My Last Day Ashore

This story has been submitted to the People’s War website by Peter Quinn of Lancashire Home Guard on behalf Bill Dixon, and has been added to the site with his permission by the staff of Blackpool Central Library.

I walked rather timidly into the Merchant Navy Shipping Office in Preston. It was wartime 1941 and my time had come for me to do my bit for King and country. I wasn’t happy; in fact, I was bloody miserable and would get worse before the day was done. A thin, fidgety man came from behind a desk, rubbing his hands and smiling - a bit too easily for my liking! “Na then lad,” he said in his best Preston accent, “’Av yer come to join us?”

“Yes,” I mumbled. I tried to match his smile, but my face didn’t want to know. “Wot’s yer name?” I told him. “Are yer fit?” he continued, nodding in anticipation of a positive reply. “Well,” I began, “apart from flat feet, bandy legs, varicose veins, cross-eyed and a touch of halitosis - Yes”. “Yer fine lad, yer fine, you’re just the calibre we’re looking for!”

Rotten sod, I thought — with that catalogue of problems I should have been back on the train and home within the hour. “Follow me!” He busied himself trying to march in front of me down a narrow passage. He looked over his shoulder making sure I hadn’t done a runner — I was still there.

“Oh!” he said, “Can yer swim?”
“Swim?”
“SWIM!” I nearly choked.
“Yes, swim! Yer know” And he demonstrated — hardly Olympic class.
“ I can do two breadths of the local baths”
“ No, no, no lad, I mean fully clothed in the North Atlantic!”
My jaw dropped!
We stopped at another office and I watched him disappearing back up the corridor, still giggling stupidly at his sick joke!

I signed on my first ship, never to forget that thin, cruel sod who had ruined my last day ashore, until I went home in 1946!

The ships on which I served 1941-1946 were:

1)“Wim” — a dirty rust bucket of a Dutch coaster — Belfast and back to Liverpool.
2)“Rowan” — another coaster — Londonderry and back.
3)“Grodno” — Twin well-deck TRAMP, launched in 1919! Escaped the scrap-yard and so did the ship’s scouse cook. Iron ore from Almeria in Spain and back to Middlesbrough.
4)“British Confidence” — Benzine tanker — New York and back to Ardrossan.
5)“Athel Chief” - another tanker — left the ship in New York.
6)“Wearpool” — a cargo ship, in convoy to Oran (North Africa). Ammunition ship supporting Operation TORCH.
7)“Ocean Volga” — from New York to Basra with stores for the Russian front.
8)“Fort-la-Trait” — stores for the Battle of Normandy. My discharge book puts us off the coast of Normandy 20-23rd June 1944. The French government gives us a “window” of 5-6th June to 20th August to be recognised as taking part in the Battle of Normandy.
9)“Highland Princess” — a trooper. Polish troops to Naples, Italy. Second trip to Lagos, West Africa. Black troops to Egypt. Third trip Liverpool to Odessa, Russia, with ex-POWs then pick up British and allied ex-POWs from Odessa to Port Said. Another ship takes them home to the UK. We embark Aussie and NZ troops — we are taking them home. Set off Suez Canal — Red Sea — Aden — Bombay — Freemantle — Western Australia — Hobart — Tasmania — Lyttleton NZ — cross the Pacific — round the Horn — Port Stanley, Falklands (about 38 years before the Argentine War) — Montevideo for beef — Pernambuco, Brazil — and then London. The “Highland Princess” had been our home for more than two years, had watered us, fed us and looked after us thousands of miles from home. Good old “Princess” — it’s Goodbye now. Enough already — let’s go home — 1946.

[The author of this piece has written a number of other contributions to the People’s War website. They are:

My last day ashore
My first ship — M. V. Wim
Jumping ship then the Ocean Volga
Convoy preparations
A Lancastrian in New York
Thanks Yanks!
Voyage around the world
I meet the "SS Grodno" and the cook!

He has also contributed two poems:

The SS Grodno — one more trip 1939
The last day of SS Kingswood]

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