A NAVAL OFFICER'S WAR

In 1943 I left Pictou and took up a staff appointment ashore. This was a hard break; I had developed a close identity with the ship and genuinely loved her. But the time had come. I was a bit sea-weary and besides, I wanted some staff experience. My appointment was as one of two senior "escort officers" on the staff of Admiral Murray who had recently become Commander-in-Chief, Canadian North Atlantic in Halifax. We were responsible to his Staff Officer (Operations), Cdr. David Laidlaw.

This appointment was short-lived, not more than two or three months. It was not a very interesting appointment, most of the action being in the jurisdiction of the St. John's, Newfoundland command. I remember nothing of it except one amusing incident which is worth recording. One morning the Commander-in-Chief sent word to us that C-in-C The Nore, an RN full admiral, was on a visit to Halifax and wished to meet the senior staff. His name was Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax.

When the admiral came around, Murray introduced him by his full surname and we shook hands. We all had had some experience of British double-barrelled names. But on our staff was a US liaison officer from Chicago who had never in his life run into anything like this. So when he had been presented and returned to our midst, he could only mutter in a hoarse whisper, "God, they must have christened that guy with a hose."

One morning I was handed a signal from Naval Headquarters in Ottawa stating that I had been appointed to the staff of the Flag Officer, Newfoundland Force (FONF) as his Staff Officer (Operations) in my existing rank, Lieutenant-Commander. The present SO(O) was a particularly gallant destroyer captain, Lieutenant-Commander John Stubbs. As captain of HMCS Assiniboine, Stubbs had sunk a U-boat after a running battle on the surface; he would later be lost in Athabaskan. I felt honoured to succeed such a distinguished officer and was delighted to be going back to the naval front line of the Atlantic Battle.

I took service passage immediately to St. John's in a destroyer, and checked into the Newfoundland Hotel where I was to live for the next eighteen months. The newly appointed FONF was Commodore Cuthbert Robert Holland Taylor, a gruff disciplinarian whose stern and rather formidable appearance masked a great kindliness and humour. I was to become devoted to him and he consulted me over the months ahead on many questions unrelated to operations.

Taylor's style of humour was basic and naval. Some years after the war, when I was in Halifax on business, I went to call on him, by then a Rear-Admiral. He greeted me warmly, motioned me to a chair and pushed over a sliver cigarette box, saying in his grunting voice: "I always forget what it is you don't do, Griffin, fornicate or smoke!"

The job of SO(O) in a command as active and strategically important as Newfoundland was one of the best staff appointments below flag rank in the wartime navy, and I was lucky to get it. SO(O) reported directly to FONF on all operational matters, was responsible in his name for sailing the escorts for each convoy in the western section of the mid-ocean, and for directing their movements at sea-except of course, the actual conduct of escort duty.

It was rather like being captain of a ship at sea. There were four watchkeepers who kept regular watches and reported to me. I kept standard daylight hours but was on call continuously day and night, wherever I might be. This was often at dinner parties, the movie theatre, the tennis court, etc. Some of these outside calls could be dealt with over the telephone (in very guarded language, having always in mind the question of security), but most of them required me to go into operations. Calls in the middle of the night came through to my room at the hotel over a direct, secure line and full discussion was possible. In more serious cases, I spoke to the Commodore who, whatever the hour, became fully alert and very professional.

There was another section of the operation room which controlled a radar installation at the entrance to the harbour. The port of St. John's is a tiny entrance between high cliffs on a rock-bound coast and, without lights of any kind, is difficult to enter at any time, especially at night or in bad weather. Four Wren officers on my staff kept constant radar watch, and when one of our ships entering harbour requested bearings, the duty Wren would "vector" him into harbour.

I remember one filthy night the duty Wren called me urgently, telling me that a minesweeper was trying to enter and appeared to be less than a cable (200 yards) off the shore. I shouted to her, "Tell him to steer 200 degrees immediately," and leapt into my trousers. This girl undoubtedly saved the ship from a nasty stranding.

The operations room itself was a big underground space with a twenty-five foot ceiling. One wall was metal, painted over by a huge chart of the North Atlantic. On this chart were magnetized symbols of all convoys and escort groups, aircraft support units, individual ships of all kinds: troopships, mainly unescorted because of their speed, cable repair ships, known concentrations of U-boats and recent sinkings. Also showing were current weather conditions, transmitted by escorts from strategic ocean sectors. The symbols were moved every few hours by Wren watchkeepers. Opposite this wall in two adjoining, glassed-in rooms were my office and that of my RCAF equivalent, a Group Captain reported to the Air Vice Marshall. It was a combined headquarters in every operational sense.

The staff of FONF was well integrated and in close cooperation. It included a staff signal officer, Tommy Brainerd, a great friend, and officers in charge of cypher, meteorology, navigation, intelligence and extended defence (this last officer was responsible for close defence of the port of St. John's). All these categories had direct, daily contact with operations. The Commodore's secretary was Paymaster Commander David Cromarty, later a judge of the Ontario Supreme Court.

It was necessary to work closely with the flotilla command, Captain D and his staff, who were responsible for the availability and fighting capability of the escorts. When I arrived on the job, Captain D was Capt. E. A. Gibbs RN, a very gallant officer who held the DSO and three bars. He was succeeded shortly by Cdr. James Rowland DSO, RN. Rowland had been captain of HMS Wolverine in 1941 when she sank U47 commanded by Günther Prien. In the first few weeks of the war, Prien had achieved, with brilliant seamanship, the extraordinary feat of entering Scapa Flow and sinking the battleship Royal Oak.

I liked and had a high regard for the personal qualities of Jimmy Rowland. But he was not, in my opinion, a very effective Captain D. The member of his staff I always worked with best was Dick Murray, who served with me after the war in the Department of External Affairs, and later became managing director of the Hudson's Bay Company.

In late 1943 I was promoted to Acting Commander, while continuing to hold my current appointment. Every escort commander and almost all captains came into operations to see the overall picture and to discuss the proposed movements of their group or ship. Thus, over the months, I met all the fighting captains, both British and Canadian, and was able to keep in touch with technical and tactical developments by both German and Allied forces.

Most of the "flaps" seemed to occur in the middle of the night. A convoy, attacked by a wolf pack of U-boats in our area, often needed a tug to bring in a damaged freighter. I have happy memories of Tenacity, our gallant little admiralty tug based on St. John's. She was always ready, whatever the weather, and out the gate in miraculously quick time. I wish I could say the same for the Canadian tugs supplied under contract to us by the unionized Foundation Maritime. I often found myself pleading with them to sail in bad weather on a rescue mission. Sometimes it was necessary to bring an individual naval ship or even a whole escort group "to immediate notice for steam" and send them out as soon as ready, usually four hours.

One sad event, for which I am glad to say I was not responsible, was the sinking by our own forces of the huge Free French submarine La Perle on July 8, 1944, en-route to the UK following her refit in Philadelphia. I remember very clearly giving this submarine her sailing orders, going over carefully with the captain, navigator and my own navigating officer the route to be followed by La Perle, clear of all convoys and known concentration of U-boats. I also remember drafting the signal, with wide distribution to all concerned at sea and ashore, specifying the route and the "safe" corridor of twenty miles inside which ships were not to attack, as they normally would, any surfaced submarine on sighting, without identifying it.

La Perle left and proceeded without incident to the mid-ocean point, CHOP, where at an hour based on an agreed approximate position, operational control changed to C-in-C Western Approaches. Shortly after, I noticed that westbound convoy ONM.243 had been rerouted rather closer to La Perle than seemed wise. But we knew that there must have been a good tactical reason. Subsequently La Perle herself was given an alteration of course, presumably to take her clear of ONM.243.

Some hours later we picked up a signal from the escort of this convoy reporting a U-boat on the surface followed immediately by another which stated that aircraft from the convoy's escort carrier had attacked. I will never forget C-in-C Western Approaches' reply: "I fear you have attacked La Perle." She was sunk, with only one survivor out of her crew of sixty. Apart from the tragedy, this didn't help us with our often touchy relationship with the Free French. One lesson we learned was that convoys with carriers as part of their escort force, having a searching range of a hundred miles or more, should never be routed nearly as close to friendly submarines as those without such cover.

One morning my Air Force colleague handed me a signal from a Canso aircraft patrolling the northerly part of the Labrador Straits. The crew had sighted what appeared to be a minesweeper or trawler, flying the naval white ensign but behaving in a curious manner, not appearing to be on any set course or making any way. Men were waving from the deck but there was no response from signals by light and the aircraft had to abandon the investigation in order to refuel. Another aircraft was immediately sent out and reported similarly, adding only that the ship appeared to be out of command and the men on deck had tried to register what seemed to be distress.

I decided at once to send a ship and instructed the senior escort of a westbound convoy about to be relieved off Cape Race to detach one of his escorts to proceed "at best prudent speed" to investigate, and if necessary to tow the vessel to St. John's. About a day later a signal came from the investigating ship reporting an extraordinary situation. The distressed vessel was an RN naval trawler (smaller than a corvette or minesweeper) which, three months earlier, had been escorting a small convoy between the north of Scotland and Iceland. The convoy had been struck by a very severe storm and had become scattered. The trawler had run out of fuel (obviously a failure to top up before leaving). She had drifted, unbelievably, all the way around to the west-across the Strait of Denmark, past the foot of Greenland into the Davis Strait and south in the Labrador Current.

She had no fuel; therefore no power, no electricity, no radio, no heat, no cooking. The Admiralty had to assume that the ship had foundered in the storm and next of kin had been informed "missing, presumed lost." I met the ship when she arrived under tow at the jetty. The men, all heavily bearded, were in surprisingly good shape, though far from overweight! Every naval ship carried ninety days' dry provisions and this had been strictly rationed. Water was restricted to drinking only and all the wood furniture had been broken up for firewood. They also knew where they were, taking regular sights, and seeing several aircraft, but had never sighted a single ship.

This incident impressed me for two reasons. The first confirmed in my mind the unimaginable immensity of the oceans, in which a ship could disappear completely for such a long period. It also showed the strength of the instinct for survival combined with ever-sustained discipline, morale and hope.

On one occasion I had a call from the Extended Defence Officer (XDO) reporting that the clapper on the bell-buoy off Cape Spear was missing. The weather was bad and an escort group was expected. XDO was an experienced RCNR hand and he said bell-clappers were welded to the mainframe; they simply could not come adrift and he suspected sabotage. I told him I would warn the incoming group about the buoy and asked him to repair the damage at once.

At about the same time, I sailed an RN corvette, HMS Gentian, from St. John's to escort SS Kelmscott, a merchant ship owned by Bowaters Pulp and Paper, to join an eastbound convoy off Cape Spear. Kelmscott was torpedoed about ten miles off Cape Spear. She did not sink but was towed back to St. John's by a minesweeper on passage from Halifax. Some weeks later, U845 was sunk by a mixed RN/RCN escort group and prisoners were taken. In the interrogation it was disclosed that the U-boat had been operating off the Nova Scotian coast and had surfaced close to Sydney. Some of the crew had gone ashore to the movies and ticket stubs were found on some of the men!

In due course the U-boat had headed eastward and arrived off St. John's. A debate took place on whether to try to enter the harbour but the captain was adamantly negative, assuming (rightly) that the narrow entrance was protected by controlled mining. He also declined to "lob a few shells into the town" stating that this would serve little purpose. It was clear that this crew were an adventurous, skylarking lot who wanted to get some money's worth out of their uncomfortable form of cruising!

The next item on their agenda was Cape Spear off the harbour of St. John's. Somebody had suggested cutting the whole buoy adrift; but they settled for taking along the clapper as a souvenir, and this was accomplished under cover of darkness. In doing so however, the U-boat went solidly aground on Old Harry Rock. Several attempts were made to get her off, but it became increasingly clear that the chances were no better than even. Opinion was expressed forcefully that the boat must be blown up to avoid capture (U-boats were told in unmistakable terms to do anything to avoid it). The captain violently rejected this and the argument became so heated that, in a typically Teutonic gesture, he pulled his revolver. He finally had his way and a superhuman effort got her off.

As a reward for their efforts, a merchant ship appeared and was soon in the captain's sights. It was Kelmscott. Five torpedoes were fired of which two found their mark. U845 assumed that Kelmscott had sunk and withdrew, later to be sighted and attacked by a Liberator bomber and, as mentioned, subsequently sunk.

To be continued…

"The Assurance-class rescue tug HMS ALLEGIANCE, of the same class as HMS TENACITY. These tugs displaced 700 tons and were armed with a single 12-pdr. AA and two .303 in. machine guns (2x1). The key role played by these small ships in the Battle of the Atlantic is often overlooked."

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episode 2
episode 3
episode 4
episode 5

(Originally Published in Vol. VII, No. 11, Summer 2000 issue of Starshell)