Gwen, Ken and the Royal Navy

Gwen, Ken and the R.N.

This is an extract from my memoirs, which I wrote in 1997, about my late husband Ken, and our lives together, and which I dedicated to my two sons.

Ken volunteered for the Royal Navy in April 1939 and was called up on 27th. November 1939. Early 1940 saw the end of the ‘Phoney War’ and things began to get serious! He had his first leave at Easter time 1940 prior to joining the destroyer H.M.S. Beagle on April 4th ready for his first active service on April 10th in the battle of Narvick.

During this leave, Ken, among others, had been given a wrist watch by the local Coedffranc School, and during the battle the Beagle came under air attack when an enemy bullet smashed the watch but left his hand intact — that was Ken’s first bit of luck. The Skipper of the Beagle Lt. Commander Courage received the D.S.O. after the battle and later he became an Admiral.

Back from Norway, all the ‘B boats’ — Bulldog, Brazen, Bodicea and Beagle were put on the Dover patrol, under Admiral Ramsey. His H.Q. was the Cliffs of Dover Castle. This was not an easy station, not much sleep, and it was called ‘bomb alley’.

Holland, Belgium and then France had been invaded, the ‘B’ boats were in the thick of the evacuation of Dunkirk. Many ragged and weary soldiers were being helped aboard, when Ken helped one — who he did not recognise — until he yelled out “Good God its Ken” — it was an old school mate by the name of Ivon Randall from Christopher Road. For years after, whenever they met in Skewen, it was ‘thanks for the lift mate’.

Another Skewen boy, Sid Richards from Burrow’s Road wasn’t so lucky, minutes later his ship received a direct hit and he was killed.

All through the invasion the tension was tremendous and the ‘B’ boats were back patrolling the Straits. One evening, which I will never forget, was when Nanna Slee and Granpa Charlie had the six o’clock news on the wireless — probably read by Alva Liddel — reporting on a fierce battle in the Dover Straits — H.M.S. Brazen sunk and H.M.S. Beagle ……….. they didn’t hear any more, Nanna screamed out “our Ken is gone”.

They rushed up to the shop — my mother had a fish and chip shop during the war — where Lila, my sister, and I were working — but then we had to wait for the nine o’clock news to find out whate had happened. What it said was that 50 dive bombers had attacked the convoy, the Brazen had been badly damaged and was being towed by the Beagle into port when she sank. Many years later I read any account of this the July 22nd 1940 action , in ‘The War Illustrated’.

Once again Ken had been lucky, during the attack he and another lad had dived under the depth charges for cover, Ken on the outside shielding the other, when a bullet from one of the dive bombers went through him — nicking him over his heart and killed his mate. Ken had plaster on the wound for months afterwards.

Ken said that whenever they were returning to Dover, they always had ‘the welcome signal’ from Admiral Ramsey — “my chicks are coming home to roost”.

The Spy in the Heather?

The first week in August 1940 Ken had a well earned seven days leave — after Dunkirk. It was a glorious summer that year. One evening we decided to go for a walk up Drummau Road and on the way we called in to Cresci’s shop. Joe Cresci was a good man, always fair, like when he had his cigarette quota delivered, they all went on to the counter, when they were gone, they were gone — no under the counter dealing for him!
Joe sold Ken a ¼ pound bar of Cadbury’s chocolates and off we went; it was such a lovely evening that we decided to climb the mountain, in those days there was a rugged path which is now overgrown. On reaching the top we sat on a ledge, taking in the beautiful scenery, and we opened the chocolates, ate some, and decided to keep the rest as a treat for the family.

There was a lone plane flying around, over Llandarcy Oil Refinery and around the mountain, we didn’t take much notice of the plane, and as it was beginning to get dusk we decided to make for home, it was about nine o’clock and although we were in our ‘twenties’ we would still get ‘black looks’ if we were late getting home.

Part way down the mountain we saw that there was someone in the undergrowth flashing a torch upwards towards the plane which was still circling overhead.

We looked at each other, then made a dash down the mountain. It was quite a run to the Police Station — no telephone boxes on the way, and no houses with a phone.

We reached the Police Station, by now out of breath, me still clutching the box of chocolates, and told a very young dopey looking Policeman about the plane and the flahing torch. He went out to the door, looked across the road towards the houses on the opposite side of the road and said “I can’t see anything”. Perhaps he expected to see a searchlight — I don’t know! Anyway we had reported it.

We got back home to Picton Road feeling quite deflated and offered the chocolates around — but by now the box was teemming with ear wigs! Needless to say, the chocolates went into the bin.

I still have Ken’s letter dated August 15th 1940, asking if I had heard any more about our experience on the mountain; he writes “that was a laugh wasn’t it, we had Skewen main road to ourselves that night alright, that policeman didn’t half dash around too! We had a suck in alright, we had expected all the Force to turn out.”

Pity they hadn’t, a lot of lives might have been saved!

The Double Cross System.

More than forty years later, on a visit to the library, I picked up a book called “The Druid”, written by Leonard Moseley and published in 1982. The book, which is well worth reading, tells the story of the ‘Double Cross Intelligence System’ which was operated during the Second World War, and the following details seem to be relevant to our experience on the mountain.

An enemy agent — code named ‘The Druid’, parachuted into the Cambrian Mountains — north of Llandovery and west of Llandrindod Wells — during a night of heavy bombing over Swansea — eventually linking up with another enemy agent by the name of Arthur Owen.

Arthur Owen, who lived in Kidwelly Street in Swansea, turned out to be a treble agent, spying for MI5, the Abwehr and the S.S., and I am still convinced it must have been him that night on the mountain. If only that policeman had alerted the Home Guard.

Arthur Owen’s code name in MI5 was ‘Snow’, and to the Abwehr ‘Johnny’. The Druid came onto the scene later, he was Gwyn Evans — grandson of a Welshman who went to Patagonia in the 1880’s, and son of a Welshman and German mother — he spoke fluent Welsh, German, Spanish and English, and through his love of singing he had a job somewhere in the B.B.C..

He mixed easily in with the people in the local pubs — including Dylan Thomas — and he used to listen in to their conversations.

In particular he would listen in on people in uniform — and it was through a Canadian soldier bragging that he heard about the Dieppe raid. He transmitted the information to Germany and so all went wrong because they were ready and waiting.

He was supposed to be the only spy that got away. Kim Philby had him in the end and he disappeared. It does not take much to imagine where!

The Anti-submarine Stew Pot.

After Ken’s post Dunkirk leave he returned to H.M.S. Beagle which was sent on convoy duty in the Atlantic for the next eighteen months, in the thick of the battle with the U-boats.

One funny story Ken told us was of an incident during a time when their food stores was running really low. They only had corned beef, potatoes and carrots left and his mess men decided to make a stew so that it would go further. A young recruit was given the job and was instructed to make it in the heavy mess pot. All went well until he put dough-boys into it — he added too many — and the whole of it became one solid mass, like a stone! He said to Ken “what shall I do with it? The answer was “ditch it”, which he did. The language in the mess can well be imagined — no stew and no pot.

As Ken said, if a sub had been below them at the time, it wouldn’t have had a chance.

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