For Five Shillings a Day: Personal Histories of World War II. Dr. Campbell-Begg Richard

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      In the meantime, the German bombing and torpedo attacks had been going on against the convoy and, on about the fourth day, we were fairly close up to the convoy and we could see an air attack in progress; one plane was brought down and three ships hit, one exploded, an ammunition ship. Then, late in the afternoon, there was a hive of activity about the ship and the rumour went out that Tirpitz, the German battleship, had been reported just over the horizon and we were about to engage her and other ships of the German Fleet. Flags were flying from the masthead as we turned away at high speed, forming single line ahead whilst the destroyers from the convoy formed up in line on our starboard quarter. While this was going on, the merchant ships were to be seen breaking away from the convoy and moving off in all directions. It was an awesome moment.

      Left and above HMS Norfolk refuelling destroyers on convoy PQ 17. (Begg)

      It was only later that we heard that the Admiralty had signalled that German heavy units were at sea and attack was considered imminent. The ships in the convoy were to scatter and find their own way into Russian ports whilst the Cruiser Force was to retire to the west at high speed. Anyway, it soon spread about the ship that we were withdrawing and leaving the ships of the convoy. It was a dreadful moment really; this was a thing the Royal Navy was not accustomed to do. So over the next few days we continued steaming at speed towards the west. Incidentally, our Walrus aircraft seaplane had been up in the air at the time all this activity was going on, and our Captain requested permission from the Admiral to stop to pick up the aircraft because, of course, she had to land on the sea and we would cruise alongside it and pick it up with our crane, but permission was refused. So we had to leave our poor old Walrus aircraft up in the air as we went off. Incidentally, the pilot kept in the air as long as he could and then landed behind one of the merchant ships and got a tow into Murmansk, very fortunate because he chose a ship that got in.

      During the days following our leaving the convoy, we kept receiving wireless messages from individual ships of the convoy, “Am being bombed, torpedoed, etc”, and requesting assistance, and, of course, there was no assistance available. Out of the 34 ships that sailed from Iceland, only 11 made it – 23 ships were sunk. This was my first operation, not easily forgotten.

      Catapulting the Walrus aircraft from HMS Norfolk.

      So over the next few months we spent our time either in Hvalfjord in Iceland or at Scapa Flow or carrying out gunnery exercises and so forth until the next convoy, PQ 18, which had been delayed because of the disaster occurring with PQ 17, was ready to sail. So it wasn’t until September that we went off again as part of the cruiser escort, but this time we also covered ships which were landing supplies for the Norwegian meteorological group, which was stationed in Spitzbergen and had, the previous week or so, been bombarded by the battleship Tirpitz, which had inflicted a lot of damage. PQ 18 was considered to be a fairly successful convoy, losing only 13 out of the 40 ships which set out, and these were lost by both submarine and torpedo-bomber attack. We hovered around the vicinity of Bear Island and picked up the returning convoy, the remnants of PQ 17 now labelled QP 14. It was this convoy where the ‘Tribal’ Class destroyer HMS Somali was torpedoed and later sank with the loss of 45 men.

      Then there are those recollections which have little to do with enemy action. The weather and seas in the wintry north was one of them. I remember watching the great battleship, King George V, struggling to gain the summit of a roller as broad as the ship was long, and then crashing down into the trough beyond. Then that Russian convoy when, in the destroyer HMS Orwell, we were close escort to a motley collection of small naval craft, mainly ex-Italian, being donated to and manned by the Russian Navy, and how we were hove to for days with mountainous seas and, with the spume and winter darkness, not able to see or communicate with any of them. They all survived. Then those mad dashes from aft to the open bridge of Orwell, trying to avoid seas breaking over the deck en route. The cold, with the inner bulkheads coated with ice and one’s breath freezing on to one’s balaclava, and the decks, guns and stanchions all iced up. The awful occasion when we lost Ordinary Seaman Kelly overboard from Orwell while we were exercising in the tempestuous Pentland Firth, and the hours of fruitless search that followed.

      On the other hand, there were those occasions when, at sea in the far wintry north, we were graced with the magnificence of the aurora borealis with its sheets of blue light moving across the sky and reflecting into the oily sea below, giving the impression of the ship being suspended in space. Then those lovely vistas of snow-covered mountains in Spitzbergen and Iceland, the almost holiday atmosphere when we left the frozen north for a spell to escort the massive troop convoys to the Torch landings in North Africa, escorting Mr Churchill to and from Canada, the camaraderie and good humour of the ships’ companies – all helped to compensate for the discomforts. And all this for 5 shillings a day – board and lodge included!’

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