World War II: The Autobiography (15 page)

After that my impressions are rather confused. There were a lot of splashes growing up around that target and it wasn’t a bit easy picking out my own. I can remember feeling a quite illogical resentment every time he put his great eleven-inch cannon on us, when I saw those damn great pieces belching their unpleasantness at myself and I can remember feeling unspeakably grateful to poor old
Exeter
every time I saw them blazing in her direction.

He came at us for about a quarter of an hour, very obligingly thinking that we were a couple of destroyers in company with
Exeter.
That covered the rather unpleasant stretch of water in which he could outrange us.

He scored a pretty little straddle after twenty minutes and his
HE
burst on the surface of the water and the pieces peppered us. There weren’t as many casualties as one would expect. Our captain acquired a sizish hole in both legs and the chief yeoman on the bridge had a leg smashed up. In my
DCT
we had rather more than our share. Six pieces came inside. With my usual fantastic luck three pieces impinged on my ample anatomy (and I regret that it grows even ampler as the years go on despite my efforts to squash it out), but caused me little inconvenience, apart from a certain mental vagueness of the ensuing minute or two. Three died quite quickly and definitely, two of whom were actually in physical contact with me, and three were wounded. I don’t expect that names mean anything to you at this distance of time, but one of the casualties was an old
“Diomede”,
Archibald Cooper Hirst Shaw. E.V. Shirley, another old
“Diomede”,
was one of the very severely wounded. The others had the common misfortune of being imperial ratings (
NZ
).

The survivors behaved just as one expected and hoped. They took no notice of the shambles (and it looked more like a slaughter-house on a busy day than a Director Control Tower) and took over the jobs of those who had been put out as if nothing had happened. One youngster had to seat himself on the unpleasantness that very shortly before had been a very efficient
GO’S
writer and carry out his job. He was a little wide-eyed after we had disengaged but otherwise unmoved. A splinter had jammed the door and prevented the medical parties from reaching us. The wounded never murmured. Shirley quietly applied a tourniquet to himself and saved his life thereby. A sergeant of Marines who was sitting right alongside me never let on that he was wounded. I didn’t discover it until the first lull, an hour later, when he nearly fainted from loss of blood.

I learnt this lesson – though it’s a difficult one to put into words – that one can wish for nothing better than these troops of ours. They may be a bit of a nuisance in the easy times of peace, but one can’t improve on them when things get a bit hot. A spot of trouble of this sort completely changes one’s attitude to the troops. I felt very proud of my fellow countrymen. [Washbourn is a New Zealander.]

Exeter,
as you know, bore the brunt. We had the attentions of the 5.8s all the time, but they weren’t very effective. I think that we shot up their control fairly early on, and put at least two of the starboard battery out of action.

Tactically my only criticism is that we should have gone in earlier, but that certainly would have meant more damage and casualties than we actually received, and we did achieve the object of the exercise without it.

It was a plain straightforward scrap, with none of the “hit-and-run” tactics which the Yellow Press credited us with. We hammered away for an hour and a half, and then hauled off under smoke. I must admit to a certain feeling of being baulked of my prey when we were ordered to turn away, because the last twenty minutes at really effective range had been most enjoyable. It turned out to be the psychologically correct moment. We had damn little ammunition left and, as it proved, the job was done. It didn’t seem like it at the time. I was very depressed. We had expended most of our bricks and our enemy looked disappointingly undamaged. The after turret was temporarily out of action, and we had seen one fire on board, and he was running like a frightened rabbit, but his fire was distressingly accurate, and his speed was the same as ever, and there was no sign of structural damage.

We shadowed all day. Once or twice we ventured a bit too close and he swung round and let us have it, but he was out of our range and we didn’t reply.

In the evening we gave the Uruguayans the thrill of their lives by another little brush just at sunset when we were closing the range to keep him in sight as the visibility lessened. Four times later, during the advancing twilight, he took exception to our presence, but these last Parthian shots were merely gestures.

The morale was magnificent while we were waiting for him to emerge from his hole. The fantastic fleets that Winston, ably aided and abetted by the
BBC
, built up outside Montevideo gave us great pleasure. We were pleased to see
Cumberland,
not for any great confidence in her fighting abilities, but from the point of view that she would again provide the first target for
Graf Spee’s
attentions.

We stayed at action stations all night, with the usual “Hula” parties keeping us amused and awake with their Maori songs. Do you remember Gould, with his guitar and his indiarubber hips?

On the Sunday evening we three went in to finish the job off.
Graf Spee
was just visible at sunset when
Ajax’s
aircraft reported that she had blown herself up. Another big moment. We steamed up close past
Ajax,
who was leading us in. Both ships had ordered “All hands on deck”, and were black with bodies who had emerged to see the last of the old enemy. Another big moment. We shouted ourselves hoarse, both ships. The “Diggers” did their “Hakas”, and sang their songs, and the
Ajax
cheered in reply.

And that was that.

SURVIVAL, THE ARCTIC, 8–11 JUNE 1940

Ronald Healiss, Royal Marines

At 4.30 p.m. on
9
June the aircraft carrier HMS
Glorious,
returning from the Narvik landings, was intercepted by the German battle cruisers
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau.
Ninety minutes later
Glorious
was no more. Of her 1,700 crew many were already dead, but hundreds took to the icy waters grabbing hold of any floatable device they could or scrambling aboard life rafts.

Around me, those who had survived the shelling were laughing and swearing as they peeled off their outer garments and prepared themselves for the shock of the icy water.

Down below me, men were already struggling in the water, reaching out for the few floatable things we had been able to throw overboard. The ship’s propeller blades, half out of the water, were churning slowly right underneath me. But it was my turn to go and I had to jump from where I was.

I took a deep breath and shoved against the deck with all my strength. Then I sailed out in a great arc above the propeller.

The thirty feet down to the water seemed like a thousand. There was a terrific jolt, then I was going down with an icy hand slowly squeezing the breath from my lungs. Things grew a little muddled.

I broke surface and gulped air. The icy water was already taking a grip on me and I looked around for something to float on.

The sea, calm a few hours before, now boiled with a sort of cold fury. As the waves lifted me I saw hundreds of my shipmates floating round me. The chances of finding a place on a raft seemed slim, but mechanically I began to swim, held up by my lifebelt.

After about five minutes I saw an air-cushion from one of the lifeboats and made for it as fast as my failing strength would allow. As I bobbed up and down I saw that four other men were swimming toward it, too. Three of them reached it with me. The fourth just disappeared.

We floated around on that air-cushion for about an hour, while the cold and cramp ate into us. Then I caught sight of what I thought to be a Carley float. My three companions hanging on to the cushion already had cramp and couldn’t move their limbs, so I began to strike out in a sort of mad frenzy with one hand, using the other to drag the air-cushion behind me with the others hanging on.

I knew I was attempting the impossible in those seas. After a long, futile struggle with the waves, against which I made no progress, I told the others that I was going to make a try on my own. I let the cushion go and struck out for the float.

The distance was only about fifty yards. It seemed like fifty miles. My strokes became slower and weaker as the cold bit deeper. I knew I couldn’t carry on much longer.

Then I heard a voice I knew. “Wotcher, Tubby! Trying to swim home?” it said.

I looked up and saw a fellow Marine clinging to an oar. He grinned cheerfully and I grinned back – and the strength came back into my arms.

The “float” turned out to be one of our motor-boats, badly damaged and well down in the water. Somehow I clambered over the side and flopped down inside it, rigid with cold.

There were already about twenty men in the boat, including the Surgeon-Commander, the Surgeon-Lieutenant and a couple of Marines I knew.

They had lashed themselves with rope to avoid being carried away by the heavy seas which were breaking over them. I followed suit, leaving enough slack on the rope to keep me on top of each wave.

In the next four hours I saw all those men die.

Many of them were already far gone from exposure when I clambered aboard and, as we floated helplessly around with the seas breaking over us, they became more and more silent.

I watched them go, one by one, sliding silently into death, glassy-eyed and motionless, except when the waves lifted them in their ropes and flopped them back into the boat.

The Surgeon-Commander was the last to go. I watched him silently as his movements grew slower. The cold now had bitten into my own body and it was getting increasingly difficult to brace myself against the waves.

I began to wonder which of us death would leave until last, but when the Surgeon-Commander answered my unspoken thought I was shocked beyond measure.

“I’ll be the next to go, lad,” he said. “Do what you can for those others. Cut them loose and let them go to their final rest. And do the same for me when I’m gone.”

He watched while I summoned all my strength and dragged myself about the boat, cutting the bodies free one by one and letting the waves carry them away.

As the last one sank into those black waters, I heard the Commander mutter: “Good lad, now – do it – for me.” When I reached him he had gone, and a wave had carried him over the side.

I cut the rope wrapped round his wrists and his body glided gently beneath the surface. I was alone.

Boxes and bits of wreckage floated by. The Huns were still shelling what remained of the
Glorious.
I lost count of time.

At last the bits of flotsam thinned out, then ceased to float by. There was nothing but sea and cold silence. The intolerable loneliness ate into me as much as the cold.

I don’t know how long I’d been alone in that boat when I saw what looked like a couple of floats, full of men, drifting about a mile away. The sight of human beings in that waste of water did something to me. On an impulse I decided to try to reach them.

I deflated my lifebelt so that if cramp or exhaustion overtook me I shouldn’t linger, then cut myself loose and went over the side.

I seemed to be swimming for hours. My legs gradually grew stiff, first at the feet, then the calves, the knees, the thighs. My stomach seemed knotted with an intolerable pain. I knew, as I rose and fell in the waves, that my time had come.

It’s true that when you see death approaching your past life passes before your eyes. I remembered my boyhood, the day I joined the Royal Marines. I could see my mother clearly. And the girl who would have been my wife in a few short days.

In my trouser-pocket there had been a little leather case in which I always carried a picture of my parents and my girl. I felt about me with a frozen hand. The case was still there.

I took it out while I floated, intent on bidding them goodbye. But I couldn’t. The faces were too real. The sodden photographs smiled up at me and I knew I couldn’t die without seeing those three people again.

I thrust the wallet back in my pocket and struck out again with fresh strength.

Then a wave lifted me and, as I floundered on top of it, I saw the rafts not ten yards away. Somebody shouted to me. I reached one of the rafts – I don’t know how – and was dragged aboard.

I wanted to cry, but I was too cold. I closed my eyes and thanked God for deliverance.

There were a lot of us on board the raft that first night. As the Northern Lights flashed around us, we discussed among ourselves the chances of being picked up.

The Signal Boatswain was aboard and told us that distress signals had been sent off before we abandoned ship. We started guessing how long it would be before help came. The optimists said twelve hours. The pessimists had no hope at all.

I judged it was about midnight when the first of my comrades started dying from exposure. In the next hours many more of them followed. Only two of us had enough strength left to thump each other to keep the circulation going.

At first we moved about the raft as our shipmates died and passed them over the side to their final resting-place. But our own strength was soon too far gone and we could do nothing but watch them die and let their bodies rest at the bottom of the float.

And so another day and another night passed. People ask me how it was that I survived those terrible hours. I can’t tell. Time had no real meaning. The bodily agony became something remote. I just knew that whatever happened I had to stay alive.

On the third morning, only three of us were left alive, and one was already demented. He writhed and shouted while the other two of us made feeble efforts to quieten him.