Approach of the storm - Chapter 13

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Roger Marsh of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of Thomas Arthur Russell and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Approach of the storm Chapter 13
By
Thomas Arthur Russell

In fact we did hear after that, that she'd sailed in such a hurry that some dockyard workmen found themselves going into action. I wonder if their union applied for double time or danger money? The date was 24th May. Prior to the announcement over the tannoy, I noticed our speed had increased and we had swung on a North Easterly course.

The convoy was dropping behind rapidly; we were leaving it earlier than usual. I remember going down on watch in the boiler room. All the boilers in the three boiler rooms were coupled and on full power, every sprayer was switched on. There was a steady pulsating throb and vibration seemed to spread through the ship. The old battleship was giving of her best. If Bismarck held her course our strategy was to bring her to action at dawn action stations, when she would show up against the dawn and give us some advantage. Every man was expecting an epic battle. I saw money being carefully packed in wallets, photographs being put away along with little personal belongings. Ammunition was being supplied to the six inch casemates. A line of seamen were passing them along the special metal cradle ways, to provide a source of rapid supplementary fire power to the 15 guns, if the range could be closed. Cans of Izal disinfectant and buckets were passed down to boiler room and engine room, along with ships biscuits and corned beef.

Passing the sick bay, I saw the light shining on the instruments being laid out and ready, and I felt a qualm of uneasiness. How many of us would end up in there in the next few hours? What mutilation, what agony could we be called on to endure, young men facing the ultimate test? I was glad that my family back home didn't know then that we were sizing up to the Bismarck. Mother would have gained a few more grey hairs. I was now off watch from the boiler room and at my for'd (forward) fire and damage control station. We were ordered to put on our anti-flash gear, that's how near to the expected battle we thought we had come. Report from the bridge informed us that the sky was lightening and any moment, could bring the enemy in sight. Down between decks, I could imagine the lookouts straining their eyes for the first sight of the enemy. Our best chance lay on hitting first and accurately.

Ramillies had a good reputation for gunnery and although slow, she had more armour than the Hood, so our chances seemed a little better. We waited mostly in silence. The minutes ticked by, we were apprehensive. As time went by, I knew any advantage derived from the dawn must be slipping away, for soon it would be full daylight, and a ship that could blow the mighty Hood up with her second salvo must be a ship to be reckoned with. I'd seen Hood once when I was in the training division. She had lain alongside the wall at Devonport, and every one of us rookies had been filled with awe at her size. She was the pride of the fleet. A model of her lay in a glass case in the drill shed in Devonport Barracks. I could imagine my old instructor’s feelings, for Old Chiefy Burns had often spoken to us about her in reverent tones, and now his old "'HooHood" as he called her in his Southerly dialect, had gone.

Soon word came down to us from the bridge. Hands secure from action stations, the pipe echoed through the ship, forenoon watch-keepers to breakfast, so that was it, it was over. He now altered course and came round to a westerly bearing. Fuel oil was running low and we must return to Halifax to replenish our tanks and await a new convoy. A mixture of relief and disappointment came over one. What if we'd sunk the Bismarck? We would have been bloody heroes. "All this for sweet f*** all," was said by one or two, but under it all lay a certain relief, faces were a little brighter. Laughter and a bit of horseplay on the mess deck showed how the men felt now.

No we weren't fated to die today. We had to leave the area and the hunt to more modern and faster ships. One humorous incident stuck in my mind. During the winter months, we did have a few days in dock in St Johns, New Brunswick. We were the first ship of our size to go into this dock and it proved a pretty tight fit. From the upper boat deck some of us watched as the ship was worked in by large steel hawsers around great pulleys shackled down to the ground. The tension on these pulleys and shackles must have been enormous. Along the dockside were several workmen attending to the berthing of the ship. Suddenly one of the pulleys tore free from its shackle and the tension sent it skating along the dockside. The men saw it coming and tried to race it, and as they ran, the rope and pulley just knocked their legs from under them.

Though laughable at the time, it could have been serious. If they had been nearer to the shackle when it had first parted, it would have caught them with its full force. As it was, the injuries were light and the lads watching couldn't help laughing. It looked so funny, like a comic really.

Between listening to Vera Lynn and "We'll Meet Again", we listened avidly for news of the Bismarck chase. Men would gather round the speakers which were fixed to the deck head, and when we did hear that she'd been sunk, a cheer echoed throughout the ship, "Square headed bastards serves them right." But not everyone held this view. They were only doing their duty. Like the rest of us, they were sailors, they had done what we would have done, fought to the last. German mothers, wives and sweethearts would now weep for their dead.

They had found a grave in the Atlantic; this vast graveyard of ships and men of many nations. What thought does the tourist give as he flies over now, his few passing hours flight where men endured, burning in tankers turned into exploding crematoriums, drowning or flayed alive by super heated steam, trapped in steel water filled compartments, trying to swim for life through water covered in burning fuel oil, days, weeks, years of tragedy. Why must such endeavour and courage be wasted by war?

A word here on the men of the Red Duster, the Merchant Navy. These men, and they were men, young and old, must rank with all the others in the forces for shear courage. Some didn't survive just one sinking, but several. Many died in open boats drifting for weeks, driven mad by hunger and thirst. Some were lucky, many were not. Ships which offered targets to the wolf pack were more like a pheasant shoot in those days of 1941. Being a stoker I could imagine the feelings of dread, being down below in the boiler room and engine room of a slowly wallowing merchantman, and hearing the reverberation of a torpedo against another ship’s side, or the clang like a great hammer of the escort’s depth charges as they probed for the U boat and tried to reduce it to a water crushed steel coffin.

We were lucky, we of the Ramillies in this respect. We were routed to avoid U boats. Western approaches destroyers saw most of the U boat battle, although it didn't mean we couldn't meet one, for they could range far and wide. The war was swiftly developing and invading new territory. Allied and Free French forces advanced into Syria to prevent German occupation with Vichy French help, but the news of the German invasion of Russia was greeted with incredulity at first. The mess deck buzzed with rumours. Someone said we would be sailing soon to a Russian port. "B**** that. We want some leave and Russia's too bloody cold anyway," was the popular cry. "Poor square headed b*******, now they'll have the chance to freeze to death, they'll really get hammered. Old Joe Stalin won't be long wiping the deck with them."

Alas, their optimism was short lived. The German advance with its bombers and masses of armour tore huge gaps in the Russian defences and advanced with lightning speed. Would anything stop Jerry? Just then he seemed pretty irresistible. How long would this war last? It seemed forever. No-one on the lower deck seemed to think about losing. All they wondered was how much longer, with each German success, would it take to win? The news and Vera Lynn - good old Vera - she seemed to epitomise the feelings of the lads.

Home and family, sweethearts and friends were very much in their mind. Some of the more hardened older men would make fun of some of the younger ratings as they gathered near the loud speakers on the mess deck. "Doughy bastards, look at them," not with any malicious intent but probably trying to show a hard exterior when they were listening as well. Some of the songs of those days were very appropriate. A touch of the romantic coupled with patriotism, "Harbour Lights", "The White Cliffs of Dover", "I Threw a Kiss into the Ocean", "There'll Always be an England" and "Rose of England"! were very popular among the lower deck. As news of bombing used to come over the air, the lads from the areas affected sometimes showed in their faces, their apprehension. Sometimes a whispered, hardly audible, "f****** bastards", would fall from a man’s lips. Others of the lads would try to put a reassuring face on it. "Oh they’ll be okay, they'll be in the shelters, don't worry." What other men thought of as we stood our watches, whether from the engine room and machinery spaces to the gunnery positions and lock-out posts, is not known. I suspect we all worried about the people at home. It was another incentive to give of our best.

This steel village heaving on the face of a great ocean manned by men dedicated to war, 850 souls, officers and men working together, from a class ridden society. It’s funny how war unites a society in the face of a common foe. Some of the most beautiful sights I can remember are of an ocean whipped up into great seas with the sun shining on their crests and penetrating them in an opaque emerald green light, topped by dazzling white foam. Great ships heaving up, bows cascading in a welter of tumbling water and foam from gleaming sides, water foaming and boiling ground the dogged down hatches till it poured through the scuppers in a flurry of foam back into the sea. Uncomfortable yes, but nevertheless incredibly beautiful was this savage pitiless ocean.

One night, I remember the black mass of the ship showing up against a clear starlit night, as I walked on the 4 gun deck for a breath of fresh air. I could make out the silhouette of a lookout, binoculars raised to his hood-shrouded face. He looked like a monk from some religious order, almost eerie, for all was silent except for the creaking noises as the ship slowly rolled her ford tripod mast and fighting top, describing a slow arc against the stars. Another night of brilliant moonlight, the moon shining from the port horizon on a calm sea. Looking Like some celestial roadway over the ocean, such times you think of home. I remember wondering, "Would they be looking up at this same moon?"

The days of the North Atlantic convoys on HMS Ramillies were drawing to a close. The old ship had done her best. We all held a pride and affection for her, and she had proved her worth. The incident of February when the German warship had withdrawn on sighting Ramillies, meant a convoy and many merchant seamen had been saved from a massacre, for this is what would surely have happened if they'd been unescorted by a battleship.

Our last, convoy was a fair sized one of about thirty ships. We escorted it all the way till the escorts of Western approaches picked it up near Northern Ireland. We left the convoy and escorted by a couple of destroyers, made our way to Liverpool. The ship was due for a refit, which would take several weeks. She had an impressive steaming record over the last year or two. Boilers and condensers needed an overhaul, R.D.F. had to be fitted. The upper deck had to be fitted with armour plate, probably a lesson from the loss of the Hood, useful in any case against aerial bombs as well as plunging shellfire.

A fault had been found in the rifling of some of the 15" gun barrels after their last practise firing and so it looked like we would receive new gun barrels. Anti aircraft armament was being stepped up by the addition of a considerable number of Oerlikang 20mm cannon. The funnel was to receive a smoke cowl, giving it a more rakish look and diverting any funnel smoke from obscuring range finding from her upper range finder and bridge.

One thing they couldn’t do, that was increase her speed by very much, although the scraping and repainting of her bottom would help a bit in this respect. Accordingly the old ship entered dry dock on a greyish day in the autumn of 1941. It was Gladstone dock and the ship's company could look forward to a fairly long leave as she came into dockyard hands.

The watches were split accordingly to provide security and standard maintenance. Men were needed to guard gangways and check workmen. An effective defence and fire fighting and damage control system still had to be maintained.

Jerry had already pounded Merseyside pretty heavily, evidence from what we had heard from the dockyard "Mateys" and what shore leave had shown us. From the area near the dock, to well towards the City itself was flattened, and I wondered who was taking the most punishment the civvies or the forces. As I went with my "oppos" Bill Taylor and Tommy Hanlon into town, I think it affected us partly looking at the devastation.

Following the tales we had heard of people being buried, burnt or drowned, trapped in basement shelters as water mains were fractured and gas set alight, I wasn't at all surprised to hear Tommy mutter quietly as if in some sort of dream, "The f*****g bastards." He must have felt it more then us for this was his home town and we just sat in silence for awhile, till the damage became less evident, as we neared the city centre.

The Spanish wine bar was a favourite haunt of ours, plenty of "Julies" for the lads to chat up. The seats were imitation wine barrels and bunches of imitation grapes hung around the ceiling. It was a pleasant enough place, and I remember one incident in which we hastily vacated the place after an obviously drunken female had pestered us for a drink and we had told her to bugger off. She immediately produced a dozen or so reinforcements and things looked ugly, for they were the meanest looking women I had ever seen. For the sake of peace and quiet the drunk got her drink. A fracas would have meant our possible involvement with the shore patrol and more important could have meant damage to our leave arrangements.

I remember chatting to one girl here, she sat down with us. She was smartly dressed, fair-haired, grey eyed and well spoken. She was attractive, a bit out of place in a pub. One thing marred her looks, she had a white cast in the pupil of one- eye but she was an impressive woman for all that. She invited me to take her home and I remember going to her home at Wavertree. She was pleasant enough company but it was more of time passing exercise, and nothing more serious than that, although my mates never believed me when I answered in the negative to their enquiries regarding, "Anything doing Russ?"

Pr-BR

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