Dad's Navy Days: 1944 - Comox, Vancouver Island (31)

"when he was asked to go to sea again,

he said he would go to cells first"

["St. Croix photo at Naval Museum of Manitoba"]

Seventy years ago my father was living the good life - and he knew it - on an isolated spit of land about 200 kilometres north of Victoria. He didn't know when the war or his duties to the RCNVR and Combined Operations would cease but just about every soldier, pilot or sailor still overseas and facing hostilities would have happily traded places with him.

It was heaven there in British Columbia. That being said, most of the men he worked with had survived harrowing experiences and I'm sure that over time their stories were shared over coffee or beer and some consequences related to, e.g., shell shock, revealed themselves.

My father writes:

Wm. Fischer (sic), a stoker (not of combined ops but of R.C.N.V.R.), was stationed there. He had, I believe, an unequalled experience. He was on an Atlantic convoy run, on H.M.C.S. St. Croix, and one night in rough seas the St. Croix was sunk and he was the lone survivor. His life jacket had lights on and later he was picked up by the English ship H.M.S. Itchen. It in turn was torpedoed and Fischer was one of three survivors. They took him and his wife on saving bond tours, etc., but when he was asked to go to sea again, he said he would go to cells first. With an experience like that I would have too. He was lucky to be alive.

Other more detailed accounts, including a newspaper interview, of Wm. Fisher's experiences reveal that the stoker was not the sole survivor when the St. Croix was sunk but was the only member of the St. Croix's crew to survive the later sinking of the rescue ship Itchen.

At Naval Museum of Manitoba one can read the following:

"On 20 September 1943, while escorting convoy ON.202, south of Iceland, HMCS ST. CROIX was torpedoed and sunk by U-305. Sixty-five members of the ship's company perished. Five officers and seventy-six men were rescued by HMS ITCHEN, however, only two days later, the ITCHEN was also torpedoed by an enemy submarine. Only one ST. CROIX sailor survived."

It is quite likely Fisher would not have gone 'to cells' alone if others in his circumstances, along with his new mates at Comox, had to make a choice between combat duty once again or cells. They had life pretty good where they were, and easy routines surely helped most returnees recover from many ill-affects of the strenuous and dangerous work endured in Europe.

One of my father's recollections reveals battle-stresses from, e.g., one month's duty in Sicily, may have resulted in unusual behaviours back in Canada less than a year later:

Gordon Bell, a YMCA director, came to ‘the spit’ as it was called nearly everyday and provided piano music, sewed on crests and buttons, repaired uniforms and showed movies. One night my oppo, Frank Herring, slightly drunk, was laughing his booming laugh at a hilarious movie when he took a sudden urge and jumped right out the window, frame and all, and he didn’t even get out.

["Some nights were spent at the Riverside Hotel, Courtenay.

Bickle Theatre was another attraction (left background)."]

Some will say my father's Navy buddy had consumed too many beers. Others will say - and I'm one of them - that after two years of hostilities some members of the armed forces reacted differently to alcohol, normal duties or peace time than others. Frank Herring likely wasn't the only man back from Europe who 'took a sudden urge' to do unusual things at times. 'Shell shock', depression, the various consequences of seeing buddies vaporized into a pink mist by a bomb blast, and so on, resulted no doubt in a long list of unusual behaviours in our nation's veterans. My own father's long list of hospital visits surely reveals a good deal about war's ill affects. (But that's another story).

After writing about Wm. Fisher and Frank Herring my father writes about more positive adventures:

["Water near the barracks w Comox in left background"]

There was a government oyster breeding ground at Givenchy and at low tide we would get bags full of the largest ones and put them in the water near the barracks, so, when the tide came in no one saw them and when tide went out we had a feast. We cooked a lot, but some of the large ones we ate raw. They were hard to swallow, i.e., the large ones, and we often needed a slap on the back to be able to move it down our throat.

[“Oyster breeding grounds to the right of ship. circa 1930s"]

Perhaps because of the plentiful oysters and the occasional cold beer, my father - a die-hard nature lover - writes only one line about the eye-popping (in my opinion) natural surroundings that encircle the Combined Ops training base:

It was beautiful to see the snow-capped mountains and the contours - which had various names.

Surely there was more he could have written. But then, maybe by the time he got around to writing his memoirs in 1975, certain memories had faded and he was happier to think of his home surroundings instead.

More to follow.

More Dad's Navy Days: 1944 - Comox (30)