Walter Leigh (continued)
Wally's friend Tommy was designated to become a stoker. He never made it. He was killed at the Portsmouth Barracks in a single bomb attack while having a dental check. Wally was on a weekend pass at the time, unaware that his friend had been killed.
Wally remembered the day he tried his first cigarette. It's not surprising. A quirk of fate saved his life that day too.
He and others were in an air raid shelter on Whale Island. "The chap beside me was a Canadian," said Wally. Everyone was ordered out of the shelter because the pay office was on fire. Wally continued, "I left my tin hat behind and went back to get it. While I was on my way back a bomb was dropped on the pay office. When I got back I found the Canadian with a pile of bricks and mortar on him. The Canadian said not to worry. He only had pins and needles. There was another man beneath him. Those were the last words he said."
Wally certainly didn't suffer from any delusions of self importance, even in retrospect.
Remarking on his acceptance into the navy, he commented, "If you were warm, you were in." His uniform consisted of a hat and boots.
After training at Portsmouth, he was off to Whale Island for a gunnery course. He laughs that he once shot a seagull. He must have been good; he was kept on as an instructor.
But Wally was itching for action and "bored to tears". His application to join a seagoing ship was granted in 1940. He sailed out on the Corvette, Vetch, one of 145 Flower Class Corvettes built and designed for coastal escort service.
Part of the 36 Escort Group, the Vetch sailed the west coast of Africa, in some "fairly lively convoys" between Gibraltar, and Freetown, Sierra Leone. That's where Wally met with the four-engine German Focke-Wulf Fw 200s. The long-distance planes were used largely for reconnaissance, locating ships and radioing their location to U-boat wolf packs.
Two winter convoys to Newfoundland brought back strong memories to the former sailor.
Wally recalled in 2005 that the U-boats were secondary. The seas were massive and he remembers not seeing the other ships in the convoys for days.
On one of those sailings he saw a man in the sea and reached under the man's life jacket to pull him out. The lower half of his body was gone. That experience made the young sailor ill. Wally says the injuries were horrific, but the sailors got used to them to a certain extent.
There were no actual doctors on board, so men split open with severe injuries were pushed together and stitched up by those with first aid training and anyone who could help.
Ships seldom went to port to drop off individual sailors with injuries. Wally is alive today because that rule of thumb was broken for him.
The Vetch was on the way to Bone on the north coast of Africa and the convoy had survived a torpedo attack by eight bombers. It was getting dark and Wally, who was now a leading seaman, could hear the drone of a plane, so he stayed at his post after the attack. It wasn't long before the alarm bells were ringing. He could see the flames coming out of the engine of the incoming plane. They gave him a target. He followed his tracers to the plane. He was hitting it. The pilot fired up his cannons. One of his missiles hit the magazine next to Wally. Pieces glanced off it and pierced his body. He looked down and could see blood pumping out of his chest. He put his finger in to slow the flow, and went for medical help -- the designated sailor passed out.
Despite that, he survived the wound long enough to be transported to Bougie where a tent hospital was waiting for casualties. They were surprised when only one sailor was brought off the ship.
One of the nurses advised him it was a pity he was the only one -- they had lots of tea made.
Wally recounted the next event in the saga with a twinkle in his eye. The surgeon arrived at the operating room with a mallet over his shoulder and announced that they were out of anaesthetic, so he had to use the mallet. But, not to worry, "I'm pretty good at it. It usually takes only one blow."
After the operation the surgeon commented that, during peacetime, the operation would have cost 10,000 pounds. Wally got it free.
The repairs were made, but the shrapnel that sliced through his liver and lodged in his diaphragm remained, as did numerous other bits.
His daughter, Joan, would approach him as a child with a magnet and draw pieces to the surface of his skin where they would remove them.
For 12 weeks Wally convalesced, tended by nurses he had convoyed on an earlier trip.
It was during that convalescence that he learned about the wild habits of the Aussies.
On one occasion the recovering sailors went off to trade some tobacco for eggs which the nurses would boil in the sterilizers for breakfast. Wally was told to put some pebbles in the bottom of the tin of tobacco to deceive the farmer.
When the farmer discovered he'd been had, he came after the military men with a shotgun. They escaped but were court martialled and sent to another ward with an Australian.
That didn't last long.
While they were asleep a hyena ran through the tent. The Aussie heard it, picked up his gun lying beside him, and blasted away. It was clearly not safe.
DIEPPE
Prior to his North African experience, the 20-year-old sailor witnessed the massacre of Allied soldiers at Dieppe. It was August 19, 1942. Wally was aboard the Vetch doing anti-submarine duty off the coast.
More than 50 years later his voice rose in anger as he recalled men being blown to bits without the necessary air support to get them up the well-defended beach. He blamed the disaster on a dispute among the military leaders; he calls it "absolute murder."
The troops waited six weeks in England before they embarked. They knew where they were going -- and so did the Germans.
Wally's ship was able to pick up a half-dozen survivors in a half-sunk landing craft.
Distinction
Wally's fine eye with a pom- pom gun earned him a mention in dispatches surrounding the landing of troops in Sicily. Wally hit three successive planes.
He laughed when he recounted the story, "It was sheer luck; they must have steered into it".
He received a Royal Humane Society Scroll for his efforts saving another sailor.
On escort duty, a corvette was rammed by a trawler that turned the wrong way in the dark. The corvette sank and the sailors on the Vetch set about picking up the survivors.
One of them was swimming so close alongside the Vetch that he couldn't be seen. But Wally could hear him calling for his mother, or anyone.
Wally lowered himself down on ropes that hold the skiff, then let go and held on to the sailor. The ship rolled and Wally felt himself go down.
He chuckled again, telling the story "I felt something, and I knew that it wasn't the bottom, not way out here."
It was the bilge keel. Wally continued to hold on to the sailor, and pushed his way to the surface. He came out by the scrambling net on the side of the ship and climbed up. He got the man on board and they pumped him out. It disturbed Wally that the man accused him the next day of stealing his wallet. (The papers of all the rescued sailors had been removed from their pockets to dry out).
Wally was awarded the 1939 Star and stars for service in North Africa, and Italy. He was granted the Atlantic medal for his part in the Battle of the Atlantic, and the French and German medals for service to the King.
Married life
Wally nearly married his lifelong companion, Olive, in 1942. It was all planned. His ship was sent out on a four-day venture to pick up a convoy off Ireland. He phoned and had the arrangements made for his leave time. The ship was out of port for 90 days.
They tied the knot two years later on September 30, 1944, in the same church in Barking where Captain Cook had married. Wally noted with a smile that the dresses for the bridal party were now too small and the cake was stale.
When discussing where they would live, Wally told Olive once that they would go inland with a pair of oars over their shoulders. They'd settle in the town of the first person who asked what the oars were for.
The couple emigrated to Canada in 1989 and celebrated more than 55 years together, before Olive passed away in 2000.
The Murmansk Run
It was late 1944. The war was beginning to wind down, but Russia was desperate for supplies. Now sailing on the aircraft carrier Trumpeter, Wally embarked on two convoys on the deadly Murmansk Run.
His ship failed to make the first one. Facing high seas, the ship's flight deck "turned up just like a sardine can." They were sent back to Glasgow for repairs.
Conditions were brutal on that final run from Newfoundland to Murmansk.
The air raids never stopped ringing as they neared Europe. The convoys faced German attacks from Norwegian air bases. Half the convoy was lost on the late December voyage to the Arctic seaport.
The cold was brutal. Ships were advised not to pick up sailors off ships that had sunk in the waters. They would be dead first from hypothermia. Nonetheless, it still happened. Wally remembered that a few were saved. Most of them turned to blocks of ice the minute they were pulled from the icy waters. But they got a few on to the engine covers.
Captains were ordered not to stop for sinking ships. One in Wally's convoy did and it was torpedoed too.
Manning the guns in the bitter cold was almost impossible. Wally remembered men going down below for cocoa and it being frozen by the time they returned to the deck. Seas came right over the corvettes and froze. They used axes, steam hoses and hammers to break off the ice.
On the aircraft carriers, the decks were sheets of ice, making take off and landing treacherous. Manning the first gun station, Wally could see the colour drain out of the pilots' faces as they prepared to be catapulted off the deck. Those who came back would embark, rosy-cheeked, like they'd been out on a weekend jaunt.
Once in port at Murmansk, they were still not safe. U-boats patrolled under the ice, firing at the ships. The ships were frozen-in within hours of tying up. Thirty to 40 horses pulling sledges driven by women would arrive, unload the ship, then drive off over the ice. Days later icebreakers would ease them out of the harbour.
Conditions on shore in the Russian port were terrible. While awaiting the unloading, Wally was called to Arkhangelsk to testify at an inquiry. He witnessed people drinking watery potato soup out of big hoppers heated with logs.
While the images of the horrors of war still remained with him after over 60 years, it was the injustice that continued to irk the veteran.
When their convoy arrived in Russia, they found three Russian destroyers tied up at the dock. The Russians, to whom they had just delivered lifesaving supplies, refused to supply them with water.
Soon after their return to Britain, the announcement came : war had ended.
The Trumpeter was sent alone to Copenhagen to show the flag. Sailing in amongst German planes and U-Boats, the sailors were ordered to fire upon any ship that came within 1,000 yards. None did, and the Trumpeter docked.
It was there Wally experienced perhaps his final shock of the war.
Inside, a barbed wire encampment were women with shaved heads. Wally stopped to ask one why they were there.
The woman explained they had been accused of fraternizing with the Germans.
She added, "They may say what they like, but I have three children to feed."
Sixty years later, Wally lived in Cramahe Township with his daughter, Joan. At the time she was applying for a 60-year anniversary medal which the Russian government was producing to commemorate the Murmansk Run. He received the medal late in 2005.
His frankness provided us with a telling reminder of the dehumanizing personal experience and brutality of war. His life was proof that man can put behind him those horrors. It was a victory of the essential goodness of man.