Editor's Column: As Published in Norwich Gazette (6).

FAINT FOOTSTEPS, World War II

Sailors Work Hard, Play Hard in Scotland 

The Ettrick, used for Combined Ops training, at Inveraray, Scotland

Photo - As found at www.combinedops.com

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, says an old proverb. I’ve read that it means that “without time off work, people (e.g., young sailors!) become bored and boring.”

Canadian sailors training on landing craft at H.M.S. Quebec on Loch Fyne during World War II worked long hours - handling tides, currents, ropes and anchors until it became second nature. Then, for fun, some rolled in the heather, bent a few serious rules, and visited The George Hotel on Main Street in Inveraray, Scotland.

My father said, “Gambling in any form was not allowed in the navy for fear the losers might steal, but a friendly game of craps with pennies was going on one night when rounds were being made. Sailor Art Bradfield of Simcoe, the winner, couldn’t sweep the pennies under his hat fast enough and was caught and severely punished (i.e., confined to barracks).”

Those not confined hiked to ‘The George’, and played another friendly game that didn’t end so well for one poor fellow.

 'The George' still stands, front right. GH 2014.

“In our group was a seaman named William K.,” recalls Dad. “He also liked to go into Inveraray (have a beer or two, but) he was absolutely blind in the dark.”

Anthony Bouchard (Ontario) and Dad would take him on each side by the arm and when they spotted a bomb blast door (a wall of bricks to stop an explosion from travelling up closes or alleys) they would suddenly pull away from him and let him run headlong into the wall.

Doug Harrison writes: William would yell, “Where are you guys? I’ll murder you, ya bums.”

“You can’t murder us if you can’t find us, Willie,” we said. “When we had enough laughs we would go back to his side - he would forgive us because he would never get back to base otherwise - but we would get it in the morning.”

Wide beach - home to landing crafts, WW2 - extends south from Irvine to

Troon, Scotland. Camp Auchengate is inland from photo's midpoint.

Photo Credit - G.Harrison, 2014 

And in the morning all were back to work, unaware that within 2 - 3 months of those (almost) carefree episodes in the Scottish hills and hotels, many young Canadians would participate in an ill-fated raid. But first they boarded lorries and trains bound for their next training assignments at Camp Auchengate, situated just south of Irvine (on the coast of Ayrshire, a 50 km. drive southwest of Glasgow), with ample access to wide beaches and the open sea, where even bigger and better bash ups occurred.

“We practiced running our ALC up the stern of the Iris and Daffodil, i.e., train ferries,” Doug says. “Their sterns were nearly completely open, but with waves and a stiff wind blowing it was difficult to hit the opening.” (Like trying to park a truck inside a garage that is moving up, down, left, right, back, forth and sideways).

A13228. Lord Louis Mountbatten (Commander of Combined Operations, on right)

watching a landing exercise on the beach at the combined operations centre at

Dundonald Camp (adjacent to Auchengate). Here the men are making their

way out of sandbagged emplacements. Photo - Lt. S.J. Beadell, IWM

H11177. A landing craft containing a Valentine tank being launched down the

slipway of a landing ship (train ferry) during combined operations training on

Loch Fyne in Scotland, 27 June 1941. Photo - Major W.G. Horton, IWM. 

[P.M. Churchill is on left. See The Watery Maze, page 97; same photo?]

He then describes a day when conditions were terrible, yet expectations remained high.

“One day I just could not make it. I had a Seaman named Jake Jacobs and he said, ‘Let me see her. I’ll put her in there.’ He pulled the ALC back, poured the coal to her and crashed right into the stern of the Iris. There was Hell to pay.”

Fortunately, Dad escaped the incident without injury or a black mark on his record.

And Jake? In my father’s notes I read, “Jake Jacobs was a lead swinger of the first water and said he would make it back to Canada before any of us, and you know, he did. He wangled it somehow and after Auchengate I never saw him again.”

Without Jake at the wheel, Dad’s luck with landing crafts might have changed for the better - had King George VI not popped ‘round.

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Unattributed Photos GH