Chapter 5

Tom Fuller

Tom Fuller faced three courts martial and collected a thick file of onion-skin sheets of reprimands. He was also one of Canada’s most decorated war heroes. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross (DSC) three times and was mentioned in dispatches. A swashbuckling Canadian commander of motor torpedo boats (MTBs) in the pusser (he called it “pukka”) British Navy, he didn’t just throw the book of MTB warfare away, he re-wrote it his way.

MTBs were fast, wooden, night raiders of the sea that planed on the surface of the water instead of ploughing through it. Constructed with one-centimetre wood topside and double 0.6-centimetre deck planking, but no protective metal cladding, they came in different lengths, ranging from 18 to 36 metres and were capable of speeds of 38 to 47 knots. They carried an assortment of armaments — 46-centimetre or 53-centimetre torpedoes, three-kilogram deck guns, and Lewis and Oerlikons guns. Some were powered by three 1100 hp Rolls-Royce Merlin diesel engines; later models were driven by three 1500 hp Packard gas engines. They were in and out — fast. Tommy’s longest fire fight lasted a mere nine and a half minutes.

Tom Fuller (photo courtesy of the Department of National Defence)

Tommy was only 30 when the war broke out; his crew, however, called him “Gramps.”

Originally, he had tried to join the RCAF. He showed his logbook to numerous recruiting officers. When they realized he was Tom Fuller of Fuller Construction, all they would offer was “Works and Bricks,” at best, warrant officer in works and bricks. He finally gave up trying to enlist as a warrior.

Back in Fuller Construction’s office in Ottawa’s west-end, he received a call from naval officer, O.C.S. “Long Robbie” Robertson, asking if he’d like to join the navy. Fuller thought it was someone from the yacht club pulling his leg. Three days later he was on the Duchess of Richmond bound for England.

He needed a uniform run up quickly. The only gold braid available at Preston’s military tailor shop was “reserved for Lieutenant Farrow.” Preston’s phoned Farrow’s residence in Hull. His wife answered and said it would be okay, but that Tommy had to drive across Champlain Bridge. She would sew the braid on. And so it was that Hollywood screen star Maureen O’Sullivan became Fuller’s seamstress-for-a-day.

Tommy was based on the island of Vis off Yugoslavia, the stronghold of Marshal Tito’s guerrillas. Fuller’s flotilla of six MTBs sank or captured 24 armed enemy ships in 10 days. He was called “the Pirate of the Adriatic.” Superstition holds that cats have nine lives; well, Fuller had 13. That’s how many MTBs he had shot out from under him without ever suffering a scratch. He survived 105 fire fights. Fuller won the first of his three Distinguished Service Crosses in the English Channel. He attacked 22 German E-boats (MTBs), anti-aircraft trawlers, and other assorted gunboats. His bold attack so surprised the German armada that, long after he had slipped away in darkness, they were firing away at one another.

Another night in the Bay of Biscay, two U-boats attempted to attack his flotilla. They surfaced simultaneously, collided, and both sank. In another action, he engaged a German destroyer and a squadron of Messerschmitt fighters while warding off three E-boats.

When German paratroopers captured the Greek island of Leros, Tommy was captured and went seven days without sleep. He managed to “liberate” a bottle of rum and shared it with his German guard, who promptly passed out. Tommy then stole an Italian admiral’s barge (“We slugged the crew over the head …”) and led an escape group to Turkey. He sold the barge in Turkey for $350, about one-tenth of its value. He was awarded the first bar to his DSC.

Fuller changed the course of torpedo boat warfare. With a deck-load of British commandos, he would ram an enemy vessel. The commandos would board (“… slit a few throats”) and seize control of the ship. Fuller would then tow the “prize” back to base. His first prize carried the payroll and Christmas mail for all German troops on the Greek Islands and “a cargo of good Bavarian ale.” Subsequent actions netted him boatloads of ammunition, cigarettes, canned goods, firewood, and wheat.

One night, he cut his engines, anchored, and waited. A 400-ton brigantine, bristling with deck guns, sailed by. Her cargo was 10 tons of Danish butter, goulash, and sauerkraut. He towed the ship 84 kilometres to base. At one point, he was 91 metres away from German shore guns, but he was able to slip by unchallenged in darkness. Tommy had been quick to steal German recognition signals. The enemy fired vertical tracer bullets to indicate: “I’m friendly.” One of the first things Fuller did was fire a vertical tracer “so we wouldn’t get shot at.” He entered the harbour at dawn with the German flag flying upside down and prisoners lined up on deck. The Yugoslavs welcomed him with a brass band. Fuller sent three kegs of butter to every Mediterranean flag officer “with the compliments of Tom Fuller.” He called it “insurance — in case anyone tried to court martial me for looting.”

After one successful capture, Tito presented him with a “complete barrel of the very finest old Proshak wine … it was much appreciated.” Tito then honoured him with a dinner. They dined on Clark’s pork and beans (“liberated”), lobster, octopus, and a huge baked fish. As guest of honour, Fuller was given the head and the eyes. During his acts of wartime “piracy,” Fuller brought back hundreds of German and Italian prisoners. Most were executed by Tito’s guerrillas.

Napoleon said that every corporal had a field marshal’s baton in his knapsack. Not Fuller! War was not a career, and promotion was never a priority. He was an acting lieutenant in 1940 and a commander when he was demobbed (demobilized) in 1946, only promoted to captain in 1951. Fuller said that, although he was paid by the Canadian navy, he served in five navies — the Royal Navy (RN), Canadian Navy, American Navy, National Army of Liberation Navy, and the Regia Marina.

His shooting methods were considered unconventional and were dismissed by the British. He was openly critical of one British commander’s gunnery tactics and found himself before the captain’s mast. He suggested to the captain that they settle the differences in a competition. In force 3 seas, at 30 knots, the British commander’s first round landed only 12 metres away. No one could even tell where his second round landed. Fuller adopted a “port attack angle” and fired 457 to 549 metres from the floating target. It disintegrated. A grizzled Royal Navy gunnery NCO who watched said to Fuller: “You know, sir, the Royal Navy travels on 400 years of tradition, but goddamn little efficiency.”

Another British officer fell afoul of Fuller’s iron will. He wanted to see action and went along on a night raid. He outranked Fuller and, when the firing started, he panicked, assumed command, and ordered retreat. Fuller hit him over the head with a fire extinguisher, ordered re-engagement, and stood on the unconscious officer during the fire fight.

When the Royal Navy decided it needed a reference book on MTBs, they turned to Fuller. He wrote and dictated a manual and “the RN incorporated practically 100 percent of it.” His manual is still the RN’s Bible. Tommy had contempt for torpedoes. He once said his torpedo officer “couldn’t fire a torpedo and hit the side of a Woolworth building.” Leaving England, he had heard there was a shortage of potatoes in the Mediterranean. So, he filled his torpedo tubes with bags of fresh spuds.

He was a consummate scrounger and, at times, a quick thinking thief. He “liberated” sheets of an admiral’s personal stationery, which later came in handy when he forged the admiral’s signature and ordered American SO radar sets for his flotilla.

“We got everything handed down. The air force didn’t like the Vickers engine, so they gave it to us. Hercules engines and Merlin engines and everything [was] handed down from the Royal Air Force. We were the cast-off boys.”

He was also inventive. When his “R” mines began exploding prematurely in the water, he wanted to know why. He found that all the plugs under the horns were missing. Spray going over the after deck and humidity was dissolving the plugs. He ordered a midshipman to “go to the base and get a gross of condoms and let’s slip condoms over the horns on the mines. The little pink-cheeked Englishman came back without them. He said, ‘there’s only Wrens in the supply base.’”

“So, I told him I sent him to get condoms, go and bloody well get them. He was pink-cheeked before, he was red-cheeked then, so off he went again.

“I said, ‘Did you get them yet?’

“He said, ‘Yes, but as I was going out the door, one Wren took a look at the other and said, ‘Now, there goes a man!’”

Once, one of his prize trophies was stolen off his bridge. He was billeted at Roedean Ladies’ College, Brighton. There was an enameled wall plaque with a hole drilled dead centre to accommodate an electric light switch. The plaque read: If you feel faint or require the services of a mistress push the button. He had liberated it and had it installed over his torpedo-firing button.

Tommy was never interested in winning popularity contests with his crew.

“I was the roughest commanding officer of anybody. I would not go on board my ship at night without hailing the Officer of the Watch. When the Officer of the Watch was on deck, I would go down. I figured that if I went down alone with no officer there as a witness, the crew would have thrown me overboard, they hated my guts so much.”

When push came to shove, though, his crew stuck with him and asked to serve with him if he was transferred. A crew member once told him: “Well, sir, we might be badly damaged, but you always bring us back to port and that’s what we want to serve on — a ship that always comes back.”

His crews even composed and sang a song for him: “Old Uncle Tom Fuller and His 85-Pound Sledge.” Actually, it was an 8.5-pound sledge, but the decimal “got dropped.” When he couldn’t tow a prize ship back to port, he used the sledge to crack the Kingston valves and scuttle it. He didn’t believe in wasting ammunition or explosives when a sledgehammer could do the job.

When the war in Europe ended, he was appointed commanding officer of the HMCS Naden, British Columbia. His last rebellious act was on VJ-day — the day Japan surrendered. It was the only time he was ever placed under open arrest. The manager of the local liquor store had closed his outlet. Fuller sent 200 of the toughest looking tattooed sailors he could find in five trucks. Their orders: bring back 25 tons of beer. He told an officer to leave a “chit” and sign his name. When the manager looked outside and saw 200 surly ratings (non-commissioned sailors) swinging their web belts, he had a change of heart. He phoned Fuller’s superior, Admiral Brodeur, who told Fuller to consider himself under open arrest. Fuller told the admiral he didn’t steal the beverage.

“I signed for it,” he boldly declared.

In later years, Tommy delighted in mimicking Admiral Brodeur’s broken English: “consider yourself hunder hopen harrest. Be hin my office at ho-height-double-ho in the morning by the first haircraft.”

He left behind a rich and ribald 42-page oral history in volume one of Salty Bits, the nine-volume collection of individual war stories published by the Naval Officers’ Association. Fuller recounted how he was ousted from the ex-German ambassador’s residence on the Island of Ischia, near Capri. The villa was required for two VIPs, who turned out to be Winston Churchill and King George VI.

“Churchill, with a great big straw hat, towel over his arm, naked as the day he was born, went down the path to the highway, stopped the traffic this way, stopped the traffic that way, and walked across. Not the towel around him, just over his arm. He went down and plunged into the harbour and then he dried himself with the towel and walked up. Stopped the traffic this way and stopped the traffic that way, with George saying: ‘Churchill, put some clothes on!’”

Tommy Fuller died in May 1994. He was 85. His coffin was placed on a gun carriage pulled by naval pallbearers to Christ Church Cathedral. His double-mast brigantine, Black Jack, boomed out a seven-gun salute. En route to Beechwood Cemetery, the cortege stopped twice. A piper played “Amazing Grace” in front of the Parliament buildings his grandfather built. The second stop was at the War Museum, where the flag was lowered.

Tommy Fuller served longer than any other man in attack warfare. He was 10 years older than anyone else on the job.