Faint Footsteps, WW2

My father started his military march as a raw recruit in the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve in Hamilton, 1941. He continued his training in Halifax, volunteered for the Combined Operations organization and soon marched in Scotland and England, where he prepared for the Dieppe raid and Allied invasions of North Africa, Sicily and Italy. Now I am doing the marching, so to speak, to learn more about his WW2 adventures.

If you would like to learn more about my adventures following my father's faint footsteps made during WW2, please visit my new blog - Faint Footsteps, WW2 

My most recent post tells the story, mainly with the use of photos, of how I built a boat in which to transport my father's ashes from London to the Atlantic Ocean, and thereby fulfill my promise to bury him at sea.

Link to I Build Me a Boat

Cheers!

Photo by GH

Dad's Navy Days: October 1943 - Homeward Bound (18)

After our work from Sicily to Italy was done and our armies
were advancing we returned to Malta. We stayed but a few days,

then took MT boats to Boujie (sic: Bougie - Arabic Bijiyah) in Algiers,

and were soon after loaded onto a Dutch ship, the Queen Emma.

[Pg. 37, "DAD, WELL DONE"].

In October, 1943 after my father left Italy, Sicily and Malta behind and reached the safety of calm waters behind submarine nets off Gibraltar, he took a good long look around him. After a full two years worth of training with Combined Operations, shepherding barges loaded deep with tonnes of war materials across hostile waters and onto hostile beaches, and - on off days - travelling into war zones and collecting a few souvenirs, he likely knew what he was looking at when he saw it and had a fairly good sense of how big, cruel and devastating was the fight called World War 2.

[H.M.C.S. Prince David at Gibraltar:
Photo by G.A. Milne, H.M.C.S.]

Because of his love of ships going back to his childhood days, he almost automatically collected vivid memories of some that transported him to various ports. About the Queen Emma, as it slowly steamed toward Gibraltar (approximately 70 years ago today), he recalls the following:

     The ship had been bombed and strafed, her propellor shaft
     was bent and we could only make eight knots an hour under
     very rough conditions. Her super structure was easily half inch
     steel, and in various places where shrapnel had struck I could
     see holes that looked like a hole punched in butter with a hot
     poker, like it had just melted. [pg. 37, "DAD, WELL DONE"]

[A stubborn Dutch freighter with gaping wound:
Photo by G.A. Milne, H.M.C.S.] 

And in his weekly column for The Norwich Gazette (published circa 1992) he recalls the following scene he saw inside the submarine nets off Gibraltar on his way back to England:

     The scene at Gibraltar was one of carnage, war at its worst.
     Nearby were destroyers which had been mauled by bomb and
     torpedoes, with gaping holes in their sides and deck plating,
     and some of the large guns were bent and pointed at bizarre
     angles. Miraculously they floated with pride and here and there
     steam came from the odd funnel. We thought of what the crews
     had been through and the fire and heat that had buckled the
     plates, how anyone could have survived. But Malta had to be fed.

[A Scot retrieves $100 from his sinking ship:
Photo by G.A. Milne, H.M.C.S.]

That he sums up the twisted carnage in six words - 'But Malta had to be fed' - suggests to me he understood the reason why convoys of ships tried to keep the small island alive at great cost to themselves. He likely marvelled at the courage of unseen crews and the desperate plight of often helpless islanders in the face of an unrelenting siege. Though he wouldn't have known that Malta had endured, a year or two before he had spent time recovering from dysentery in one of its hospitals, the highest tonnage of bombardment per capita of any site in the history of war, he surely knew 'the island... was a legend now in the world' (Seige: Malta 1940 - 1943, E. Bradford). 

["Recommended reading for anyone interested in World War 2"]

That being said, without any doubt he was thankful to be heading home. 

There are only a few more stops to make before he will plant his feet on Canadian soil. Only one more big battle, with an unsuspecting fellow wearing black garters.

More to follow.

Last photo by GH

***

Please click here to read Dad's Navy Days: October 1943 - Homeward Bound (17)

Dad's Navy Days: October 1943 - Homeward Bound (16)

"After about a month Do-go had a tearful goodbye with his friend Peepo.

He stood on the beach and I on my landing craft, waving our goodbyes."

Doug Harrison, Leading Seaman Coxswain, recalling October 1943

["Doug's hand-written memoirs, circa 1975"]

Time flies.

Seventy years ago today, while waving farewell, a young Canadian seaman likely felt his 30 days in Sicily and Italy had passed quickly. Solemn goodbyes play tricks I suppose, and the hard work associated with his many trips back and forth across Messina Strait between Messina (Sicily) and Reggio (Italy) upon barges filled with the material of war was perhaps forgotten in the time it takes to wave a hand to a young friend left behind and then turn his mind toward home for some relief.

After months of serving the needs of Allied forces in their fight for the Mediterranean, Doug was bound for Canada and Norwich, the small town in which he was born, raised and would spend - for the very most part - the rest of his life. He would spend Christmas, 1943 primarily with his mother, family and girlfriend Edith, my mother.

[The Aquitania arrived "safely at Halifax on December 6th, 1943"]

Father first wrote about his time in Sicily and Italy thirty years later (but no doubt recalled it during many restless times between 1943 and 2003, the year of his death), and included more details about his youthful, eye-opening, ofttimes harrowing adventures there and in other faraway places. About these adventures he once said, "It would cost a small fortune today to retrace the places I had been to and seen under the White Ensign."

In that he and I are in agreement. A travel itinerary would have to include dozens of places in the UK, North and South Africa, Sicily, Italy and Western Canada. My own travels, costing 'a small fortune today', have barely begun to scratch the surface and in the space of the few sentences below he touches on a few places that will cost me far more to visit.

About his departure from Sicily and then Europe he writes the following:

     Our flotilla went back to Malta for a few days and from there

     we took fast Motor Torpedo boats to Bougie in North Africa and

     boarded a Dutch ship, the Queen Emma, whose propellor shaft

     was bent from a near miss with a bomb. In convoy we made about

     eight knots up the Mediterranean to Gibraltar, anchored inside

     the submarine nets for a couple of days, and slowly moved out

     one night for England.

     In true navy fashion, after landing at Gourock, near our Canadian

     barracks H.M.C.S. Niobe in Greenock, (Scotland) we entrained for

     a barracks at Lowestoffe, where on a clear day the church spires

     of Norwich could be seen. We spent a month there, then went by

     train to Niobe, received two new uniforms and a ticket aboard the

     Aquitania, arriving safely at Halifax on December 6th, 1943. I had

     a wonderful Christmas at home with Mother and family. It was sure

     nice to walk down main Street and meet the people.

     [The Norwich Gazette, circa 1992]

[Father's friends 'Rosie' and 'Westy' aboard the Aquitania, 1943]

Sicily, Italy, Malta, Bougie, Gibraltor, Gourock, Greenock, Lowestoffe, Norwich (UK), and Halifax. Quite the itinerary for one man among many in the RCNVR at the end of 1943, and that doesn't include his stops at several ports (including Freetown, Cape Town, Durban and The Hidden Valley) as he sailed around Africa, from Scotland to Port Said, Egypt, during the middle of the same year. It is no wonder then that the Canadian Navy boys were known to often sing about rolling along, as in the following song:

     Roll along, Wavy Navy, roll along

     Roll along, Wavy Navy, roll along

     If they ask you who you are

     We’re the R.C.N.V.R.

     Royal along, Canadian Navy, roll along

     [D. Harrison's version, penned in 1975]

Somewhere along the way between Sicily and home, my father signed on for two more years with the RCNVR, but not for 'HO' or 'Hostilities Only'. After Christmas, 1943 he was sent by train to Vancouver Island ("It was heaven," he said), and it was there he celebrated the end of World War 2, all in one piece as some would say.

["Then I went to Givenchy III... Vancouver Island"]

I wouldn't say 'all in one piece', to be completely honest, but that's another story. 

["Doug at home in Norwich with Combined Operations flag"]

Photos by GH
 
***

Please click here to read Dad's Navy Days: September 1943 - Italy (15)

Dad's Navy Days: September 1943 - Italy (15)

"I remember one of the many refugees of war,

a barefoot lady dressed in a black sleeveless

dress, carrying a huge black trunk on her head."

Doug Harrison, Leading Seaman Coxswain

["Navy boys in Cairo, 1943, with a young guide, Omar"]

Fortunately my father wrote down many recollections about his time in Sicily and Italy during WW2. Many events he experienced were horrendous. Others, related to refugees of war, were solemn. And a few fall under the heading 'boys will be boys'.

About living life occasionally on the edge of some type of law he writes:

     One evening an officer and I went on a short foray and
     acquired a few chickens. The officer had a cook, and I thought
     of home as I enjoyed a couple of drumsticks in payment for my
     part in the acquisition. (Oh! We left some chickens for the
     owner.) [1992, The Norwich Gazette]

Sounds harmless enough doesn't it? However, in hand-written memoirs composed in 1975, he goes into a bit more detail:

     We weren’t too busy and the officers (who ate separately but
     had the same food as us) were growing tired of the diet, the
     same as we were, even though they had a Sicilian cook and we
     didn’t. An officer by the name of Wedd asked me if I knew where
     there were some chickens or something. I said, “Chickens, yes.”

["My father knew how to handle chickens"]

     When he said, “how be we put on some sneakers and gaffle them”
     I said, “Okay by me. Right then, tonight at dark we’ll go, but I
     get a portion for my part of the deal.” He agreed and later we
     got every chicken in the coop, rung their necks, and then took
     them to the house and had the Sicilian cook prepare them. I got
     a couple of drum sticks out the window. Next morning, the Sicilian
     cook came in as mad as hell. Someone had stole his chickens. Little
     did he know at the time he cooked them that they were his own
     because his wife looked after them. [Pg. 36, "DAD, WELL DONE"]

["Doug's hand-written notes from 1975"]

In the above telling of the story it appears the earlier note, i.e., "we left some chickens for the owner", was included so he didn't seem like a weasel to his hometown audience. If in fact he was a weasel at times, some of his concluding comments about his 30 days in Sicily and Italy reveal he was a soft-hearted one. About one aspect of his departure for Malta again he says the following:

     I learned quite a bit of the Sicilian language under Pietro's
     tutelage. He did all my errands and I would have sure liked to
     have brought him home. It broke my heart to leave him.
     ["DAD, WELL DONE"]

And for his hometown audience he writes:

     After about a month Do-go had a tearful goodbye with his
     friend Peepo. He stood on the beach and I on my landing craft,
     waving our goodbyes. What a strange war. I have thought of
     him often. [The Norwich Gazette]

["Peepo, are you still alive and well in Messina, Sicily?"]

I think of Peepo myself on occasion, as an 83 or 84-year-old man walking the streets of Messina, Sicily with a few memories of his own about WW2, the time he acted as a guide and errand-boy for a young Canadian sailor. If I ever travel to Sicily, I'll make an effort to find him. Father's notes hold some of his memories but more may still be out there.

More to follow.

***

Please click here to read Dad's Navy Days: September 1943 - Italy (14)

Dad's Navy Days: September 1943 - Italy (14)

"(Pietro's) mother did my washing and mending for

a can of peas or whatever I could scrounge.

I was all set up." ["DAD, WELL DONE"]

[Photo from SIEGE: MALTA 1940 - 1943 by E. Bradford]

In 1943, while my father was in the business of ferrying war supplies to Italy - from Sicily, across the seven-mile-wide Strait of Messina - I'm told he lived in a large Sicilian home with other seamen and coxswains, most of whom were members of the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve (RCNVR) and Combined Operations with the 80th Flotilla. Some nights he "slept on (a) hammock on a beautifully patterned marble floor." Other times he "slung (the) hammock, covered with mosquito netting, between two orange trees in the immense yard." And thanks to 'chocolota', the Canadian Navy boys - one with the nickname 'Do-go' - soon got to know some of the locals, including a Mrs. Guiseppe and her son Pietro, referred to below as 'Peepo'.

Father writes:

     Canned food was quite plentiful now and several young

     Sicilian boys, quite under-nourished, came begging for handouts,

     especially chocolota, as they called our chocolate bars. 

     I took a boy about 11 years old under my wing when off duty.

     In one corner of the yard was a low, square, cement-walled 

     affair complete with a cement floor, tap and drain hole. It was

     here I introduced “Peepo” to Ivory soap, Colgate toothpaste

     and hair tonic for his short, shiny, ringletted black hair. My

     name was “Do-go” which I am still called today at navy reunions,

     and this boy really shone when I had finished his toilet. Peepo

     wasn’t too keen on soap and water and it certainly was obvious,

     but not for long.

     I tried to learn some of his language, and he mine (the Canadian
     Marina). Although we were from countries thousands of miles
     apart, the war had brought us together and we got along famously.
     He and I also wandered about Messina. I went with Peepo to meet
     his Mamma. I took some canned food, chocolota and compost tea,
     a complete tea in a can exactly like a sardine can, with a key
     attached as well. Although the lad’s mother was forty-ish, she
     appeared older. Over a cup of tea, and with difficulty, Mrs.
     Guiseppe said she would do some laundry for me, and mending.
     [The Norwich Gazette, circa 1992]

Daily routines, with the help of some of the locals, became easier as days passed and occasionally father received a day off. What's a 23-year old from a small Ontario village to do with his free time in Sicily or Italy?

He writes the following in the same newspaper column:

     We operated our landing craft under (peaceful) conditions with

     skeleton crews and we enjoyed time off. Some of us went to Italy,

     hitched rides on army trucks, went as far as we were allowed to go

     and had a good look at some of Italy. We lived on the edge, because

     not far from the shoulder of the asphalt road were high cliffs and

     we could look down on the Adriatic sea, its beautiful beaches

     and menacing rocks.

[Map found at worldatlas.com]

     I remember one of the many refugees of war, a barefoot lady dressed

     in a black sleeveless dress, carrying a huge black trunk on her head.

     I suppose it contained all her earthly belongings or it was very dear

     to her, and she walked along the coastal road back toward Reggio,

     to what, I’ll never know. I couldn’t have carried that load.

"We lived on the edge," he says. And it's true. A couple of times, when free from carrying loads across the strait in barges, he came close to breaking some type of law, once because he knew a few things about chickens his pals didn't.

More to follow.

***

Please click here to read Dad's Navy Days: September 1943 - Italy (13)

Dad's Navy Days: September 1943 - Italy (13)

"Some buddies and I spent my 23rd birthday singing our
lungs out in a cottage-style house near the beach..."
Leading Seaman Coxswain Doug Harrison

For about 30 days in 1943, under relatively peaceful conditions, my father delivered the material of war back and forth across the Strait of Messina, between Messina, Sicily and Reggio, Italy. Three days after D-Day Italy (September 3) he turned 23 years of age. He says he sang his lungs out, and more:

     Some buddies and I spent my 23rd birthday singing our lungs out

     in a cottage-style house near the beach, complete with a piano but

     incomplete with no roof. I had my guitar along and we all had some

     vino. About midnight with the hilarity in full swing, thunder rolled,

     the skies opened and the first rain in months came pouring in. Soaked

     inside and out we headed to where we belonged, singing “Show Me

     the Way to Go Home” as big as life and twice as natural.

     [The Norwich Gazette, circa 1992]

It seems life in Sicily wasn't bad at all at times. (I'm sure the vino helped.) Father likely thought his time on the water and routines on land were easy, at least manageable for the most part. Feeling better after his time in Hill 10 Hospital in Malta - fighting a bout with dysentery - he even performed a few medical duties for others. He writes:

     One of our stokers set up a medical tent for the civilians at Messina
     and treated them for sores and rashes. We fed them too but when
     pregnant women came we had to close up shop.
     [Pg. 35 "DAD, WELL DONE", D. Harrison's naval memoirs]

And writing for The Norwich Gazette (his home town paper) 20 years later he adds a few more details:

     In the navy we just acquired things. A tent was set up on the beach

     after we acquired some salves, soap and gauze to treat the locals who

     had rashes and cuts, etc. The word spread about the Canadian Marina

     Hospital and one morning a few days after we opened, two very

     pregnant ladies appeared. The work of mercy ended, and very quickly

     I might add, amidst our embarrassment.

["Seaforth Highlanders medics treat a Sicilian girl whose

insect bites have become infected" Photo by Terry F. Howe

found in OPERATION HUSKY by Mark Zehlke]

Though he and the stoker couldn't help pregnant women, he and other sailors were able to help Sicilian civilians in other ways thanks to their regular Navy food supplies. On two occasions father wrote about the connection he made with Mrs. Guiseppe and her son Pietro. The first time was in 1975:

     After a time we were sleeping in casas or houses and I had a helper,

     a little Sicilian boy named Pietro. First of all I scrubbed him, gave

     him toothpaste, soap and food. He was cute, about 13 or 14 years of

     age, but very small because of malnutrition. His mother did my washing

     and mending for a can of peas or whatever I could scrounge.

     I was all set up. [Pg. 35, "DAD, WELL DONE"]

Father remembered more details about his relationship with the Guiseppes twenty years later. 

More to follow.

["Doug Harrison with nephews Bill and Bob Tait, 1941"]

Above photo property of KH
 
***

Please click here to read Dad's Navy Days: September 1943 - Italy (12)

Dad's Navy Days: September 1943 - Italy (12)

I can find three instances where my father remarks about D-Day Italy (September 3, 1943; the first major Allied invasion of Europe during World War 2) and the subsequent month's work of ferrying supplies to the troops on the 'toe of the boot' via landing craft. His words inform me he and his mates faced little or no opposition during the invasion, and he was seeing the devastation of war at a level not experienced up to that point.

["7:00 a.m., D-Day Italy, September 3, 1943":

photo attributed to rafbeachunits]

The Brantford Expositor reported a few of his thoughts while he was home on leave in December, 1943:

     The Italian campaign was “easy,” so far as his share of the
     invasion was concerned, he said. “There was nothing to it.
     It was just a matter of walking in and taking over, after a
     55-minute bombardment of   Calabria, on the toe of the
     Italian boot, by naval guns and rocket guns.” 
     [The full interview can be found in "DAD, WELL DONE":
     The Naval Memoirs of Leading Seaman Coxswain
     Gordon Douglas Harrison]

[Map from SEIGE: MALTA 1940 - 1943]

He provided a bit more detail 30 years later (circa 1975) when committing his WW2 experiences to paper for the first time:

     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. How long we worked
     across the straits I cannot really recall, but perhaps into
     October. [page 35, "DAD, WELL DONE"]

And even more details are found in a column he wrote for his hometown weekly newspaper 20 years farther down the road:

          THE INVASION OF ITALY AND CHRISTMAS IN CANADA

     It was no different touching down on the Italian beach at

     Reggio Calabria at around midnight, September 3, 1943

     than on previous invasions. Naturally we felt our way slowly

     to our landing place. Everything was strangely quiet and we

     Canadian sailors were quite tense, expecting to be fired upon,

     but we touched down safely, discharged our cargo and left as

     orderly and quietly as possible.

     In the morning light on our second trip to Italy across seven

     miles of the Messina Straits we saw how the Allied artillery

     barrage across the straits had levelled every conceivable thing;

     not a thing moved, the devastation was unbelievable and from

     day one we had no problems; it was easy come, easy go from

     Sicily to Italy. [The Norwich Gazette, circa 1992]

Easy come, easy go. Load up and start the engines. So, back and forth between Sicily and Italy he travelled for about 30 days.

I am fortunate father liked to write things down and that he wrote matter-of-factly and with a steady hand in 1992 (at the age of 72) about the invasion and evident devastation in Italy. And I am fortunate he left behind more stories about things that occurred during his time there with the 80th Flotilla.

Through his stories I find myself motoring along with a young man over 14 miles of open water in a landing craft burdened with the materiel of war, a young man who turned 23 on September 6, 1943, seventy years ago today.

["Doug Harrison (front centre), age 23 in 1943"]

How did he celebrate? With some Navy rum or Sicilian vino? I'm not sure, but a few stories remind me he didn't make out too badly while delivering goods from Sicily to Italy. Except for stealing a few chickens he didn't bend many rules at all.

More to follow.

Unattributed photos by GH

***

Please click here to read Dad's Navy Days: Sept. 3, 1943 - Italy (11)

Dad's Navy Days: September 3, 1943 - Italy (11)

My father, a Leading Seaman with RCNVR and a volunteer member of Combined Operations, had likely been thinking about what his part would be in the invasion of Italy for several weeks while resting and recuperating on the island of Malta in August, 1943. Officers weren't talking and ratings* could only guess. Restless nights among the inhabitants of Malta's tent city were surely common.

["Combined Operations badge; found at rafbeachunits] 

He wrote about his naval experiences on more than one occasion and for different audiences. He wrote personal memoirs in 1975 for his family, newspaper articles in the 1990s for his hometown weekly and short stories for books later published by inspired members of the RCNVR and Combined Operations. About D-Day Italy and his subsequent 30 days of labour upon landing crafts he wrote a good deal.

For example:

     Although no one ventured a word (while in Malta), 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. Our flotillas beached at the mouth

     of a now dried up river bed at Mila marina, then a few days in

     Catania harbor itself, where we had a good view of German

     low-level attacks on a British cruiser.

[Loaded LSTs in Catania harbour, Sept. 1, 1943:

Photo from rafbeachunits]

     At night we watched  German planes try to take evasive

     action as they were caught in the searchlights which circled

     the harbor. During the day we could see the smoke from Mt. Etna.

     At midnight on September 3, 1943 our Canadian landing craft

     flotilla, loaded once again with war machinery, left the beaches

     near Messina, Sicily and crossed the Messina Strait to Reggio

     Calabria in Italy. The invasion of Italy was underway.

     [The Norwich Gazette, circa 1992]

Father was not the only person to later write about events related to D-Day Italy, a significant invasion that occurred 70 years ago today. Another member of Combined Operations recalls the following:

     Invasion of Italy

     “During the last days of August our forces boarded ships of
     all description for the long awaited invasion of the continent

     of Europe. I do not recall the hour of our departure from

     Catania but it was during the night of September 2nd or the
     very early hours of September 3rd for it was during the hours
     before dawn that we sailed through the Strait of Messina with
     our long range guns in Sicily and our naval escort blasting the
     shoreline in the Reggio di Calabria area with everything we had.
     Our guns on the Sicily side were firing directly over our flotilla.
     It was indeed a wild and scary sight as we headed in, just as dawn
     was starting to break. We had no real understanding as to what
     we were going to face. We simply hoped for the best and planned
     for the worst. As it turned out the initial enemy opposition was
     much lighter than we anticipated.”
     [W. Sinclair MacLeod, excerpt from memoirs found at rafbeachunits]

My father recalls opposition was lighter than expected as well. He also recalls that "the devastation was unbelievable."

More to follow.

* ratings: seamen of different rank, e.g., probationary, ordinary, leading

***

Please click here to read Dad's Navy Days: August 1943 - Malta (10)

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   

***

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

Dad's Navy Days: July 1943 - Sicily (5)

["Soldiers pour out of landing barges. Note ladders used to

help scale obstacles": Feb. 5, 1944, London Free Press]

On February 5, 1944 a headline in The London Free Press read as follows: Norwich Boys In Thick of Two Invasions By Allies. The sub-heading said: LS. Buryl McIntyre and LS. Douglas Harrison With "Biggest Armada of All Time". Rare it is that my hometown hits the headlines. Rarer still that my father and his good friend would be in the spotlight.

["Buryl McIntyre (left) and Doug Harrison, Norwich, Ontario"]

But the war was on - e.g., in Sicily, 70 years ago this month - and fresh news kept coming back to Canada as men returned on leave before suiting up and finding fresh assignments. The article was comprehensive and in it I find first hand details of how my father and his 'oppo' fared in Sicily after the July 10, 1943 D - Day or invasion of the island, a stepping stone to Italy. (Re 'oppo': a term used by Navy men to describe those working opposite one another, e.g., upon a landing craft. One might work the motors while the other worked the winches.)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corned_beef]

One paragraph in the newspaper article - about some daily cooking routines - matches up very closely with stories my father tells in his naval memoirs (penned in 1975 while living in Norwich) about his time in Sicily, so I attribute many of the following details to him:

     "After the fall of Sicily the boys landed and set up house-

     keeping. They were then able to get fresh fruit such as

     grapes, lemons and limes as well as fresh tomatoes. There

     was plenty of firewood and they did their cooking in biscuit

     tins. Aboard the barges they had used these tins as stoves,

     partially filling them with sand or cotton waste, pouring

     gasoline, sometimes mixed with oil, punching holes in the

     sides of the can around the top to provide air while cooking

     and stirring well before lighting. Such a fire would burn for

     a long time and could be given new life by adding a little

     fuel and stirring. They had been given rations aboard

     the barges but had to do their own cooking and make

     their own tea." [The London Free Press, 1944]

For those wishing to know what the rations were like, you won't find the answer anywhere within the full Free Press interview with Buryl and Doug. By early 1944 both men would likely admit they did not want to see another tin of rations for as long as they lived. The following old photo and details may help explain why.  

["Soldiers in Tripoli share a tin of bully beef": nzetc.victoria.ac.nz']

     Corned beef production and its canned form remained
     important as a food source during World War II. 
     Much of the canned corned beef came from Fray
     Bentos in Uruguay, with over 16 million cans
     exported in 1943.
     [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corned_beef]

Bully beef (i.e., corned beef) made up a significant part of Navy rations. Of the 16 million tins exported from Uruguay in 1943, my father would likely say he unloaded almost all of them. In his memoirs (1975) he says the following:

     "I had 27 days at Sicily living on tomatoes and Bully Beef.
     I swore I would kick the first bull I saw in Canada right
     in the posterior if I got back." [Page 33, "DAD, WELL DONE"]

["Bully Beef, tin opener: toolmonger.com"]

Later still he recalls the following episode shortly after he'd left the shelter of his landing craft and moved into a nearby limestone cave:

     "The cook's duties were to find food and cook it in a huge
     metal cauldron, which we had procured in the same way
     as the rum and barrage balloon (i.e., by skillful light-
     handedness). The cauldron was raised on stones and heated
     by pouring gasoline on the limestone underneath. This
     worked out quite well. The cook scrounged tomatoes
     (pomadori) which were plentiful and we managed some
     bully beef (the same way as rum, barrage balloon and cauldron).
     This was all stirred up together and one night we had tomatoes
     and bully beef, and the next night we had bully beef and
     tomatoes. Once in a while we threw in a sea boot to add
     a little flavour." [The Norwich Gazette, circa 1992]

Even while in the lap of friendly hospitality - father visited Canadian airmen who were landing and taking off in Hurricane fighters a short distance away from his Sicilian cave, and was invited to sit down to a supper of tomatoes and bully beef - he couldn't say anything better than, "Not that again!"

["Canadian men found no mention of bully beef in their handbook"]

After enduring 27 days of 'beef pomadori', father reports he actually did find one good thing to do with the ever-present tomatoes:

     "Everywhere I looked there were anti-personal (sic)
     hand-sized grenades that needed only to be touched
     to go off. They were built to maim and not kill because
     it takes men to look after the wounded, but if you're dead,
     you're dead. We threw tomatoes at a lot and exploded
     them in that manner." ["DAD, WELL DONE"]

Seventy years ago this month, Allied forces were settled into routines in Sicily. Some were mundane, many others were not, and a few were a touch of both.

More to follow. 

Three unattributed photos by GH

***

Please click here to read Dad's Navy Days: July 1943 - Sicily (4)