whereabouts: ‘My parents were baffled – they’d never even been outside the village and suddenly they get a letter from South Africa! They didn’t believe it. They’d never even been to Plymouth!’ By the time the letter reached his parents, he was far away in Singapore, after the sinking of HMS Prince of Wales.
The foreign ports had another advantage. They were a fantastic location for shopping trips, making merchant seamen very popular when they returned home with their 25 lb-allowance of food that was available in foreign ports but rationed in the UK. In Buenos Aries merchant seamen were able to purchase pre-prepared boxes of food, designed to provide a selection of goods unavailable at home, including luxuries like tinned ham. As one recalled: ‘I would go home with it and Mother would open it up! Fantastic.’ The ports of the world offered the teenage Arthur Harvey shopping opportunities of which he had never previously dreamed: ‘You could get suits made in India, if you had the money. I got measured in the morning, and the suit was ready by teatime. I also got my shirts handmade.’ On his first trip to New York in 1943 he purchased clothes for his baby sister and bought nylon stockings to impress his girlfriends back in Portsmouth.
Neutral ports were also a good place to barter. British seamen who had goods to sell or exchange took items ashore to see what they could get. Ex-Vindicatrix boy Bill Ellis remembered a wartime visit to Seville:
I decided to go ashore on my own and went to a cafe. I had some cheap cigarette lighters that I’d picked up in Lisbon. So I walked up to the counter, asked for a drink and put a lighter down in exchange. There was a woman sitting in there and she wanted to see the lighters. I said OK if you give me the money. I realized she wanted to buy other things from me. She wanted coffee, which I had onboard the ship, so I agreed to come back the next day with a pound of coffee. She paid me about a pound per pound of coffee – and I got together with her.
When the Spanish soldiers guarding the docks realized he was going into town to trade, they stopped him and demanded cigarettes as a bribe for allowing him to leave port carrying his trade goods.
Sailing the world was an eye-opening experience for all the boys. They not only learned how to enjoy themselves, but also about the iniquities of world. Bernard Ashton sailed with men of all nationalities, who lived and worked together without concern. On one trip to Australia he was shocked when his friend was refused service in a bar. The seaman, from the streets around London’s docks, who Bernard thought of as ‘a real Cockney’, had been singled out for his black skin. And in the southern ports of the United States, Bernard watched in disgust as policemen beat the feet of black men sleeping in the streets.
One of the least popular ports was Murmansk in northern Russia. It was just fifteen miles from the border with German-occupied Norway, making it uncomfortably close to the front line. Most of the British seamen thought the town cold and dull, with few facilities for them. However, not everybody felt the same. Some appreciated the efforts made by the Russians to entertain them. Jock Dempster, who arrived in Murmansk as a sixteen year old, later described the facilities:
The authorities had created a social club which we were encouraged to use. Concerts, dances, the occasional ballet and choral renderings. Hard to imagine an audience of unshaven seamen sat watching the classical entertainment but I remember one choral concert which performed to a packed house and a very appreciate audience. The dances were very well attended, and the local militia also used the club. Hostesses – mainly students, teachers and secretaries – were happy to waltz round the floor, but in this instance fraternisation stopped at the main door. The girls would chat, teach us a few words of Russian, talk socially but no more. I have never met any veteran who ever saw a girl home. Respect was observed on both sides. I did learn quite a few Russian phrases and the first two verses of a song I’d heard at one of the concerts, as well as the phrase: ‘Can I see you home, please?’ The answer was always ‘Nyet’, but I always received a big smile … A bond of mutual respect was created with both sides appreciating the extreme hardships jointly endured. I have never ceased to admire the stoicism shown by the inhabitants living under unbelievably harsh conditions.4
The one thing that set the seamen apart from others was that they were able to bring things home. They brought home new suits from Indian tailors, food from South America, rum from the West Indies, toys from the United States and cloth from around the world for wives, mothers and girlfriends. Most importantly, they returned home dressed in a manner that set them apart from their contemporaries. Bernard Ashton recalled returning home after his epic journey that had seen him buy, then lose, two sets of fashionable clothing when his two consecutive ships were sunk: ‘I arrived home in my new American suit. And I had patterned socks. Imagine that in a mining village in 1942! If only I’d come home with my blue-striped beach suit, panama hat and two-tone shoes from Puerto Rico!’
Notes
1. ‘Merchant sailor witnessed world at war’, Kitchener-Waterloo Record (2 January 2008).
2. Osborn, Trust Me … I’m An Old Sailor.
3. Rowe, Sticky Blue.
4. The Scotland-Russia Forum Review, 20 (December 2008).
CHAPTER 21
Ready for War
‘One chap said to me, “They are training us to kill, we don’t even know how to make love yet!” How true that was. We were all immature. We had our rifles but, when it came to women, we didn’t have the foggiest. We had missed our teenage life.’
Bill Fitzgerald, 1/5th Queen’s Regiment
In summer 1944, with the coming of the long-awaited ‘Second Front’, many of the soldiers who had volunteered whilst underage finally saw their chance to go to war. In many cases it had been a long wait: Ted Roberts, a volunteer aged fourteen, and Stan Scott, a volunteer aged fifteen, were both now nineteen. Fred Walker, who had joined the Army aged sixteen, and taken part in the Dieppe operation before he reached the call-up age, was now a twenty-year-old veteran of Sicily and Italy. Even his mate John Tupper, who had been just sixteen at Dieppe and who had also fought in the Mediterranean, had finally reached the age of eighteen. They were part of a force that was largely untried, most of whom had only experienced war during the Blitz.
Underage volunteer Eric ‘Bill’ Sykes spent the final six weeks of 1942 undergoing basic training at Berwick-upon-Tweed, where he celebrated his seventeenth birthday, before being transferred to the 70th (Young Soldiers) Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry. The unit trained incessantly, spending their days marching at high speeds and their nights on guard duty. Bill recalled the marching songs he and his fellow young soldiers sang as they tramped through the lanes of North Yorkshire: ‘We are the good ol’ DLI. We’ll meet the enemy by and by, every man in the regiment is willing to do or die – Cor blimey.’ However, Sykes was less than certain about the emotions of the song: ‘I don’t remember being willing “to do or die” for anyone at any period, then or now.’
However, the proximity of death at any time in the infantry soon became apparent to him. On exercises, live rounds were fired to give the youngsters an idea of what it would be like in battle:
One exercise involved advancing under a creeping barrage of twenty-five pound artillery shells. On this particular occasion one of the gunners laid back 100 yards, instead of forward one hundred yards, and a shell fell into a group of people and we suffered several losses. I remember that occasion well as I was a member of the burial party for one of the young officers.
Whilst training, Bill noted:
We did not talk about going to war as we were too busy and at the end of the day too tired to do anything but sleep. As would be usual, the conversation of virile young men would generally turn to girls, sex and the question of when we would get leave to participate in such activities.
In Autumn 1943 part of the battalion was detached to act as reinforcements in the Mediterranean. This spurred Bill on to make a move and so, partly attracted by the higher rate of pay, he volunteered for the Parachute Regiment. After a brief, but intense, series of exercises in the Yorkshire Moors, designed by the battalion commander to toughen up the ‘Young Soldiers’ who had volunteered to be paratroopers, Bill was transferred to the 7th (Light Infantry) Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, joining them at their Physical Training Depot at Hardwick Hall in Chesterfield on 9 September 1943 for six weeks of physical training designed to ‘toughen them up’ for service as paratroopers.
Having passed the initial course, he was then sent for parachute training at Ringway outside Manchester. Whilst a constant stream of volunteers were ‘returned to unit’, Bill progressed from tower jumps to a balloon and then finally to an aircraft:
Our Drop Zone from the aircraft was at nearby Tatton Park and included one drop into trees, and another into water at night. Dramatic experiences for a young teenager who had never been inside an aircraft before, let alone flown in one. Once again the selection process took its toll and only the courageous, or stupid, survived.
