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

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СКАЧАТЬ merchant ships independently at intervals and without escort to Russia.

      Reginald Urwin experienced that Arctic route in a lone freighter and was fortunate to survive and tell the tale:

      ‘I was 16 at the time and did the usual induction courses and so forth at a training establishment at Tyne Dock, where we learnt how to use Bofors, Oerlikons and machine-guns. I did a fairly uneventful trip across the Atlantic and was then on a collier in the Channel and had a scare or two with E-boats and things, and then it was back to the Tyne where we heard about PQ 17, and we’d also heard about PQ 18, convoys that went to Russia, from some of the survivors who got back, and that was interesting. About the middle of September 1942, I think it was, I was sent to a ship at Tyne Dock and she was loading at the time. She was loading tanks and dismantled planes and engine parts, medical stores and general equipment, everything to do with warfare, and the last thing that they did before we left was that they welded brackets on the afterdeck, three a side, and these were gun mounts for Vickers machine-guns, and that didn’t look very good. We had a Bofors onboard, we had four sets of twin Oerlikons, everything abaft of the bridge. This was the Empire Gilbert, and we had an ancient 4-inch on the stern, which the gunners weren’t very happy with because, I think, the date on it was something like 1916 or something, but it worked, it went OK.

       Ralph (Reginald) Urwin

      Then we sailed north. We thought, well, we’re going up to pick up a convoy, and we went off up to Iceland. Arrived in Reykjavik and we sat around there waiting for other ships to arrive; some were coming from America and other places and I think there were, in total, 13 vessels. Anyway, just prior to our departure there was a conference ashore and all the skippers were called to this conference, and when our skipper came back he got us all in the messroom and explained to us what was about to happen; it seemed that the idea was that the ships were to sail from Reykjavik at staggered times and try and get to Russia on their own, without escort or anything.

      So we went out, we set off from there about the latter part of October and it was pretty rugged; the only ships we saw actually on the way were Icelandic fishing boats, and they were immune because the Germans didn’t bother them. I think it was about three days out from there that we were torpedoed – this was 2 November 1942. The idea had been, of course, to get to the most northern part and get straight on to the main route to Murmansk, but this didn’t happen – as I say, we got torpedoed.

      My station was the port-side Oerlikon, and when we were hit I finished up at the foot of the starboard lifeboat davit and I didn’t know very much about how I got there or anything, but the explosion must have been quite severe because it must have thrown me right over the top, over the bridge. I got to my feet and tried to cut the lifeboat free, but the ship was going so fast that I was awash before I could do anything and the ship just went down – it completely disappeared within a very, very short space of time. It couldn’t have been any more than 3 minutes, well 2 minutes, and there was nothing to be seen. I don’t know how long I’d been out at the foot of the davit, of course, but it was just so sudden and then, after it was all over, it was a most weird, weird feeling, because suddenly about me there was nothing there, and you were just on your own with people all around just sort of hollering out at each other and trying to make contact.

      It didn’t seem very long after that that I spotted this shape and it was the submarine that had sunk us, coming towards us, and we were screaming out for help and doing what we thought, you know, was the best thing, and they steamed up alongside us and I felt myself being dragged over the side on to the submarine, and after that I just didn’t remember very much more. I can remember going to the conning tower, but I just collapsed and the next thing I knew was that I was being sort of revived. I think it was the Medical Officer and the Mate or the Chief Officer who were working on me, and I’d been stripped and they were rubbing cognac and everything into me in order to get the blood flowing again. I afterwards found out that there had been two other people picked up and they were from the Mercantile Regiment, and these guys were responsible for the Bofors, the anti-aircraft guns aft, but I didn’t know these people because they had been put on board just before we sailed.

      Other than that, we finished the patrol on the submarine. We were fairly well treated; I think the Navy looks after the Navy, the Army looks after the Army, and so on. Well, we weren’t treated too bad. We were fed the same sort of food as they were fed and we had pretty well within reason what you could expect; we had free rein of the submarine. If there was any action or anything like that we were told in no uncertain terms what to do and where to go and we just had to stay put at that. There was a couple of flurries but I didn’t find out too much about them, but there was some hectic activity there on two or three occasions actually. We finished the patrol on the submarine and we went then to Narvik. We were about two weeks on the submarine.

      While I was in the submarine there was the usual questions; they asked about what cargo, what tonnage, where we were from and other activity. At that time I think the Air Force was fairly busy in Reykjavik; they were particularly anxious to know if there was any air activity in Iceland at the time. They weren’t too sure whether we had aircraft there or not and of course we couldn’t tell them anything because we didn’t know. We told them that we didn’t know. We had seen aircraft but they didn’t get too much information. They knew that we were carrying arms because of the explosions on the ship and all that sort of thing, but that was a dead give-away.

      When we got to Narvik they put us into a holding camp, which was very close to a big Russian camp they had there; they had a lot of Russians there, and these fellows they treated like subhumans there. It was really, really bad, and of course it was a different calibre of German too that we got in with there. When we got to this holding place they actually strip-searched us and we thought that was rather funny, because we’d only come off a German submarine straight to the camp, and why they had done this I don’t know, but there didn’t seem to be a lot of trust between the services anyway. They took all our clothes away and deloused us, had our clothes done and they all came back pressed and cleaned, ironed, brought by two Russians, and we were told by the Germans that we were to make full use of the Russians and use them as our servants, because they were to prepare our meals, which was fish, consisting of nothing but fish and potatoes. They were to do anything – get the firewood in, do the washing and do anything that we required of them, which we didn’t do anyway of course. We did our own thing but, to all intents and purposes, these Russians were just earmarked to do precisely what we wanted them to do.

      It wasn’t long before the rest of the Russians found out that we were there, and we could see these Russians, when we took our exercise we could see these Russians who were being made to pull sledges loaded with firewood and all this sort of thing, and they were very brutally treated, and it didn’t augur very well for us. I thought, well, if this is captivity under the Germans I wonder how it will go when we get to wherever we’re going in Germany. We were there, I think, about eight or ten days, and then one of the Germans came in, and in effect said pack up all your gear, you’re now going to Germany.

      We were then taken down by truck to this little ship, about 2,000 tons, called the Danferspray Bremen, and she was an iron-ore carrier and she was going down to, well she was to drop us off at Wilhelmshaven. We dodged all the way down the Norwegian coast; we went to Stavanger and Kristiansand, which was just before we made a rush across the Skagerrak to get to Kiel, and the thing was only capable of about 7 knots. Of course, our first thoughts then were that if this thing ever got hit. . . When we got on board this Danferspray Bremen we were put into cabins and we were locked in these cabins all the time we were on board this thing, and the crew would bring us food to the cabin and that was it; we weren’t allowed out at all, not until we were leaving Kristiansand. Then the Captain, with another man in uniform, came down and he had a gun and he told us that this was going to be a bit of a dicey run: “Your cabin doors will be left open, here are life-jackets – should anything СКАЧАТЬ