4 – Convoys, chaos and carnage

Despite the dreadful accident, Valiant never slowed. She just kept steaming through the Straights of Pantelleria, heading for Malta. The apparent threat from the Italian torpedo boats didn’t materialise. It seemed to me that Hicks had died for no reason at all.

Two slow, war-weary biplanes flew out to meet the convoy as we approached Malta. They were hopelessly outdated and outclassed Gloster Gladiators of the Royal Air Force, known to the people of Malta as Faith and Hope. Along with another Gladiator called Charity, which had been destroyed the previous year, they had become the last heroic lynchpin in the defence of Malta. Their pilots must have been cheered by the sight of our convoy, because they knew it was bringing new Hurricanes for them.

But Valiant didn’t stop at Malta, sailing on to Alexandria instead. There, in January 1941, we joined Admiral Cunningham’s C Force. We moored in Alexandria Harbour, right next to a warship of the French fleet that was being guarded by the British. The French sailors were still on board under a form of house arrest. Like our earlier attack on the French battle fleet at Oran, this was to prevent the ship from being handed over to the Germans by the Vichy French government. We’d sit out on Valiant’s deck and watch them, and they’d sit on their deck and watch us back. That was pretty strange. But it was good to be in Alexandria because it gave us a chance to rest up. An ordnance crew came aboard and got to work repairing the damage to our turret. Fear had begun to invade me in an insidious way, but I kept a lid on it as best I could.

Bloody hell, what’s going to happen next?

Whenever we went ashore in Alexandria we headed straight to the Fleet Club, a Royal Navy establishment where the British crews anchored in Alexandria Harbour gathered to eat, drink, swap yarns and get into fights over trivial matters, like whose ship was bigger and better. It was terrific, the Fleet Club, noisy and boisterous with its big bar, billiard tables, and frantic Egyptian waiters serving cheap meals. My shipmates and I always ordered the same: steak, eggs and chips with well-done fried onions and a pint of beer, followed by quite a few more pints. I used to love that. It got me in the frame of mind for having fun.

Some of the Alexandria locals travelled about in horse-drawn carts called gharries. One day a group of us at the Fleet Club got talking about those gharries in an idle, beer-fuelled kind of way.

‘We need our own personal transport, that’s what we need,’ said ‘Scouse’ Parker, another sailor from Valiant who’d joined our regular drinking group.

‘Yeah, our own personal transport.’

‘A gharry would be perfect,’ Parker said.

‘How could we get one, do you think?’ Freddie asked.

‘We could steal one,’ Johnny suggested.

‘No, we’ll commandeer one.’

‘Even better.’

So we agreed to commandeer a gharry. Only a combi­nation of beer and youth can make that seem like a good idea. Out we went into the crowded streets of Alexandria and pretty soon we saw a gharry that took our fancy.

‘Does anyone know how to drive a gharry?’ I asked. I had driven a horse-drawn laundry van, but didn’t think that counted for much.

‘I do,’ said Parker.

‘Then we appoint you our official gharry driver,’ I said.

‘I accept.’

It was easier than I thought. We simply approached the gharry, hoisted out the driver and poured ourselves in. The poor driver protested loudly but the beer made us indifferent. Besides, none of us understood Arabic.

‘What’s he saying?’

‘Haven’t got a clue.’

Parker grabbed hold of the reins with great flair and off we galloped. It was an interesting drive, but only for about five seconds. After that it seemed more dangerous than being on a battleship. Parker didn’t have the faintest idea what he was doing.

‘I thought you said you could drive a gharry!’ I yelled from the back.

‘I didn’t say I could drive this one.’

‘Oh.’

‘Tell the bloody horse to stop!’

‘What good’s that going to do?’ Parker said, heaving back on the reins. ‘He doesn’t understand English.’

‘Silly me.’

With the horse out of control, the gharry swerved all over the narrow street, people yelling at us and leaping out of the way. Pretty soon Parker realised he was a hopeless gharry driver and abandoned any further attempts at controlling the horse. He let go of the reins and thankfully the animal stopped. A little shaken, but laughing uncontrollably, we abandoned the gharry and slipped unsteadily into the crowd.

At other times I would set off around Alexandria by myself. I really enjoyed that colourful place, with its chaotic back alleys and bazaars, all crammed with pokey shops and open-air stalls. It was dirty, noisy and packed with jostling, yelling people. The air was sharp with spices and the pungent smells of strange food cooking. I thought it was wonderful in an exotic, slightly mysterious way.

The traders got excited whenever they saw British sailors approaching. They pushed and poked us, holding their wares up in front of our faces, demanding we spend our money. It was possible to buy just about anything in the back alleys and bazaars of Alexandria. It was even possible to buy a woman. One of my mates, Peter Rimmer, was always on the lookout for ‘blue’ photographs. By today’s standards I suppose they were tame, but back then they were definitely considered illicit. Peter had quite a collection, which he guarded jealously.

After our runs ashore we’d go back to the ship and confront reality again. I began to dread the telltale signs that our force was getting ready for sea again. We’d see ‘flashing up’: smoke belching from the funnels of ships in the harbour and pennants going up all over the place.

Oh, oh. Here we go again. Where is it this time?

We’d steam out of Alexandria Harbour and maybe a couple of hours later they’d tell us where we were going. It was usually to Malta, escorting yet another convoy. We were invariably shadowed by the Luftwaffe’s long-range Condor reconnaissance aircraft, so were always on high-alert. We accompanied the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious on a number of those Malta convoys. She had Fairey Fulmar and Swordfish aircraft of the Fleet Air Arm aboard, which at least gave us some air cover. They were courageous blokes who flew in those Swordfish. They had open cockpits and were made of wood, fabric and bracing wire, so the crews were often exposed to the fury of bad weather. ‘String bags’, we used to call them. They flew very slowly and were sitting ducks.

As these convoys continued through February and March, I stood my watch as usual on Valiant’s bridge. Often a young blond midshipman would be up there with us. He had joined the ship in Alexandria in January. He was an ADO, an Air Defence Officer, and his job was to coordinate the searchlights and lookouts scanning the skies for aircraft. He was a little older than me and his name was Prince Philip of Greece. Sometimes he would chat to us, but otherwise kept to himself. He was just another crewman as far as we were concerned, no one special at all.

We often stopped in Malta, and I hated that. The Italians regularly bombed Valetta Harbour, although it was a little safer because of the protection offered by the RAF Hurricanes we had escorted across from Gibraltar. The Italians bombed us from high altitude, and not all that accurately, but when the Germans came into the Mediterranean they brought their dreaded Stuka dive-bombers with them. They’d use them on us whether we were at sea or holed up in the harbour at Malta. We’d see them high up, then they’d roll over into a near-vertical dive with their characteristic high-pitched scream. It was terrifying, that sound. Some­times the RAF Hurricanes would streak over to take on the Stukas in snarling dogfights. I was frightened most of the time on those convoys, and judging by the frantic rush to the heads after the Stukas departed, I wasn’t the only one. Stukas must be the best laxative ever developed. It was like that all the way to Malta, and all the way back again. I didn’t think there could be anything more terrifying than a Stuka attack.

Our work in the Mediterranean often involved support for the British Army along the North Africa coast, bombarding enemy positions with our 15-inch guns. Once we attacked a position near Bardiyah, just east of Tobruk, firing into the big sandy cliffs at the water’s edge. Then, out of nowhere the cliffs started firing back. The culprit was a white fort on top of the escarpment.

‘The bloody cheek,’ fumed our gunnery officer. ‘We can’t have that. Demolish that thing immediately!’

On his command, our gunners swung all eight of Valiant’s 15-inch guns to the same side of the ship and fired them simultaneously in a vicious broadside. There was a tremendous blast as the shells shrieked off toward the coast, leaving a great cloud of brown cordite smoke to drift down the length of the ship. The gunners’ range-finding was immaculate: the shells all hit the cliff in a neat line directly beneath the fort, which, after a pause, slid to the beach below and disintegrated. I tried not to think of the people in that fort, but it wasn’t possible.

They’ve got mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, just like me. They’re ordinary people, and we’ve just killed the whole bloody lot of them. But it was war and we couldn’t change what was going on, so I did my best to switch off. But burying those sorts of feelings takes its toll.

In between jobs like the fort at Bardiyah, we’d steam back to Alexandria and lie up in the harbour to resume our pastime of eyeballing the French sailors. Being back in harbour was a mixed blessing for me. It was much less dangerous, but there was a lot more time to think. And as 1941 wore on it became difficult not to dwell on the bad news coming from the home front. Britain was still under siege. London, Coventry, Manchester and my home city of Liverpool were all being bombed by the Luftwaffe.

Will I still have a home to go to when all this is over?

And there was a buzz around the mess decks that disturbed me greatly.

‘Canada, that’s where we’ll be off to if things don’t start looking up,’ I heard a sailor say.

‘Canada? Why Canada?’

‘In case we lose the war.’

‘Who says we’re going to lose the war?’ another bloke protested. ‘Like hell we’ll lose the bloody war!’

‘If it looks like we’re going to lose, they’ll withdraw Valiant and all the other big ships to Canada. We’ll be the Free English, in exile over in Canada. You know, just like the Free French in exile now in Britain.’

That got the usual mess deck response.

‘Bullshit!’

‘You’ll see. We’ll all end up being Canadians.’

It was dreadfully depressing to hear talk like that. Defeat was in the air. I became morose and fearful, besieged by lonely, chilling thoughts about the very real possibility of dying, piled on top of the usual nightmares about Stukas screaming overhead.

We never got sent to Canada, but in the last week of March, the Royal Navy sent Valiant and the other ships of our force to intercept an Italian fleet assembling in the eastern Mediterranean. Acting on an air reconnaissance report from their German allies, the Italian ships had sailed from ports in Italy to attack a large British convoy. Our job, together with the aircraft carrier HMS Formidable, HMS Warspite and Admiral Cunningham’s flagship HMS Barham, was to protect the convoy.

During the night of 29 March, the tannoy in Valiant clicked on, hissed and crackled like it always did, and the captain told us that we were going to be engaging in a naval battle with ships of the Italian fleet. Just like that. A matter of fact.

A naval battle? That can’t be right. I’m just a Liverpool lad, people like me don’t take part in naval battles!

A bugle trumpeted over the tannoy, sounding the call to raise the battle flag, the only time I heard that rare call on a warship. It was followed by the more familiar bugle call to action stations, so I rushed to my gun turret.

Valiant was the only ship in our force with radar, one of the original radar systems used at sea during the war. It had a range of about 100 miles, pretty good for those days, but as it turned out we didn’t need any such range on the night of the 29th. Just after 10 o’clock the radar detected three Italian cruisers, Pola, Fiume and Zara, a mere six miles away. They were steaming with their guns pointing fore and aft, oblivious to the ships of our force approaching. The weather was quite good that night, so to this day I’ve never been able to fathom why their lookouts didn’t see us.

Still undetected, we steered onto a parallel course within 4000 yards of them, and swung our 15-inch and 4.5 guns broadside to the Italians. Warspite did the same. On Valiant’s bridge, Prince Philip was coordinating our searchlights. He caught the enemy ships in a blinding, blue-white illumi­nation, and we were given the order to fire. Those poor Italians didn’t stand a chance. Our armour-piercing shells pummelled them and caused devastating damage. The three cruisers sank within a few minutes. They didn’t even have time to fire a single shot back at us. Another two Italian destroyers were also lost in a different engagement in the same battle. Some 2400 Italian sailors lost their lives.

It was over in no time at all and I was glad to get out of that without being fired on. The thought of being sunk filled me with horror. But it was another job done, so we turned for Alexandria, all the while expecting to be attacked from the air. Nothing happened, so we got away with it nicely.

And that was the Battle of Matapan. As an ordinary seaman on a battleship, it’s possible to take part in a naval engagement without even realising that it might be historically significant. The ship is so big and complex, with so many people doing hundreds of different jobs, that no one is ever told all the details that make up the big picture. An ordinary seaman doesn’t know why it’s happening, or how a situation has come about. He’s just told the bare facts. He’s a very small player in what is actually a deadly game of chess played with opposing ships on a huge area of sea, with the opponents mostly out of sight of one another.

Back in harbour I kept thinking about those Italian ships going to the bottom, packed with sailors like me. The tension was building in me terribly. But I couldn’t dwell on it because the Germans suddenly invaded Greece and Crete, so they sent us to Crete during May.

Dear Lord, here we go again.

We went into Suda Bay, the harbour on Crete, and once again we were sitting ducks. The RAF never seemed to cover us, and the Germans were only about 90 miles away with their aircraft and paratroopers. Suda was a volcanic place where the water was the clearest I’d ever seen. I could see the bottom of the harbour below the ship’s bilges when I looked over Valiant’s deck railing.

Why do they keep sending us into places like this? They’re really pushing our luck.

The Germans bombed us nearly every day and night while we were in the harbour. We were constantly called to action stations. It seemed the Luftwaffe had started a shuttle service. They came over from Greece, dropped their bombs, went back to Greece, refilled their bomb bays and came out to attack us again.

One day in Suda Bay, a snarling swarm of Stuka dive-bombers singled Valiant out for some close attention. We rushed again to action stations, elevated our 4.5 guns and commenced firing. It was bedlam closed up inside our turret. My head was reeling from the din of the gun firing and the clatter of empty shells spilling onto the deck. The attack lasted for about 15 minutes before we were given the order to cease firing. We emerged from our turret to find the quarterdeck in chaos. Two bombs had exploded there but, by some miracle, no one was killed. A few of the crew aft on the upper deck were wounded, though. I knew one of the blokes who got hurt, Tubby Herks, a big round-faced Scot. He was badly shaken up and other sailors in that part of the ship were trying to sort out the smoking wreckage. They looked dazed and ashen. Holed up in our turret, we hadn’t even felt the bombs explode.

Although the damage to the ship was slight, this attack was enough to convince the Royal Navy that we shouldn’t be in places like Suda Bay where the Luftwaffe could bomb us at will. So we made some hasty repairs and steamed back to Alexandria. As soon as we got ashore we set course for the Fleet Club and had a few settling drinks.

Conversation in the Fleet Club often got around to the sailors who suddenly vanished from the ship after reporting sick. I don’t know what became of them, whether they were sent to jobs ashore in Alexandria or got shipped back to England. But they were removed from the ship very quickly, because uncontrollable fear in one person can spread to others.

‘Where’s so-and-so?’ someone might ask, mentioning a sailor we all knew.

‘He reported sick.’

‘Bomb happy,’ someone else would say. That explained everything.

‘Poor bastard.’

No one ever blamed those men, or thought any less of them. We were all struggling in silence with our own ­anxieties. I had begun to notice the strain on the faces of the other young seamen around me. They looked older. I wondered if I looked like that. I was determined to keep going because I didn’t want to let my mates down, and I knew they didn’t want to let me down. That’s what being part of a ship’s crew is all about, a sense of mutual obligation. But we were all riding an emotional roller coaster.

The lows were sometimes horrific. When we weren’t at the Fleet Club, escorting convoys or doing other jobs at sea, we’d spend long periods on the ship as she rode at her mooring in Alexandria Harbour. This meant we were available to go aboard any battle-damaged ships to help clear up. Once I was assigned to a working party when one of our cruisers struggled into harbour after taking a direct hit during an air raid. A bomb had crashed through the steel deck of the bridge, and exploded in the mess deck far below. The carnage was unspeakable. There were bits of bodies scattered everywhere and the stench was nauseating. It was the smell of death and the memory of it lives on for a lifetime.

None of us wanted to be part of it, but we were ordered to get the job done and not talk about what we’d seen. Every single member of that working party was shaken to the core. It was soul-destroying, heart-wrenching and desperately sad. These days, I dare say the men of such a working party would receive counselling. But there was nothing like that then, nobody at all for us to talk to. That was how it was, and not just for people in uniform. Civilians were ‘cleaning up’ after their neighbours’ houses had been destroyed in air raids, their own families were being bombed and killed as well, at home in England, here in Africa, wherever the battles were being fought. Like the sea, bombs don’t make any distinctions.

Fortunately, there was also plenty to keep us laughing. On Valiant, many of the lighter moments were provided by a dishevelled Canadian sailor called Banjo Bailey, a misfit, ­hostilities-only volunteer from Saskatchewan. Whether he had been in catering as a civilian I’m not sure, but he worked below decks in the galleys. No amount of navy discipline seemed to convince Banjo to tidy himself up. His hat was never straight and he always looked unshaven. Once, when I was on watch, Banjo presented himself on the bridge with a side of meat slung over his shoulder. Everyone looked at him in astonishment.

‘What’s that then, Bailey?’ an officer enquired.

‘It’s a side of meat, sir.’ He spoke with a slow drawl.

‘I can see that, man. But why in God’s name have you brought it up here?’

‘I was just told to take it to the bridge, sir.’

A pause while the officer worked it out. ‘I think you’ll find you were ordered to take it to the fridge, Bailey.’

‘Aye aye, sir,’ Banjo said. He about-faced and left the bridge, as confused as everyone else.

Without fail, we all got our rum issue every morning at 11 o’clock. It was beautiful rum, too, good stuff with a lovely dark, reddish colour. One morning, while we were escorting a convoy to Malta, we were at action stations when ‘Up spirits!’ came over the tannoy. But because we were all closed up in the turret, no one in our gun crew could leave their post to collect the rum issue. So Banjo was sent below to get it for us. He returned empty-handed.

‘Where’s the rum, Banjo?’

‘Couldn’t find any,’ he drawled.

‘There must be a rum issue down there somewhere.’

‘I didn’t see any.’ He seemed perplexed, as always.

‘Well, what was down there, then?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing? What about on the mess table?’

‘Oh,’ Banjo said, his memory jogged. ‘There was this thing, a big container.’

‘And …’ we chorused helpfully. We were desperate for our rum ration. It was always in that container.

‘I looked in it but it was only cold tea, so I chucked it away.’ Banjo was lucky to escape alive.

Apart from lifting the spirits and keeping us warm, rum was also valuable currency. The rum was for drinking there and then, according to the navy. But by building up a supply, blokes could use it for barter. Get someone to cut their hair, do their washing, things like that. I always drank my rum straight away, though. Like I said, it was good stuff. And it always made me incredibly hungry. Once I’d downed my rum I could eat my way through a stack of the corned beef sandwiches that were always available on board. Even when we were at action stations the galley crew would bring us corned beef sandwiches. The best sandwiches ever, they were.

Our convoy duties dragged on through 1941, with no indication that we’d be going home any time soon. About the only highlight was when I turned 20 in October.

Then, in the last week of November we sailed from Alexandria in the company of our sister battleships HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Barham as well as eight destroyers. We were to join up with a bigger Allied fleet and intercept two large Italian convoys believed to be making for Benghazi in Libya. On the afternoon of 25 November our group was patrolling south of Crete when, without any warning, Barham was hit by three torpedoes fired from a German U-boat that had skilfully penetrated our line of defending cruisers. Surely fate was at work for me here. That submarine commander could easily have fired at Valiant, with me closed up at action stations below my 4.5 turret, but instead he selected Barham through his periscope.

When the torpedoes hit her, Barham rolled on her side almost immediately. We heard a dull rumble, then a massive explosion as her store of ammunition blew up. Less than three minutes later she had completely disappeared, dragging more than 850 men with her to the bottom of the Mediterranean. There is a famous piece of film showing Barham rolling over with some of her desperate crew massing on her upturned side. I don’t know who shot the film, or what ship he was on when he captured Barham’s last moments, but it is spellbinding and chilling. It could have been me and my shipmates clinging to Valiant’s hull, with just seconds to live before she blew up. Amazingly, about 450 crewmen survived and were rescued.

Immediately after firing her torpedoes, the U-boat erupted from the water right in front of Valiant. This happened sometimes when a submarine, cruising just beneath the surface, relieved itself of the weight of its torpedoes. The lookouts on our bridge watched incredulously as the sub’s conning tower passed right down the side of us. She was so close that we couldn’t depress our guns far enough to fire at her. Valiant immediately began to turn around with the intention of ramming the U-boat on the surface, but our turning arc was huge and by the time we’d come around, the enemy vessel had managed to crash dive. We passed harmlessly over the top of it.

After that job we went back to the relative safety of Alexandria harbour where, early in December, I was promoted to able seaman. Maybe I’ll be sent home for Christmas with my family. No such luck, though. The war had other ideas. Early on a calm Mediterranean night, I was in our mess when the quiet of the evening was punctuated by a bugle call that a sailor never wants to hear.

‘Clear lower deck! Clear lower deck!’ Something was ­seriously wrong. No one waited for an explanation. We just rushed to the upper deck.

‘The enemy has attacked our ship here in the harbour,’ the captain told us in his usual matter of fact way.

In harbour, we always had Royal Marine sentries on board, patrolling the decks. The sentry on our bow had spied figures clinging to Valiant’s mooring buoy in the darkness and a small boat had been dispatched to investigate. The figures turned out to be Italian navy frogmen. They were captured and brought aboard the ship where, under questioning, they admitted to attaching limpet mines to Valiant’s hull.

‘These gentlemen seem reluctant to tell us where exactly on the hull these mines are located,’ the captain said. ‘So to encourage them to do so we are going to put them down in the lower deck.’

Shortly after the Italians had been taken below, muffled explosions came from deep in the ship. No one was hurt but, in an instant, our great battleship was disabled. She was down at the bow. This courageous attack by the Italians shocked us all, especially because Valiant’s sister ship Queen Elizabeth, moored near us, had suffered a similar attack and was already listing badly to starboard. Even in harbour, we realised, there was no escape from war.

With Valiant disabled, a group of my shipmates and I were told to report to the master-at-arms’ office. We were going to be drafted away from the ship.

Perhaps this is it. Maybe we’re going home.

I began to cheer up at the prospect, as I hadn’t been home since November 1939, but I was handed a written draft chit posting me to shore duties at Port Said in Egypt, at the entrance to the Suez Canal. Johnny, Charlie, Davey and Peter were all posted with me but Freddie had orders to remain on Valiant. Peter packed his collection of dubious photographs in his duffle bag.

‘We’ll be a bit safer in Port Said.’

‘Maybe,’ Johnny said doubtfully. ‘But it might be a hell of a lot more dangerous.’

So in January 1942 we reported to Navy House, a big building overlooking the jetty at Port Said. This would be our accommodation. I was put on general shore duties, which meant patrolling the quayside on foot, protecting the British military installations there.

‘Protecting them from what?’ I asked.

‘Egyptians in boats,’ I was told.

‘What do I do if I see Egyptians in boats?’

‘Shoot them.’ I must have looked alarmed. ‘Don’t kill them, just scare them off. Don’t let anyone approach the quay.’

Well, this was certainly different from being aboard a ­battleship. All that training in seamanship and here I was, a sentry with a rifle and orders to shoot at Egyptians approaching in boats. It wasn’t terribly exciting, but that suited me fine. We did have a few air raids, and I had to make a dash for cover occasionally, but they didn’t come to much. The only Allied aircraft we saw were RAF Wellington bombers fitted with huge metal rings that completely surrounded them. The rings created a magnetic field that exploded enemy mines, so the Wellingtons would fly low past the quay on their way to make the Canal safer for Allied shipping.

Each of the navy sentries patrolling the quay was assigned an interpreter. Mine was a Greek civilian called Minoli Kambouris who spoke excellent English and perfect Arabic. On my instructions, he’d call out to any small boats that approached, warning them I’d shoot if they didn’t bugger off. Minoli was a lovely man. He taught me snippets of Greek and Arabic, and from time to time he’d take me to his home in Port Said to spend time with his family. They were a very kind, ­welcoming lot. I enjoyed doing that, meeting new people and going into a family home. It was a break from the boredom.

After I’d been on sentry duty for a couple of months, Johnny Hennessey and I were assigned as an armed escort taking some British soldiers to an internment camp at Ismailiya, which is on the Canal about halfway between Port Said and Suez, near the Bitter Lakes. They had committed various crimes and were to serve their sentences at that dreadful place. Johnny and I presented our papers to the sentry at the camp gate but as soon as we’d handed the ­soldiers over, they were set upon by a brutal bunch of military policemen. I was shocked. They’d barely set foot in the camp and already they were being mercilessly kicked and punched.

‘You can’t treat those blokes like that!’ I protested.

‘On your way, sailor,’ one of the MPs snarled. ‘It’s none of your bloody business. Go on, piss off.’

By this time I’d just about had enough of all things ­military. I left feeling disturbed, churning inside. Utterly fed up, I went back to patrolling the quay with Minoli. At the end of June I got another draft chit. This time, together with Johnny, Peter and Davey, I was detailed to escort a contingent of Italian prisoners-of-war to Durban in South Africa. Our hopes soared.

‘This is more like it,’ Davey said.

‘Durban’s a long way from the hot spots.’

‘Better than all the bullshit at Navy House.’

We sailed to Durban with the Italian prisoners on a Polish passenger ship, going via the Suez Canal to Port Suez, then through the Red Sea for a brief stop in baking-hot Aden. Then we sailed into the Indian Ocean, calling in at Mombassa, and finally down the east coast of Africa. The Italian prisoners gave us no trouble at all and we arrived in Durban around the middle of August.

Then, with Johnny, Peter and Davey, I was sent to a military staging camp at Pietermaritzburg, in the hills to the west of Durban. It was absolutely wonderful there. The war hadn’t touched the area at all, so it felt like peacetime. The air was beautifully cool and fresh and there was plenty of food. It was heaven, even though we were sleeping in tents. It was just nice to feel the peace soaking into me, damping down my ragged nerves. Every morning the local farmers left gallons of fresh milk outside our tents, the sweetest milk I’d ever tasted.

We’d been in that invigorating camp for a couple of weeks when more draft chits came. I couldn’t believe it. We were being drafted back to England! The relief was almost overwhelming.

It’s over. I’m actually going home! You’re all right now, Jim.

It was the most fantastic feeling, the best news I’d had since I was drafted to Valiant back in 1939. My mates and I returned to the port at Durban in high spirits. We would be embarking on a ship berthed some distance away from the main quays. It was a passenger liner. I stared at it.

‘That looks bloody familiar, that ship,’ I told the others. ‘It’s a Cunard ship.’ Anyone who’d grown up in Liverpool would recognise those distinctive lines.

We walked along to look at the ship that was going to take us home. As I got closer I was stunned to see Laconia on the bow, still visible beneath its coarse coat of wartime grey.

‘Well, bloody hell!’

‘What’s up?’

‘I know this ship,’ I said. ‘My father was the first-class steward.’

Here was the most amazing omen, I figured. Someone was guiding me, surely. I was going home on my father’s last ship, a ship I’d been aboard and loved as a boy. She looked neglected, but beneath her sea stains and shabby paint I could see it was the same wonderful Laconia.

‘This is meant to be,’ I told the others. I was totally convinced of it. It was 28 August 1942, and I was going home.