Monday, August 26, 2013

Dad's Navy Days: August 1943 - Malta (10)

After the WW2 invasion of Sicily by Allied Forces - 70 years ago - members of the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve (RCNVR) rested and recuperated from illnesses on the island of Malta. In my father's case, after a 10-day stay at Hill 10 Hospital, which included daily handfuls of pills and four or five days of a starvation diet, he explored the island with renewed vigour.

[Malta's military hospitals have a long history"]

All the while, war weary members of the RCNVR and Combined Operations (serving on landing crafts) thought about what was coming up next. Surely, they would only have had a rough outline or an inkling. "Although no one ventured a word, we all had Italy in the back of our minds," father wrote in an article for his local paper.

He also mentioned the following:

     When my friends returned from Sicily in their landing craft,
     I was waiting for them at the bottom of the cement steps.
     Our commanding officer Lt/Comdr Koyl and a few hands
     disappeared for awhile and when they returned they were
     weighted down with kit bags of parcels and mail. The blues
     disappeared and quietness settled in as every one of us, in
     a different posture, chewed on an Oh Henry bar and read
     news from home. The war wasn’t so bad after all. We shared
     with anyone who hadn’t received a parcel; no one went
     hungry. We feasted on chocolate bars, cookies, canned goods
     and the news.

     There were still about 250 of us - we hadn’t lost a soul, but
     one man had a terrible shrapnel wound in his arm. 
     
[re the shrapnel wound: I never gave it much thought until a year ago while having a cup of tea with Londoner Al Adlington, a man who'd informed me via email a few weeks earlier that he'd not only served with my father but had been in Sicily as well in 1943. On the first day of the Allied invasion he'd been injured: He was manning a gun when attacked by the Luftwaffe and a shell rattled around inside his protective cage and ripped into his hand and arm. "That was the end of it for me," he told me. My father would surely have remembered Mr. Adlington because the best man at his wedding (Al's wife Mary showed me their wedding picture, taken in Glasgow) was Chuck Rose of Chippewa, one of my father's close Navy buddies.]


[Raw recruits, Effingham Division, Halifax, 1941;
Doug Harrison, from Norwich, front row, third from left;
Chuck Rose, from Chippewa, first on left in fourth row;
Al Adlington, from London, fourth row, third from left]

[Chuck and Pauline Rose, Harrison's backyard, Norwich, 1955;
Pauline lives today near her family home in Chippewa]

     We conserved parcels for a rainy day and were dispersed to
     ships and tents to live for a few days while our stoker got the
     engines on each craft ready for the invasion of Italy. Of course,
     no one knew when that would be, but urgency was the order of 
     the day and repair parts were non-existent. We toured the island
     of Malta and some sailed over to Gozo, another small island.
     We mingled with the inhabitants but generally we took the
     opportunity to get some rest and re-read mail. I saw a movie,
     and before the show the music consisted of western songs by
     Canada’s own Wilf Carter.

["Wilf Carter (link to photo), one of Canada's famous cowpokes"] 

     Although no one ventured a word, we all had Italy in the back
     of our minds. Before we got too settled in, we were throwing
     our hammocks aboard our landing craft again and heading for
     Sicily. [The Norwich Gazette, circa 1992]

And from the shores of Sicily - in September, 1943 - all the material of war belonging to Allied troops was to be delivered by ship and landing crafts to the seven-mile-distant shores of Italy.

Today, as I anticipate the approach of the 70th anniversary of D - Day Italy, I'm aware that as father rolled up his hammock, he heard the countdown in the back of his mind.

Photos by GH   

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Please click here to read Dad's Navy Days: August 1943 - Malta (9)

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