Up the Gatineau! Article
This article was first published in Up the Gatineau! Volume 22.
Life Below Decks
Cliff Quince
On September 9, 1939 Canada declared war on Nazi Germany. I was fourteen, and on that day our family was returning home to Montreal from the New York World’s Fair. We stopped in Plattsburgh, New York where the US Army was holding manoeuvres. So many soldiers were in this small town that wooden currency was made available. You could buy wooden nickels, dimes and quarters!
The war wasn’t supposed to last very long. France’s impregnable Maginot Line would keep the Hun at bay, or so our parents thought. The Germans had a line facing it called the Siegfried. The Allies were so sure of an easy victory that a line in a patriotic song was, “We’re going to hang out our washing on the Siegfried Line; have you any dirty washing, mother dear?” The Maginot Line was outflanked by May of 1940, and therefore rendered useless.
My sister was eighteen. By the time she was twenty, she was in the Air Force, serving as a teletype operator in Torquay in the south of England. As a teenager growing up, my life went on much the same as usual. At age fourteen there weren’t many prospects of my getting involved. I was busy with Gilbert and Sullivan operettas put on in high school, school dances, Boy Scouts. But there were some changes to make us aware that Canada was at war: rationing of a few items and guest speakers in the high school auditorium including Buzz Beurling, the RCATF fighter pilot with 28 victories. He told us to eat raw carrots to improve our night vision. Teenage boys were anxious to get into the excitement of being in the service, so after school we joined the School Cadets and learned to march and carry a rifle. This wasn’t enough for me, so at sixteen I quit school, got a job and joined the Black Watch Highlanders Reserve Forces. Now I could march and carry a rifle in a real army uniform. That, too, wore thin and by the time I was seventeen, I was in the Navy.
After basic training I was a qualified AB, an Able Seaman. No courses for me; I wanted to get to sea. Stokers, Gunners, ASDIC (a type of sonar) Operators, Signals, no way. Iwanted a ship. My prayers were answered. I was assigned to a frigate that was on convoy duty. It was the HMCS Dunver, senior ship of the C5 Barbarpole Group, and we were to sail within 24 hours. I was eighteen now and anxious for adventure, as were most of the young crew. Farmers from the west, city kids like myself, small town boys; the only thing we had in common was the anticipated excitement we were about to experience. Being seasick was a disappointment. Some of us felt woozy for an hour or two, or until we got accustomed to the pitching, tossing and rolling of our home away from home. Some never succeeded in conquering the malaise. I remember a lad from Verdun, after which the Dunver was named, who was always seasick for several day every trip. But he refused to quit and take an assignment ashore.
We made thirty-two crossing in two years and he was sick for every one of them. An unsung hero.
Our ship was big enough and modern enough to have a “sick bay” or a one-room bospital, which meant we had a Medical Officer and a Sick Bay Attendant (SBA), or male nurse. I was in sick bay for some minor ailment when a crew member was brought in, apparently suffering from a strained thigh muscle. He was ordered to lie down, a hot water bottle was placed on his thigh and a thermometer shoved into his mouth. The SBA left the sick bay for a few minutes. The patient, enjoying the laid-back treatment, decided to extend his time off duty for a few days by putting the thermometer on the hot water bottle for about a minute, then popping it back in his mouth. When the SBA returned he took the reading. His eyes bulged and he raced out of the sick bay to inform the Medical Officer of the miracle he had just witnessed, a lad burning with deadly fever and still alive. “Saw Bones” ordered a retest and the patient was returned to duty immediately.
It wasn’t until I recently saw the CBC documentary called The Black Hole, about the Battle of the Atlantic, that I realized the dangers we were in. The war at sea was a lark, we thought, and the hardships a test of our manhood. Standing watch at night in the North Atlantic on swelling seas with temperatures well below freezing was just part of the job. In fact, the rougher the weather, the more we felt superior 0 nature — to a point. We could travel much faster than the convoy, which at times was as slow as six knots, and we could sail with a zig-zag pattern, but we still had to sail in the same direction as the convoy, listening with ASDIC for enemy subs. When the ship began to ice up we were in danger. Icing up was an unbelievable phenomenon. A half-inch cable would gather enough ice to become six inches in diameter, and this would only happen on the seaward side of the ship. The ship would then list to one side, making steering difficult, and capsizing a possibility. “All hands on deck” would be piped and all hands given axes and an order to de-ice the ship, smartly.
Not having a “specialty” (such as signaller, stoker, etc.) did me in good stead, aswas assigned the duties of Quarter Master. The Quarter Master was the helmsman who steered the ship at sea, and when in port, stood guard at the gang plank, or entranceway to the ship. I also sported a 45-calibre revolver while on duty in port, and had an assistant call a Bosun’s mate. Standing guard at a gang plank when there was no activity could be mind-boggling. Because the Bosun’s mate was supposed to pipe orders from the bridge throughout the ship, we would sometimes engage in a little chicanery. We would propose a new assignment for our C5 Barbarpole Group, and write up a phoney signal that we had to deliver to the Commander immediately. This, of course, would only be whispered to lower mess decks as fact. The trouble was that a couple of days later, we began to believe our own rumours!
Our Captain was a very shy former merchant navy officer, as was our Navigating Officer, who was anything but shy; he always had a devilish twinkle in his eye. They were good buddies and often spent an evening ashore together. One early morning I was on duty from midnight to 4 a.m. when the twosome returned on board. After the Captain had headed to his cabin, the Navvy said to me, “The Captain has lost his cat, and I am not sure what it looks like, so if you see any cats tonight, put them in the Captain’s cabin.” We knew this was an “official lark” and there would be no “off caps” punishment for our devoted observance of the order. Cats are common on a harbourfront, and we managed to slip more than twenty into the Captain’s cabin before our shift was done. We passed the order on. And nary a word was said.
Frigates were mainly anti-submarine ships, and they were treated better than most ships with respect to armament up-dates. On our first crossing, we had single four-inch guns fore and aft. Their muzzle velocity was so low that we could watch the shell fly through the air, and it didn’t §o too far. We had four twin Oerlikon anti-aircraft guns, and six depth-charge positions. As the war progressed, the armament improved, as did the submarine detection devices. We soon had twin four-inch guns fore and aft, which were far superior to the single fours. By the end of the war in Europe the frigate was also equipped with an armament called the “Hedge Hog,” which could fire a pattern of twenty-four ‘bombs over a suspected submarine. To do so, we had to slow down, almost to a dead stop. It kind of made you nervous in sub-infested waters. If a torpedo was sighted, you were a sitting duck.
Please don’t get the idea that the Canadian Navy was run by a gang of teenage drop-outs. Not so, but of our ship’s complement of about 100, half were in their teens or early twenties. Many of the officers were Merchant Marine types, as were the non-com Petty Officers. Most of these were experienced seamen, several from Newfoundland. Our Chief Petty Officer was like a high school principal, bemused by our antics, but responsible for our conduct and discipline. When all is said and done, ours was a happy ship. There were quite a few French Canadians on the ship, possibly because it was commissioned in Quebec City.
The only place I had heard the name “Clifford” before was on a radio program called One Man’s Family. There were seven Cliffords on this packet. We also had a stoker who was a Maori from New Zealand. When we did some “workups” in Bermuda, he loved to dive from the bridge into the sea. and we loved to watch him.
On occasion, generally at night, a freighter would be hit and the explosion would light up the sky. Our job was to immediately search for the sub or subs, for they were hunting in packs at that time in the war. “Action Stations” alarm would be sounded and all hands doubled immediately to their posts. My post was in the wheelhouse, ready to take the helm as required. Full speed ahead would be rung to the engine room, and the search was on. We had no time to think of rescue, which was the responsibility of other ships in the flotilla. As we homed in on ASDIC contacts, depth charges would be fired overboard. Other escort ships in the convoy would be doing the same, and at the very least, we would break up the “wolf pack.” T don’t recall ever losing two ships in any one convoy.
One day ASDIC had a solid fix on a large submergible that was deep but was quite still. We steered for it, and the duty officer sounded “Action Stations.” The ASDIC operator announced that the object was slowly rising, and the gun crew loaded and prepared for a possible surfacing. The Oerlikon gunners were ready to strafe. Finally it surfaced. It was a whale.
Another time we were doing a routine sweep ahead of the convoy, when the lookout sighted a lone freighter out of position from the convoy. The Group Commander ordered it by Aldis lamp signalling to identify itself, but there was no 1eply. The Commander sounded action stations, and the twin four-inch guns were readied and pointed towards the freighter. Again, they were requested to identify and again, silence. We were now alongside within hailing distance. Suddenly the sides of the freighter were lowered and we stared into a row of eight-inch guns. It was one of ours, a submarine decoy ship intended to lure U-boats to the surface for an expected solitary kill. From the bridge the Commander was heard to shout, “Secure guns, full speed ahead, and a jolly good day to you, Sir!”
I can recall a couple of times I got the wind up and wondered if we would survive. Once I was in the crow’s-nest in a pea soup fog. Radar was out, and I was to keep my eyes sharp for ships in the convoy. Suddenly this huge hulk of a ship was dead ahead of us. Before I could shout to the bridge, the Captain saw it t0o, and ordered the engine room “Hard aport, full astern port engine, full ahead starboard.” We missed. The Captain must have been eating raw carrots.
The next time was when we were in extremely rough seas. No man was assigned to the crow’s-nest as the waves were filling it with water. I was returning from the galley with the dinner for our mess, a slow arduous trip, trying not to drop the food, and at the same time, hang on to something so as not to be bashed against a bulkhead. T was navigating the stairway down to our mess when the ship gave a shattering heave and rolled to starboard, and seemed to stay there. Ilooked up ata roll indicator over the stairwell and it read 45 degrees. Would it come back or keep rolling? It came back. Please Lord, not again, once was enough!
It wasn’t always rosy in the garden. There were a few cranks on board and we generally steered clear of them if we could. One was a crabby cook, who seldom had a kind word for anyone. If the helmsman knew he was on duty in the galley then he would intentionally over-steer the vessel. “Port your helm 15 degrees,” says the Officer on Watch. “15 degrees to port, Sir.” He would steer hard aport to get the ship’s head moving quickly to port. He would then have to sieer to starboard quickly to get the ship to steady on a 15 degree tum. This method would cause the ship to roll even in a calm sea. The rolling would cause the pots and pans on cookie’s stove to careen back and forth. A couple of these manoeuvres and the voice from the bridge would shout, “What’s going on down there?” “Nothing Sir. I got it now Sir. Steady she goes Sir. Right on course Sir.” Sometimes the sport would get the Captain to the bridge. The silence in the wheelhouse then was deafening.
We were not without casualties. One hand slipped overboard and was drowned, and another got in the way of a depth charge as it left the launching pad. This latter incident brought home the meaning of the word toughness. Sailors were referred to as being tough. Ikmew I wasn’t, nor did I think most of my shipmates were, until this incident. There was to be an instant burial at sea, and all hands were to report on deck in their dress uniform. There were grumbles at this order; what was wrong with our action station garb? There would be a Burial At Sea church service. The toughness was a cover to hide our real emotions. Our tears for a buddy gone would come later and in private.
We were finally officially credited with the sinking of a sub off Ireland. This was awesome. The subs would sail into inland Irish waters, which were out of bounds tous! We out-waited them.
When the battle of the Atlantic was over, most of us re-signed for the war in the Pacific. Once again I picked up a ship right away. A Castle Class corvette; I forget its name. That fracas didn’t last long and I was home for Christmas 1945 and back in civvies in early 1946. No injuries, no scars, but a head full of ‘memories, mostly good and a few sad.