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    You're In The Navy Now
    You're In The Navy Now
    You're In The Navy Now
    Ebook109 pages1 hour

    You're In The Navy Now

    By Alan Higgins

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    When Alan Higgins joined the Royal Navy at the outbreak of World War II, he was not yet sixteen years old. But his youth could not save him from the horrors of war and he was soon serving aboard the cruiser HMS Edinburgh. On May 1st 1942, HMS Edinburgh was sunk by a German U-Boat in the icy Barents Sea but Alan miraculously survived. However, this wasn't to be the last of Alan’s troubles and he narrowly escaped death during the bombing of a station in Russia. He experienced more peaceful spells in North America and Bermuda, but most of his war took place in the Mediterranean and he found himself dodging bullets and bombs during the Battle of Anzio in Italy. Later, as a crewman of a landing craft at the Normandy D-Day landings, Alan was forced to saw off a fellow sailor’s shattered leg with a bread knife. Despite the terrible danger, Alan survived the war and has now written You’re in the Navy Now, a richly-descriptive and good-humoured account of his unbelievable years in the Royal Navy.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMereo Books
    Release dateJun 30, 2015
    ISBN9781861510662
    You're In The Navy Now

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      Book preview

      You're In The Navy Now - Alan Higgins

      YOU’RE IN THE NAVY NOW

      A teenage recruit sees front-line action in WWII

      ALAN HIGGINS

      Copyright © 2015 by Alan Higgins

      All Rights Reserved.

      Published by Memoirs

      25 Market Place, Cirencester, Gloucestershire GL7 2NX, England

      Tel: 01285 640485, Email: info@memoirsbooks.com

      www.memoirspublishing.com

      Read all about us at www.memoirspublishing.com. See more about book writing on our blog www.bookwriting.co. Follow us on www.twitter.com/memoirsbooks

      Join us on www.facebook.com/MemoirsPublishing

      No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the copyright holder. The right of Alan Higgins to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 sections 77 and 78.

      The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      ISBN: 978-1-86151-066-2

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      I wish to thank Glenn Booker for his time in converting my handwritten memories into text and in choosing relevant photographs. I would also like to acknowledge the help of my daughter Susan for coordinating the communication between myself, Glenn and Memoirs Publishing.

      This book is dedicated to the brave seamen of HMS Edinburgh and all those who served on the Convoys to Hell who were not as fortunate as I was and did not survive.

      Table of Contents

      Early Days in Barry

      A Ship of My Own

      The Sinking of The Edinburgh

      Polyarno, Russia

      Archangel, and a date with a difference

      An Eventful Journey Home

      Combined Operations

      Action at Anzio

      D-Day and After

      Back to Italy, and the Greek problem

      A Court Martial and a Cutlass

      Bartering and Black Markets

      Landing Craft Infantry

      Navsource Online: Amphibious Photo Archive

      Early Days in Barry

      I was born at Number 28 Burlington Street, Barry Dock, on November 25th 1923, one of seven children. It would have been eleven if the quads born 18 months after me had been able to survive. Alas, they lived only for about eighteen days.

      As a young lad of that period, the 1920s and the 30s, one had to make one’s own pleasures such as the street games ‘Bumbarino’, ‘Hecky Go Jump’, ‘Mob’ and so on. At twelve years old these pleasures would include lighting fires on the patch of (as then) un-built-on ground at the end of the street and roasting potatoes. When workmen were laying the huge gas mains between the gasworks and the gasometer on the Moors we used to collect and melt the lead wool sealing material, melting it in tin cans, then pouring it into mud moulds and imprinting them with our initials.

      Another summer treat was swimming naked with the rest of the Burlington Street gang – Larry Clements, Lofty Marsh, Tommy Baker and others at Tom Edge, a reservoir at the east end of the New Docks (Number Two Dock). This pleasure was interrupted by the sight of PC Trigg, the docks policeman, which sent us scampering across the surrounding fields.

      To augment the family income I used to sell the South Wales Echo. I picked it up at five o’clock at Barry Dock Station. Then at 5 pm I used to run up Dock View Road, Thompson Street and Holton Road shouting ‘EK WEE HO!’ I received threepence per dozen sold and it was a great pleasure to give my mother a few shillings a week to add to the meagre pay my dad earned as a coppersmith for a few days work in the Graving Dock.

      At Holton Road School I remember Pop Humphries, a veteran of the First World War, a strict but humorous teacher. He would call out one boy thus: ‘Inigo, out you come for the caning’. That was Inigo Jones, a good boyhood friend of mine. Other boys in my class were Sydney Pycroft, Peter Luen, Jacky Batt, Ossie Evans, Billy Lovell, Ken Lee, Leonard Francis and more.

      COUNTDOWN TO WAR

      I left school at fourteen and worked for Ernie Webb, greengrocer, fishmonger, and seller of poultry in Holton Road. However in 1938 the clouds of war were gathering and rather belatedly the Government decided to prepare for the worst by building hangars at RAF St Athan. This led to the town of Barry becoming the place of leave for large numbers of RAF apprentices with their different- coloured bands around their caps, the colour indicating the trade for which they were being trained.

      My two older sisters became attached to a couple of sergeants and brought them home. They were Big John and Little John, a nice couple of chaps. I recall one of them bending a paper clip to the shape of an engine crankshaft to explain how an internal combustion engine worked.

      At fifteen years of age my mind was made up: the RAF was my future. I caught the train to Cardiff and went to the RAF Recruiting Office, only to be rejected because of my lack of the required educational standard. Surprise, surprise - next door was the Royal Navy recruiting office and after a brief medical, an eyesight test, weighing, and a mental arithmetic test, to enlist I was given a standard form to fill in. I needed my parents’ consent and a referee – this was Councillor Bill Butcher from Coigne Terrace. After posting the form to the Admiralty I received a letter telling me to wait until a boy’s class had vacancies.

      SIGNING ON WITH THE NAVY

      On September 18th 1939 I was told by letter to go 120 Victoria Road, Bristol, near Temple Meads Station, for a final medical examination, which I passed. I then went by train to Plymouth, then Devonport, to formally join the Royal Navy.

      I recall that when the train was at Newton Abbott in Devon a man entered our compartment with a local newspaper. The front page headline was not a good omen:

      ‘600 Men Lost on HMS Courageous’. The Courageous was an aircraft carrier which had been sunk the day before. When we arrived at the main barracks at HMS Drake there were hundreds of men, women and children scouring the ‘missing’ lists looking for names of their loved ones.

      We spent the day and following night at the barracks, then the next morning I signed a contract to serve for twelve years from the date of my eighteenth birthday. I was still just fifteen years old.

      We then went across a creek to HMS Impregnable, a boys’ training ship, where we were issued with all our kit and hammocks. Sailors are fully equipped to be sent anywhere, with all clothes and bedding. All our clothes had to be marked with our names in red silk chain stitched in our dark woollens, white cotton in our blue serge and black cotton in our duck suits (canvas). At that time I had no

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