"What can I say about fifty-two days leave at home?
Draw it out... or say it was mostly wine, women and song?
I guess that covers it without revealing too much."
Leading Seaman Coxswain Doug Harrison,
December, 1943
[Doug with his sister Gertie, Hamilton, circa 1941]
My father reached the safety of Halifax on December 6, 1943, stepped off the Aquitania upon seasoned sea-legs, cheered loudly with his mates, quietly thanked God to be back in Canada in one piece, likely looked for a place to stow his gear and headed toward a familiar watering hole. He had leave coming and lots of things to think about and discuss with his RCNVR buddies.
He would be in a lively pack that would include some of the boys who crossed the Atlantic with him, some of whom appear in the photo below ('Aquitania' written on the back in pencil). Almost for certain the pack would include Rosie (Chuck Rose, Chippewa), Westy (Don Westbrook, Hamilton), Joe (Watson, Simcoe; on right side, straightening his collar) and Buryl (Mcintyre, from Norwich, father's home town, but not in photo). Though my father only mentioned the man once in his memoirs, Anthony Bouchard may have joined in too, though aboard ship he stands apart from others and looks like he is in a very dark mood.
["Rosie and Westy stand above their names' first letters"]
["Anthony B. (right, looking at camera) was the only man in
father's division whose first name he forgot over time"]
But who among the Navy men would not wear a dark face at times when thinking back to some of the events they had been through, suffered through, alone and together, during the last two years?
For example (from father's memoirs):
August 19, 1942 - the Dieppe raid
My father missed the action by one day but was asked to deal with the barges when they returned, with some occupants in pieces. "I lost my first comrades at Dieppe," he writes, and names a few. "(I) was asked to go and clean up ALCs as they struggled back from Dieppe. I absolutely refused. I was so incensed..."
November 11, 1942 - the invasion of North Africa
"At around midnight over the sides (of the Derwentdale) went the LCMs, ours with a bulldozer and heavy mesh wire... there was little or no resistance, only snipers, and I kept behind the dozer blade (with Joe Watson) when they opened up on us...I worked 92 hours straight and I ate nothing except for some grapefruit juice I stole."
July 10, 1943 - the invasion of Sicily
"This was to be our worst invasion yet... we saw (Allied) gliders everywhere, sticking out of the water, crashed on land and in the vineyards... We started unloading supplies with our LCMs about a half mile off the beach and then the worst began - German bombers. We were bombed 36 times in the first 72 hours. Stukas blew up working parties on the beach once when I was only about one hundred feet out. Utter death and carnage."
August, 1943 - recovering from dysentery at Hill 10 Hospital, Malta
"Oh, we'll soon cure that," (medical staff) said. How? "We won't give you anything to eat." When I felt better they sent me to a tent where I got regular meals. I saw an airforce newspaper and on the front was a picture of Bob Alexander of Norwich, a school chum. But Bob returned to the fray and was lost on one of his bombing missions. How sorry I was to hear that news. He had already done so much."
September 6, 1943 - the invasion of Italy
"There was no resistance. The air force had done a complete job and there wasn't a whole building standing and the railroad yards were ripped to shreds. One of our stokers set up a medical tent for the civilians at Messina (in Sicily; the barges started and usually ended their work days there, after making the seven mile run across the strait to Italy loaded with war materials) and treated them for sores and rashes. We fed them too but when pregnant women came we had to close up shop."
Between the early raids and invasions father trained endlessly in Scotland and southern England. While upon the seas, e.g., the Meditteranean, he hid in tight corners while being bombed in broad daylight and witnessed tremendous bonfires in the dark of night (one was the hospital ship Alatambra being sunk by German torpedoes; "seven hundred and ninety were killed or drowned," he writes). During some of the landings my father saw Navy barges - and all aboard - disappear in bomb blasts, and once upon shore was discomfited by the depravations that so many civilian families faced.
Seventy years ago, almost to the day, father likely walked up, for example, Lower Sackville Street from the Navy piers and landed in at a familiar pub, with some of the same men he had walked down the street two years earlier before embarking to the war in Europe. Before sitting down Rosie, Westy, Joe, Buryl and Doug (and perhaps Anthony) could easily have ordered the same brands of beer they had sampled aplenty during their last visit.
They might have noticed bar towels hanging just where they'd seen them two years earlier. Clean glasses, and bottles and barrels could have been stacked in the same spots, arranged the same way as before. Perhaps the same barman in his worn jacket poured their first pints and called one or two by name. Whatever the case, so happy they would be to sit in familiar, secure surroundings.
And though so much could have been just as the young men remembered it, so much had changed and disappeared, not ever to return.
Still, almost to a man, they signed up for two more years.
More to follow.
Photos by GH
***
Please click here to read Dad's Navy Days: December 6, 1943 - Home, but not to stay (20)
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