by Edward Kay
And I met a Scottish artillery officer named Craig whose unit had been tasked with fighting a rearguard action to slow the German advance during the Allied retreat in the Battle of France. “It came down to a vicious street battle in a town just outside Dunkirk,” said Craig. “We went head-to-head against the elite of the Panzer tank corps. We were only a few hundred feet apart the whole time, for an entire day. Our guns and their guns, pounding the crap out of each other till the town was reduced to rubble all around us.”
I was still working on my first pint, but noticed that his glass was empty, so I bought him another round.
“Ta,” said Craig with a nod to me as the barman placed his ale in front of him.
“What happened?” asked Ken.
Craig had a faraway look in his eyes, like he was watching the battle as he described it to us. “We fought them to a standstill. Kept at it until we ran out of ammunition and had to take to our heels. We left our heavy weapons behind and got the hell out of there just ahead of the Hun as the last boats departed for England. Lost a lot of good men that day, and I’ve still got a couple of chunks of shrapnel in me. One in my shoulder and one in my arse,” he said, laughing as he pointed out their approximate locations. “But they say that we slowed the Germans down enough that it enabled thousands of our fellows to get off the beach and into the boats to fight the Krauts another day in North Africa, instead of spending the rest of the war in a prisoner-of-war camp.”
Ken and I talked so much with Charlie and Craig and so many other people that by the end of the evening my throat was hoarse. But it was good. I felt better, and it wasn’t just the two pints of dark Scottish ale I’d had by the end of the night. Being able to tell aloud the things I had seen, to other people who understood what I’d gone through because they’d had similar experiences, was a huge weight off my shoulders.
Ken and I left the pub and found our way to the Salvation Army, where we bedded down for the night. I fell into a blissful eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.
* * *
The next day I made my way to 37 Bell Lane and tapped the door knocker. I heard small footsteps running for the door, and a moment later was greeted by a red-haired boy with a gap-toothed grin.
I said hello, to which he responded, “Are you that Canadian, then?”
“I’m not sure,” I replied. “I’m a Canadian. Just not sure if I’m that Canadian.”
“Oh, you’re that Canadian all right,” he said, with a smaller version of Aileen’s grin.
A moment later a middle-aged woman with a pleasant face came to the door.
“Hello, I’m Bill O’Connell,” I said, holding out my hand.
She smiled at me. “I’m Mrs. Henderson, Aileen’s mother. And mother to this one too. Say hello properly then, Jimmy.”
“Hello,” said Jimmy as he shyly held out his hand.
I shook it, then pointed behind his ear.
“What’s that growing behind your ear?” I asked.
“What?” he asked, wide-eyed.
I reached behind his ear, gave my wrist a flick and out popped the Hershey chocolate bar I’d put aside for the occasion.
“There it is!” I said.
“Mom, did you see that?” he asked. “I had a chocolate bar growing behind my ear!”
“Say thank you,” said Mrs. Henderson.
“But Mom, it was growing behind my ear!” he shrieked.
“That’s very lovely, but say thank you anyway to Mr. O’Connell for finding it for you.”
“Thank you!” came the singsong reply.
Then Mrs. Henderson explained that the munitions factory was operating round-the-clock shifts, seven days a week, so even though this was a Saturday, Aileen was working. Mr. Henderson was upstairs sleeping, because he worked night shifts as a machinist.
“But Aileen will be home and washed up by six-thirty,” said Mrs. Henderson. “We’d be pleased to have you for dinner if you’d like to come back.”
“Thank you,” I replied. “I’d like that very much.”
I spent the rest of the day exploring Glasgow on my own. When I returned that evening, Aileen’s father greeted me at the door and introduced himself as Ewan. He had a strong handshake and an easy smile. He told me that he had served in the Royal Navy during the First World War, twenty-five years earlier.
“I got my first combat experience at the Battle of Jutland,” he said. “That was a nasty bit of business.”
He was understating it. The Battle of Jutland was infamous. More than six thousand British, Canadian and Australian sailors had died in that battle between the Royal Navy and the German fleet.
“But you lads have got it just as tough on convoy duty,” he said. “And we’re grateful to you for it. I reckon half the food on this table is here because of you fellows making sure the Jerry submarines didn’t feed it all to the fish.”
He looked like he was about to say something else when Mrs. Henderson smiled at him. “We are indeed grateful. But I’m sure young Bill here would like a break from the war, so let’s talk about something else, shall we?”
Mr. Henderson paused, like he was deciding whether to argue the point. Then he smiled at her. “So, tell us about Canada then. Are you all as rich as the Yanks?” he asked me. Now I knew where Aileen got her sense of humour.
“No. We don’t all drive around in Cadillacs and have servants, like the people you see in the American films.” I told him that we even hunted and fished for our dinner during the worst of the Depression.
“Oh, you really are well off then,” Mr. Henderson joked. “Here it’s only the royal family and the lords and barons and all those sorts of mucky-mucks who get to run around shooting at their supper.”
As for the Hendersons’ dinner, it was a lamb stew which, given the rationing, consisted of a few very small pieces of lamb surrounded by a sea of gravy, potatoes, carrots, turnips and onions. But I didn’t care. It felt like being at home again, and the Hendersons’ small row house was like a mansion after being crammed into the mess deck of the Wildrose for nearly the past two weeks.
Later, I thanked her parents for dinner, then Aileen and I went to the Locarno. This time I moved much more confidently about the dance floor, and the horrors of the sea battle at last felt far away.
Chapter Nine
February–March 1942
The return journey to Halifax was my first real taste of a North Atlantic winter. For the first portion, from Scotland out above Northern Ireland, it was almost balmy because of the Gulf Stream’s warm current. But as we sailed south of Iceland toward Greenland and into the cold water below the Arctic Circle, the Gulf Stream’s influence diminished and the weather changed abruptly. At first I just noticed the chill in the air and that I could now see my breath. Then the waves grew bigger, the troughs between them became deeper. At last the air and the water grew so cold that when spray from the waves hit the ship, it instantly froze onto every metal surface.
Off watch, a bunch of us lay in our swaying hammocks and tried to sleep. But we could feel the waves growing higher as the ship pitched and rocked, and the hammocks swaying more and more. “Why the hell don’t they steer us away from this?” muttered one of the guys.
A petty officer who happened to be passing through said, “I’ll tell you why. Because we got a warning that there’s a huge wolf pack on the prowl four hundred nautical miles south of here, below the weather front.”
Our more northerly route kept us away from those subs, but it put us into the teeth of a vicious winter storm. We had entered the Black Pit once again, and the brass evidently felt that without air cover, the threat of massed U-boats was so dire that the treacherous weather was the lesser of two evils. And crazy as it sounds, it was true. When the waves were 60 feet high the U-boats couldn’t fire their torpedoes accurately, so they usually avoided these weather systems completely.
That was small comfort as the gale raged around us now. The cold, stormy weather made life absolutely miserable, and the fa
ct that the Navy still hadn’t issued proper winter clothing added to our discomfort. We had only our wool uniforms, with oilskins over them, along with cheap non-issue sweaters that we’d picked up ashore.
As we sailed north into the teeth of an Arctic winter, the problem of inadequate clothing became much less serious than the danger from the ice that was constantly forming on the upper surfaces of our ship. It built up on everything, in layers as thick as my wrist. It was potentially as deadly as a torpedo or a bomb. The guns would get so thickly covered in ice that if we didn’t chip it off, they couldn’t be aimed or fired. The lifeboats became frozen uselessly to the ship. One night a young stoker on only his second voyage slipped on the icy deck and went over the side. We never saw him again.
We had been warned that ice could also collect on the upper surfaces and make a ship so heavy that it would capsize or sink. I found out how true that was one day when I was on watch and saw a Greek freighter, heavily sheathed in ice, ride to the top of a 60-foot wave. As the freighter crested the massive wave it plunged nose-first down the other side at a steep angle, then into the water at the bottom of the trough … and simply didn’t come up again.
“Merchantman down!” I shouted. The alarm was passed through the raging wind from crewman to crewman till it reached the wheelhouse.
The captain ordered us to pull out of formation and search. Plowing through the towering waves, we circled the area for fifteen minutes looking for survivors. But nothing came to the surface, not so much as a life jacket or a scrap of wood. The sea had swallowed that freighter whole.
After that, despite being pelted by sleet that felt like icy razors tearing the skin right off our faces, all of us — from the captain on down to the lowliest stoker — were out on deck every spare minute we had, knocking the ice off. We went at it with everything we could lay our hands on: hammers, axe handles, crowbars, wrenches and pipes. It didn’t matter how many times we slipped and fell on the oily, icy deck, or how numb our fingers got from the spray and sleet, we kept at it until we just couldn’t smash any more ice. Then the next guy would take over.
All around us, the storm kept blowing harder. The waves were now the height of a six-storey office building. Normally we were only seasick for the first three or four days after being on the water, but the ocean was so violent that we were constantly vomiting. Guys threw up over the side, but it would get blown back by the wind or carried by the waves back onto the ship, so we’d be chipping that off along with the ice. It was a miserable job, but I figured that if the weather was so terrible that we found ourselves chipping frozen puke off our own ship, it was definitely too rough for the U-boats to attack.
One evening, with the worst storm conditions yet, the north wind was screaming through the rigging as I finished my watch. My face and hands were numb and my ears were ringing from the near-hurricane-force gusts. I crawled into my hammock in my cold, sodden uniform, pulled the clammy wool blankets over myself and tried to sleep. The mess was as frigid as a meat locker. Our breath turned to frost on the steel ceiling. Icy water from the upper decks dripped down into my hammock, so I pulled my oilskin over my head and blankets to make a little tent to protect myself. I was exhausted, but could only fall into a sort of half sleep, because the ship was pitching and rolling even more violently now than when I had been on watch. Ankle-deep water formed a lake beneath my hammock, sloshing around, mimicking the motion of the ocean outside.
“God, this is like trying to fall asleep on a roller coaster,” Ken muttered.
“Yeah, while wearing cold, wet clothing and inhaling the stink of paint, bunker oil, sweat, stale breath and puke,” I answered.
The waves became so high I was almost pitched face first out of the hammock. The corvette was rolling further and further on its side as it crested each wave. Each time it took longer to right itself. Finally one wave crashed into us so hard that the water came pouring into the mess deck, hundreds of gallons all at once.
As I swung in my hammock the whole room tilted around me and just seemed to stay there, so when I looked up I could see the wall. I thought we’d been knocked over on our side and I hung on while I waited for the next big wave to turn us over completely. In the dim light I couldn’t tell who was awake and who was asleep, but nobody said a word. There was no shouting, no crying. Everyone was silent. I resigned myself to the fact that I was probably going to die tonight. It was that simple. But slowly I saw the line of the ceiling begin to right itself again and become parallel to my line of vision. Then we hit the next wave and the ship tilted again, though not quite as much as the time before. I began to relax a bit, trying to convince myself that the worst of it was over. At last I fell asleep. Not a very deep sleep, but enough that I wouldn’t be completely stunned when I went on watch in a few hours’ time.
I awoke to a voice announcing, “We’re out of the Black Pit!” When I opened my eyes I could tell from the rocking of the ship that the storm had died down, at least a bit. If we were out of the Black Pit, it meant that we had air cover once again — and a much better chance of staying alive. But the convoy had been scattered by the storm. It took us more than two days to regroup. Only then could we fully assess the damage.
The lead ship, a destroyer much larger and more powerful than us, had suffered such severe damage that it had to put into port at St. John’s for repairs. Its wheelhouse had been torn off by the storm and blown right into the ocean. On another ship the thick bulkheads had started to warp from the constant battering of the waves.
Our little corvette had suffered much less damage. My feeling about her began to change. She was cold, wet, crowded and slow, and I still didn’t like any of those things. But now I knew that the Wildrose was tough and reliable and she could get us safely through the worst that the North Atlantic could throw at her.
When our convoy arrived in Halifax we were all given two weeks’ leave to recuperate, since it had been such a gruelling round trip. I was exhausted, but thrilled by the news.
Two weeks was just enough time to go visit my family in Iroquois. Despite the storms and the U-boats, one advantage to being in the Navy was that we had to come back to Canada regularly, so on occasion we were able to visit our families, something the Army and Air Force fellows never got to do once they were overseas. I’d never got the chance yet, so I wasted no time in going to the station on Hollis Street. My mom had mentioned in a recent letter that they had a telephone now, so I called my parents to let them know I was coming. Then I bought a ticket for the next train home.
Late in the afternoon the following day I got off at the station in Iroquois. It wasn’t a long walk from there to home. I smoothed out the creases in my uniform, then slung my kit bag over my shoulder and set out. I had only walked a couple of blocks when I ran into Mr. Martin, my history teacher, in front of the post office.
“Bill O’Connell,” he said, slowing down and shaking my hand. “You don’t look like the skinny kid who used to sit in my class charming all the girls.” I didn’t remember ever having done that. I figured it was his stock line. “How is the Navy treating you?” he asked.
“As good as it can, I guess,” I answered. “We were badly unprepared at the start. But I think we’re starting to make some headway.”
He smiled, sort of sadly. “I remember telling you a couple of years ago that the diplomats were probably working behind the scenes and the war would be over by the time you went on summer vacation.”
“I remember that too,” I replied.
There was an awkward pause. He looked serious. “I was in the first war, you know. Served in the Artillery Corps in France.”
“I never knew that,” I said.
“That’s because I never told any of you students,” he replied. “Never told most people after I came home. Didn’t want to talk about it. I saw things over there that I wish I could forget. But I never will. I guess I hoped the politicians were too smart to ever put us through that kind of misery ever again. But I was wrong.”
I had always thought of him as just a boring guy with a boring job who didn’t know what he was talking about, thinking the war would be over by summer vacation.
“You look like you’re either coming or going,” he said, motioning to my kit bag. “Which is it?”
“Coming,” I replied. “Just got off leave from convoy duty.”
“Well, I don’t want to keep you from seeing your family. You’ll be back in the thick of it soon enough.” He reached out and shook my hand again. “Good seeing you,” he said. “Be safe. And give those bastards hell.”
“Thanks, Mr. Martin,” I said. “I’ll try.”
I had never heard him swear before. He wasn’t talking to me like a teacher to a kid anymore, but as a soldier to a soldier.
I turned away and continued toward my parents’ house, which was just a couple of blocks away. Little boys saluted me as I walked down the main street, some very excited, others looking extremely serious, standing at attention. I tried to maintain what I thought was a dignified military bearing as I walked through the town, but by the time I reached the end of my street I was so excited to see my family that I was almost running.
I knocked on the door, then opened it. “It’s me, Bill!” I called out. By happy coincidence, it was almost dinnertime, and the moment I entered the house I could smell the welcoming, familiar aroma of my mother’s home cooking.
I heard footsteps racing down the hallway. “Mom, Dad, it’s Billy!” I heard Marian call out. Then she and Burt came charging around the corner into the front hall. They threw themselves into my arms and I hugged them tightly. It had been nearly a year and a half since I’d last seen them, and I was surprised how much taller they both were.
My mother and father came out of the parlour, smiling. My mother kissed me; my dad shook my hand, then put his arms around me.
