Monday, August 5, 2013

Dad's Navy Days: August 1943 - Sicily (7)

["From ship to shore to The Savoy": Photo
from The London Free Press, Feb. 1944]

Life inside The Savoy, 70 years ago

When my father, along with other members of the RCNVR and Combined Operations, heard the 80th Flotilla was pulling out of Sicily during the first week of August, 1943 he surely did as expected. He packed up his meagre belongings and threw them onto a landing craft bound for Malta. He likely did so without a lot of energy because he was, by then, in the unyielding grip of a very common malady amongst over-worked and under-fed sailors, i.e., dysentery. Because of his growing weakness he didn't likely have the strength to carve his initials upon the limestone walls of The Savoy, in which he'd stayed for about three of his four weeks in Sicily.

[Map from Combined Operations by C. Marks, London]

Limestone walls? The Savoy? His chief accommodation? Yes, all of that. Though he'd spent the first week after D-Day Sicily (July 10, 1943) upon landing crafts, the Pio Pico (a U.S. liberty ship) and beaches near Avola (south of Syracuse), the remainder of his stay was spent amongst the sumptuous surroundings he later called The Savoy.

While writing his naval memoirs in 1975 (at age 55) he introduces his chief accommodation in the following manner:

     "We used a pail of sand saturated with gasoline to heat our
     meals on if any food was available (i.e., while living on the
     beach or landing craft during the first week). Later we moved
     into a limestone cave, dank and wet, but safe from bombs.
     We hung a barrage balloon over it, about 1,000 feet up, and
     one sailor got drunk and shot it down but we had 50 - 60 feet
     of limestone over our heads... one morning I woke up in my
     hammock in our cave (the hammock was slung between two
     limestone piers and above the lizards) and I saw Hurricane
     planes taking off just a short distance away." 
      [pg. 33, "DAD, WELL DONE" by G. Harrison]

[Photo from palermo.for91days.com]

Twenty years later, some of the same descriptions of the cave returned to father's thoughts when filling out a questionnaire concerning the RCNVR and Combined Operations:

     "Some slept on the beaches and on landing craft and one
     group found safety from bombs in an abandoned limestone
     cave near the beach. Very damp and lizardly, it was a
     welcome haven at night."

As well, the safe, damp and 'lizardly' cave (I especially like that last description) gets tagged as 'The Savoy' in a column he wrote for The Norwich Gazette in the early 1990s:

               Cool, Damp, Safe Rooms at The Savoy on Sicily

     " ...After about a week of being continually harassed by
     bombers, ack-ack fire and dog fights in the sky (we
     Canadians shot down a wing tank) one of our fellows on a
     short reconnoitre ashore found an abandoned limestone cave.
     The cave, a huge hump in the beach landscape, was to become
     our shelter at night for nearly three weeks. About 60 of us
     slept there, including another Norwich boy, the late Buryl
     McIntyre. The remaining Canadian boys slept in holes dug
     along the beach, covered over by whatever they could
     scrape up.

["Doug Harrison and mate Buryl McIntyre, 1941, Halifax"]

     The cave itself had been used at some time to house cattle
     to protect them from us. It was large enough to sleep many
     more. The roof was 70 or 80 feet thick and supported by
     huge limestone pillars inside... unless a bomb dropped in
     front of the door, we were as safe as a church. There wasn't
     a bomb as yet that could pierce that roof.

     The limestone underfoot was almost like wet cement,
     but we happily trudged through this, put our hammocks
     down doubled up, laid our mattresses on them, curled up
     in our blankets clothes and all, and slept like logs. We even
     recessed navy lamps into the walls. The ceiling was about
     20 feet high. It was cool, damp and safe and we shared our
     good fortune with several little green lizards who had cool
     feet. Early each morning we paraded out and slung our
     sleeping gear over bushes or on the lower limbs of olive trees
     and they would be quite dry by night.

[Photo from knowingsicily.com]

     Our commanding officer, Lt./Cdr. Koyl gave us the news
     and said we could now return to Malta and prepare for Italy.
     In our glee someone shot down the barrage balloon and we
     said goodbye to the cave, which we had nicknamed The Savoy." 
      [pg. 108 - 109, "DAD, WELL DONE"]

About seventy years ago today, bone-weary Canadian Navy men were stowing gear on various landing crafts destined to return to Malta for repairs, i.e., repairs to body (dysentery hit many sailors hard), soul, mind and various crafts of war. D-Day Italy was only one month away. They had to get ready.

More to follow.

Photos by GH unless attributed to other sources

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