It Stood Us All in Good Stead (5)

It Stood Us All in Good Stead

My father's lengthy response to a questionnaire distributed to WW2 veterans in the 1990s is very enlightening to someone like me, one who came late to showing an interest in his wartime experience. However, I read his words eagerly in December 2011 while compiling his Navy memoirs and stories into book form, a full year after I'd buried him at sea, so to speak. 

I learned more about Combined Operations. I learned more about my father.

Combined Ops Insignia: "United we conquer"

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A Combined Ops Questionnaire (2)

I would be remiss if I didn’t speak highly of my wife and the other Combined Operations (CO) wives that I have had the pleasure to meet. It seems CO was a sound choice and we carried that on over here and chose very good partners (again for the most part). It seems that they like family too. I am favoured to be in contact with many CO Ratings and know a few of their children, good children too.

[The children of two WW2 CO veterans play together in Burgessville, 1954.

L-R: Gord Harrison, David and Susie Rose (front), Lannie and Dale Harrison]

I don’t think volunteering for CO was different from General Services. It gave ratings a variety of things to do and even today, variety is the spice of life. I like challenges. I enjoy giving them a whirl. They are learning experiences. No need to be afraid, try, try again. We helped each other in so many different ways in CO and we were all different. I like the concept of helping one another, and I repeat, I saw a great deal of that in CO. Honesty as well. The old basic ways would help Canada out of many of her problems today, CO ways too. Yes, all for one and one for all. I would rather volunteer to give money to government than have it taken. We Ratings at times with no Officers around, governed ourselves and we did well too. We weren’t being ruled. The Canadian Ratings were a responsible group. I respect authority but I don’t have to like it. I feel I can conduct myself properly and in the face of it all CO Ratings did conduct themselves well in a world they knew damn little about for a long while.

["CO Ratings stayed near or on landing craft while training in England.
L-R: Don Linder, X, X, Doug Harrison (peeking out from behind),
Jim Malone, Don Westbrook". Photo Credit - Lloyd Evans, RCNVR] 

Tides, winds, currents, ropes, motors, oil, cold dark cramped quarters. We learnt in a hurry in CO and it stood us all in good stead for after the war. A strange foreign world and we made it work. The officers, like ourselves, must have seen the ratings growing as they gained experience. As Montgomery said about the Canadian soldiers, “It wasn’t a matter of how, just when.”

I remember in Sicily being under fed, working long hours but we just kept plugging. Golly, some of us had lovely rib cages! I would forget we were scared. Frank Herring’s constipation became less a problem as the days and nights wore on. I stole a shipment of rum consigned for the officers’ mess in the stoke hole of our American LCM. Some can sleep on an empty stomach but sleep with rum is automatic. We would wake up in the morning with our blankets covered with shrapnel. But the Cave was found and oh, the rum was soon gone. Next shipment please.

In Sicily the 80th Flotilla was like a bunch of barn banties. We scrounged for our lives - well no, we didn’t eat worms although I suspect some had them, and if they did, I don’t know how the hell worms survived on our rations. Things got better. We made Kuntz our cook. Pomadore and bully beef, bully beef and pomadori. I sure missed Norwich water to drink but I missed my Mother more.

The war, not Combined Ops, took away my simple pleasures which I missed horribly - my poultry, sports, car, flowers, garden. Would you call my girl friend a simple pleasure? But I got them all back in due course - even the poultry.

I never did and I never will like good-byes but I had to say good-bye to a lot of Combined Ops guys one way or another. But I will never forget them.

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[Lest we forget: Doug Harrison, front and centre (right). Circa 1980]

I find the above photo poignant for a couple of reasons. It speaks to my father's desire to remember his friends lost during WW2 and appreciate the efforts of all veterans, men and women, alive or dead. And it was while I was preparing a 'Remembrance Day' newspaper column in November 2011 that I came across his hand-written memoirs about his days in RCNVR and Combined Operations.

That day was momentous.

More to follow.

Please link to Faint Footsteps, WW2 (4)

Unattributed photos GH