Very early WW2 years.

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Hi Fred.
They soon found out how wrong they were on that score.
Cheers Des

[happy daze john in oz]

We were living in South London and when the sirens went my great uncle would grab, I was only a couple of years old, and take me down to the library where half a dozen air raid shelters had been erected.
One bomb blew the front door off the house and they had to wait almost six weeks until another could be found.

[Ken Atkinson]

The early war as my father saw it.

We had a small fairly pleasant air attack at the mouth of the River Plate. Clouds of pale blue dragon flies hovered over the ship. They had wing spans of nine to twelve inches and they created quite a breeze when they fluttered close. We left the River Plate and headed for St. Vincent for final orders and the date we sailed was 1st September 1939 and War was declared two days later. Even though it was officially peacetime each night we darkened ship and took all wartime precautions. We sailed a most tortuous course away from the normal shipping lanes, as we knew that some German U-boats were anticipating the declaration of War and would have sunk us if we had been found. Two days after we had sailed the captain decided to head for Sierra Leone in West Africa to see if there were any convoys homeward bound as we could not break radio silence to ask for instructions.
With all our extra mileage wandering about the Southern Ocean we had to take bunkers before we could leave. A barge laden with coal came alongside and two planks were rigged between the two vessels – one for coming to us and the other returning to the barge.

We were not sorry to leave such a place, and we sailed in a convoy of thirty-five ships escorted by the light cruiser "Dauntless" which took us as far as Gibraltar, and then we carried on North without escort until we were picked up by two destroyers in the Western Approaches of the English Channel and we detached ourselves to continue up the Irish Sea. We anchored within the Mersey Bar, and we swung at anchor with our homeland so near and unattainable but no one was allowed ashore. After waiting for three days, we were told that our cargo should have gone to Antwerp, and we picked up an outward-bound convoy as far as the Channel, and continued as far as Boulogne on our own hoping for some definite orders. We passed a West bound ship and signalled her "Mine ahead." and she replied to us "Mines ahead." Which was not very comforting. Next day we anchored off Dunkirk, and the following morning we sailed on and passed, with trepidation, several floating mines, which had apparently drifted on to the lee shore from the North Sea. At last, we entered the West Schelde with sighs of relief and steamed up to Siberia Dock in Antwerp.

After discharge we sailed out of the River Schelde and dropped into an anchorage off Southend where we waited for a Channel convoy. As we passed through Dover Roads, we threaded our way through a vast array of Continental ships going through a thorough search by Contraband Control which was much more than the normal search for odd duty-free goods. A little further along the Channel we had an engine breakdown, and we just had to lie there until we repaired the damage and the convoy sailed on and left us. At last, we got on our way again and rounded the Longships light without an escort, and we arrived at Milford Haven before our friends in the convoy. When we were cleared for entry to the port we set off at high speed for Barry, trying to get there before another ship that started with us. As we cut across all the corners, we discovered later that we had cut across part of a minefield.

One evening two of us were walking ashore in our best civvies when we were approached by two girls who stuck a white feather in our buttonholes and said that we should be in uniform, presumably meaning that those men not in uniform were cowards. This movement seems to have started in South Wales and it caused quite a lot of ill feeling, and we started to use our uniforms ashore whereas we had previously only used them on shipboard. Soon the authorities issued us with a neat little silver coloured metal badge with the initials M.N. inside a loop and knot of cordage.

[Harry Nicholson]

Thank you, Ken - this is an absorbing piece of primary history. Marvellous to 'hear' your father's voice come through. Priceless material - is there more?

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Hi Ken,
My brother had the same thing happen to him, he had just paid off in Liverpool {You would think that those girls would know better] when they cam up and stuck a white feather in their lapels, he crosssd the Atlantic on a tanker.
Des