Sidney Lyles; a life on water

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by a volunteer on behalf of Sid and has been added to the site with his permission. He fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Sid gave me permission to interview him for this story being fully aware that it was going to be used for the BBC WWII People’s War Internet archive.

Sid was born on the water in Doncaster in 1922. His father had his own barge where the family lived and worked. He’s travelled on the water most of his life. He started working on the inland waterways carrying a100 ton of cargo such as flour, bricks and other goods up the south Yorkshire canals as far as Sheffield. First they’d go down to Hull to load up, calling in a various places dropping cargo on the way. His father died “early doors” of cancer. Although he never went to school his mother taught him to read and write and the other life skills he needed he picked up through experience. He remembers having a very good childhood and being very happy travelling about all the time.

When war broke out he remembers that he was staying with his married sister at Mexborough, both of their parents being dead by that time. He heard the news on the radio. “I thought if there’s gonna be a war I might as well be in it and went to join up” He was 19 at the time. As could be expected he chose the navy. He went for the interview and signed his name and that was that, he was in. His training started on the HMS Ganges at Plymouth. There he was put through drill as well as square bashing and taught all of his knots, something that wasn’t needed in his case.

After training he joined the Phoebe in 1942 and never left her for all the years he was in the navy, which was quite unusual. Each time she went in for decommission she kept a skeleton crew onboard, one of which was always Sid. He remembers her fondly, “HMS Phoebe was a Dido class cruiser 5.25 dual guns, single and twin guns as well as torpedo tubes and depth charge racks. A big ship.” She was manned by 600 crew including a Chaplain and the Royal Marines.

She survived the war although she got torpedoed, Sid remembers, in 1943 (archive information states1942) off the African coast. The torpedo ripped a huge hole in the side of the ship, big enough, according to Sid, to “drive a bus through it”. The hit was made worse due to the fact that it struck just around breakfast time when the night watch were sleeping and the afternoon watch were having breakfast. So only one watch was above deck. Sixty hands were lost all together. “That’s war”, he shrugged when asked about the event. He never feared for his own life because he never thought about it, he just loved being on the water, it didn’t bother him one bit.

Being in battle, “You just don’t notice it, you’ve a job to do and you just do it, you don’t think about what’s going on. If you’re a gunner you know you’re a gunner and you have to be alert all the time. As soon as they said “action stations” you went to your position and just got on with your job.”

To get “patched up” they had to cross the Atlantic all the way to America, not an easy journey for a vessel in her condition. She was taken into dry dock at Brooklyn navy yard and the crew was given permission to go ashore, which Sid said, was a nice break from the sea. Sid recalls his time in New York as being quite different from what he had seen in Europe, “You wouldn’t have thought a war was going on”.

He enjoyed being onboard the ship even if you had to make your own entertainment when you weren’t working. “You had to work three watches and you had one watch on and one watch off so that you didn’t repeat the shifts. Morning, afternoon and night. A “dog-watch” was a two-hour watch, the normal watch being a four-hour one.” So when he wasn’t on watch he wrote letters to his sister that were taken ashore the few times they docked to take on food and oil. He wrote often although it took a long time for the letters to get back home. He also played the piano on the mess deck, did his washing or read in the library when the noise of “gabbing” got too loud.

He remembers once that rats got onboard while they were in Bombay dry dock repairing one of the four propeller shafts. They had to use traps to get rid of them. Fortunately they all slept in hammocks that where swung between two bars on the mess deck so there was no danger of them getting into bed with you!

Sid recalls that HMS Phoebe’s tours of duty took her to the Mediterranean where she partook in the liberation of Malta as well as escorting Merchant Navy convoys off the African coast and in the Far East. He also remembered that they had to take the King and Queen to Ireland. He got to see them but he never met them.

He was out by Rangoon when he heard that the war had ended and the ship sailed to Plymouth to decommission. He was de-mobbed in 1946 and remembers being given the famous grey pinstriped suit with a Trilby. They wanted him to stay on but 9 out of 10 who were asked said “no way!”. He was awarded the following medals; Burma Star, Italy Star, Africa Star, 1939-45 Star and Atlantic Star. He was very sad to hear that the Phoebe had gone for scrap in the 1950’s.

After the war he went back to live with his sister and got a job at a steelworks in Mexborough making circular saw blades. He met his wife after leaving the navy and soon went back again to the water in a 150-ton oil tanker based at Hull where he worked up to his retirement. He used to travel up to Leeds and Selby, up the Humber and up the Ouse.

His final comment to sum up his 83 years was this; “It was my life, I was born on the water and I lived on the water”

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