Presentation: Dad's Navy Days Part 9

Dad's Navy Days, 1941 - 1945

By G. A. Harrison

Landing craft in Grand Harbour, Valletta, Malta

Photo credit - Times of Malta

Introduction: The following post will be part of a Nov. 2016 presentation regarding my father's WW2 service with the RCNVR and Combined Operations organization.

Part 9 - Rest, Recuperation and Repair in Malta - August 1943

My father shares some of his memories about his time in Valletta, on the island of Malta, in his memoirs and Norwich Gazette articles. Details follow:

After approximately 27 days (in Sicily) I came down with severe chills and then got dysentery. I was shipped to Malta on the Ulster Monarch and an intern came around and handed me 26 pills. I inquired how many doses was that? “Just one,” he replied.

At Malta I was let loose on my own to find Hill 10 Hospital. I did after a while and they asked me my trouble. I said, “Dysentery.” “Oh, we’ll soon cure that,” they said. "How?" I asked. “We won’t give you anything to eat.” So for four days all I got was water and pills and soon I was cured, though weak. I thought of those poor devils in the desert.

When I felt better they sent me to a tent where I got regular meals. I saw an Air Force newspaper and on the front was a picture of Bob Alexander* of Norwich, a school chum. But Bob returned to the fray and was lost on one of his bombing missions. How sorry I was to hear that news. He had already done so much.

Soon all the boys returned to Malta and we prepared for Italy, though all our barges stayed in Sicily. We took a Landing Ship Tank (LST) back to Mili Marina, Sicily, and if memory serves me correctly, attacked Italy at Reggio di Calabria across Messina Straits on my birthday, September 6, 1943.

A signalman sends messages to an LCI (left) and LCT in Sicily

Photo credit - Imperial War Museum (IWM)

*Editor's note - More details about Bob Alexander are mentioned in a later Gazette article, below.  

*****

FOOD, SUSTENANCE AND MAIL WERE FOUND ON MALTA

At the end of the Sicilian campaign several Canadian sailors and officers became ill. Fatigue brought on by long hours of work and poor nourishment for over a month had now taken its toll and showed up in various ways. Salt water sores, rashes, sunburn, dysentery, things we hadn’t time to bother with before now began to manifest themselves.

Fear was now gone and the inaction caused many to have letdowns. Many had not relaxed for weeks and now that it was over they had difficulty handling it. Mail from home would have helped at a time like this; most of us hadn’t had mail since April and it was now the middle of August. I would have given my right arm for a cool drink of Norwich water and Sweet Caporal cigarettes from the Women’s War league. Parcels and letters were awaiting us in Malta and we were heading that way by landing craft and ship.

If we had a doctor I don’t recall one, but someone, possibly an officer, doled out quinine for malaria, as mosquitoes were really bad. Under the worst possible conditions we tried to keep clean; the only clothes we owned were on our backs and we weren’t to get more until our return to England sometime in October. Khaki shorts and shirts were our uniforms.

After being free from dysentery, I now felt its ravages. Luckily though, I went the 100 miles or so to Malta aboard a real old veteran ship named the Ulster Monarch. Whenever there was a campaign this old stalwart was there. None of us were basket cases and certainly enjoyed being flaked out in bunks on the Monarch. I remember the ship’s sick bay assistant (Tiffy) handing me a fistful of pills. I counted them and there were 16. I asked him how many doses they were and he answered, “One. What are you going to wash them down with... the deck hose?” We all laughed but I wish I hadn’t. 

In a few hours, with my orders from the ship’s doctor to report to Hill 10 Hospital, I climbed the cement steps in Valletta Harbour as best I could. Malta isn’t very large and by asking a few natives I found my way to the hospital, dragged right out.

Bighi Ex-Royal Navy Hospital, Valletta, Malta

Link to Photo Credit

I wandered in and reported my condition to one of the English orderlies. I’ll never forget how cheerful his reply was in that Godforsaken place. “Oh, we’ll soon cure that, Canada.” “Yeah? How?” I said. “We’ll starve you for a week.” (So, what else was new?)

Caption: Ill effects of dysentery and malnourishment were felt by many members

of Combined Operations. CPO Hugh Houston of London, Ontario walks (left) in

Victoria, B.C., and(right) stands in Valletta, Malta, after experiencing both in the

Italian campaign. Photo from St. Nazaire to Singapore, Volume 1, page 155

But I was in no condition to argue and for a few days I found out how severe dysentery can be, and hunger was no stranger to me, but after four or five days the staff relented and gave me a little boiled cabbage. Here was FOOD and SUSTENANCE and I suffered very few side affects. I was on my way, even my ribs looked better. After about 10 days I was given a clean bill of health and released to wander freely about Malta and wait for my comrades who were late coming from Sicily in landing craft.

I found a vacant array of Air Force tents to sleep in and was fortunate to scrounge some food from the natives. I thought I had it tough - but I couldn’t hold a candle to these folks. I investigated a bit of the catacombs where many slept and lived through the intense bombing raids - no wonder the island was awarded the George Cross.

I can’t remember the name of the service paper I found in the tent, but there before my eyes was a photo of a Norwich air force boy, Bob Alexander. The paper reported that Bob had completed 30 missions and had returned to Canada to become an instructor. It’s a small world. I carried that paper for a long while.

When my friends returned from Sicily in their landing craft, I was waiting for them at the bottom of the cement steps. Our commanding officer Lt/Comdr Koyl and a few hands disappeared for awhile and when they returned they were weighted down with kit bags of parcels and mail. The blues disappeared and quietness settled in as every one of us, in a different posture, chewed on an Oh Henry bar and read news from home. The war wasn’t so bad after all. We shared with anyone who hadn’t received a parcel; no one went hungry. We feasted on chocolate bars, cookies, canned goods and the news.

There were still about 250 of us - we hadn’t lost a soul, but one man had a terrible shrapnel wound in his arm. We conserved parcels for a rainy day and were dispersed to ships and tents to live for a few days while our stoker got the engines on each craft ready for the invasion of Italy. Of course, no one knew when that would be, but urgency was the order of the day and repair parts were non-existent. We toured the island of Malta and some sailed over to Gozo, another small island. We mingled with the inhabitants but generally we took the opportunity to get some rest and re-read mail. I saw a movie, and before the show the music consisted of western songs by Canada’s own Wilf Carter.

Although no one ventured a word, we all had Italy in the back of our minds. Before we got too settled in, we were throwing our hammocks aboard our landing craft again and heading for Sicily. Our flotillas beached at the mouth of a now dried up river bed at Mili Marina, then a few days in Catania harbor itself, where we had a good view of German low-level attacks on a British cruiser. At night we watched German planes try to take evasive action as they were caught in the searchlights which circled the harbor. During the day we could see the smoke from Mt. Etna.

At midnight on September 3, 1943 our Canadian landing craft flotilla, loaded once again with war machinery, left the beaches near Messina, Sicily and crossed the Messina Strait to Reggio Calabria in Italy. The invasion of Italy was underway.

*****

Clayton Marks of London contributes the following about the Canadians in Malta. From his book Combined Operations:

On August 5th operations ceased on the Sicilian beaches, and the two Flotillas (80th and 81st) returned to Malta. After a month of hard work under exceedingly difficult conditions the men were looking forward to a fourteen-day leave which had been promised them, always subject to "exigencies of the service". The news which greeted them on arrival in Malta was, first, that civilian dockworkers were on strike, and secondly, that their craft must be put in condition at once for a landing on the Italian mainland.

A Landing Craft, Mechanized (LCM) in use during Operation HUSKY 

Photo credit - Imperial War Museum (London) 

Twenty-four cranky LCMs, which had been overworked consistently for a month to land 40,959 men, 8,937 vehicles and 40,181 tons of stores, must at once be retuned to concert pitch by the equally over-worked men who had operated them. Complaints were loud, eloquent, sustained and unavailing, but once this routine gesture was over with, the Canadians manifested, as always, a peculiar zest for anything mechanical. At the end of two weeks, during which all the fit men of both Flotillas worked day and night, they announced to amazed dockyard authorities at Malta that their craft were ready to sail again.

Please link to Presentation: Dad's Navy Days Part 8 (2)

Unattributed Photos GH