Story Time: Bury Me At Sea (3)

“Bury Me At Sea”: A Father’s Final Voyage

A WW2 Navy veteran’s request becomes a son’s great adventure

My mother and father both got their wish... eventually. Photo GH

Part 2 of their story concluded as follows:

Most of the pressures I felt on November 26 paled in comparison to what I thought lay ahead during discussions with my father.

Fortunately, while anxious thoughts filled my mind I received two gifts that brought some relief.

* * * * *

The first was the gift of time, and it could not have come at a better one. Because the ground at the cemetery was frozen the interment of mother’s ashes would occur in the spring, so I had three to four months in which to talk things over with my father.

The time was used with benefit in a variety of other ways. My brother, sisters and I had time to plan a wake in the comfortable setting of our family home in Norwich, during which my mother was remembered in conversation, stories and song by all, including many thoughtful friends. (At no time did anyone mention they really missed the opportunity to stand out on the frozen tundra to say a final goodbye to my mother while facing into a biting Canadian wind). My brother had time to search for and find a ceramic orb for our mother’s ashes, and I had time to find a wooden box - formerly for someone’s 78 rpm record collection - and velvet bag, into which the orb would be placed and later lowered into the ground.

The other gift was that of sound advice. A neighbour in London and the best of friends during the best and worst of times, heard about my plight and responded with a few very helpful ideas. He felt it would be worth mentioning to my father that a burial at sea offers surviving family members no place to go to visit and remember ‘the dearly departed,’ e.g., at significant dates during the year, like on a birthday or Father’s Day. On the other hand, a grave site in or on the outskirts of mother and father’s hometown, and a suitable gravestone upon which both parent’s names are inscribed, provides a definite place for sons and daughters and other family members to visit and think good thoughts.

After doing a bit of research I found I could bury father at sea by going aboard a Canadian Navy vessel (e.g., HMCS Sackville, Halifax) at a prescribed time or by mailing cremated remains to a certain pastor with connections to the military, and that a detailed map is provided with the exact location of burial in Halifax Harbour, but I felt the map would not provide the same type of connection to my father - once dead and buried - as an actual site in our long-standing hometown.

Armed with such options and ideas, I slowly nudged my father to think about what he felt the best course of action would be as we considered our shopping list of future responsibilities, i.e., purchasing and preparing a grave site along with a fitting gravestone before the spring thaw.

Fortunately, we both liked big cups of hot coffee and long car rides in the country together. So, on (just about) every Saturday during the winter of 2000 and spring of 2001, I’d pick him up at the front door of London’s Parkwood Hospital (he moved there shortly after mother’s death) and we travelled up this country road and down that one - "just following our noses," my father would say - and when the time felt right, I’d ask, ‘slow and easy,’ like a man who had about four years to decide and not four months, what he thought about this option, i.e., a single grave site for mom; or that one, a double for both of them. Or this one, i.e., a grave site on Quaker Street (north-west of his hometown); or that one, in a harbour near Halifax.

SS Silver Walnut under construction. Details to follow. Photo GH

“No pressure,” I’d say. “Take time to think and I’ll see you same time next Saturday.”

I kept my siblings informed about our progress by email and only by studying them closely could anyone discern whether I was both inwardly and outwardly calm at the same time. But I say now that the discussions with my father didn’t result in an ulcer like I thought it would. (It could be true I have, at times, an overactive imagination).

As weeks went by and a long list of winding roads in Middlesex, Elgin and Oxford counties became more familiar to us both, we not only got closer to final answers but grew closer as father and son. At the beginning of our travels together a medium coffee was all we had time to drink before I dropped him back at Parkwood, and I was sometimes hesitant to get to the point of the matter. As spring approached only a large coffee would satisfy our needs (and sometimes we’d stop at a small town along the way and pick up refills), and it seemed we both approached issues together more confidently. Talks about mother were not only getting somewhere but doing us both some good.

Finally, the day arrived, not by accident but by some small surprise, when just thinking about things had to come to an end and final decisions had to be placed upon the table. And I found I had little trouble turning to him after we’d taken a second look at gravestones in Norwich and asking the question: What do you think you’ll do?

Happy times during their younger years in Burgessville. circa 1953

I recall driving father to Long Point on a pleasant Saturday afternoon and while cruising at about 70 kilometres per hour on a dirt road outside Walsingham I spotted his favourite birds - bluebirds - flying from fence lines and telephone wires to a nearby and freshly plowed field.

I slowed the car and pointed toward the activity. “There’s your bluebirds,” I said.

“I think you’re right,” he said. “I can’t see them very well ‘cause of my eyes but I know how they move. I’m counting on you to spot them now.”

Within five minutes I slowed again and stopped at the side of a large open field.

“I think an owl is coming this way, being chased by crows,” I said.

The pack was about a half kilometre away and as if on cue, the one large bird and its many pursuers headed right toward us. As they approached the car, flying about 5 - 10 metres above the bare field, I could see the large bird was not an owl and was bigger than any winged creature I’d seen in the past.

Once I recognized it I said, “Crying out loud, it’s a bald-headed eagle.”

The eagle and smaller black birds seemed to be heading right toward the windshield of my car. They cleared the fence line and were instantly upon us, but instead of scooping us up with his mighty talons, the bald eagle flew across the road and over another bare field, being harassed all the way by a score of sworn enemies darting this way and that. We sat silently for several seconds, craning our necks to see the birds disappear into the distance.

I took a breath. “Wow. That was something.”

My father said, “I’ll say. I’ve never seen a bald eagle as close up as that.”

I recall that day often. It was a good day for my father and I. The toughest decision we had to make was which back roads to take and whether we wanted a second cup of coffee or dough-nuts with that. Not all rides together were as sweet.

"It was a good day for my father and I." circa 1980s

One day, as spring approached in 2001, I felt my father’s decision, to be buried at sea or beside his wife Edith in Norwich, had to be made, not in a hurried fashion, but at least before the frost left the ground at the cemetery on Quaker Street. My thinking was, once the frost was gone my family could get together and inter our mother.

Father and I had looked at grave sites and stones (singles and doubles) on more than one occasion by then, likely knew more about kinds of fonts and their sizes than we cared to know, so while sipping coffee in my car and following our noses along some country road I turned to him and said, “What do you think you’ll do?”

“I’m going to think about it some more,” he said. And he didn’t go into detail.

I likely said something along the lines of ‘no hurry, no worry, Dad. We’ve got lots of time’, because I didn’t want to rock his boat or seem impatient. I feel that was the best move I could have made at the time, even though I didn’t know then what I know now about how important his days in the Navy were to him.

Today, I would say the following about his idea to be buried at sea: It was related to the most significant, life-changing years or events in his life.

The where, when and why related to his idea or desire I will never fully know or understand. For example, he may have been relaxing on a Vancouver Island beach (at HMCS Givenchy III, a Combined Operations training school or base on a spit of land outside the town of Comox, B.C.) between training sessions in 1944 or ’45, when the light bulb turned on in his mind. He may have been at a Navy reunion in the 1960s or ‘70s and talking to buddies from RCNVR and Combined Operations. He may have been writing his Naval memoirs at his home in Norwich in 1975.

Gun-toting guard on duty at Comox. Photo 1944 - 45

Relaxing (centre) on the beach, HMCS Givenchy III, Comox.

Photos from the collection of Doug Harrison,  1944 - 45

Whenever or wherever the idea was born, it was kept alive for many years because ‘all things Navy’ were never far from his mind. Not only did my father write 40 pages of memoirs but he wrote many stories about his experiences in Europe (e.g., re Combined Ops training in northern Scotland and southern England) and during three major Allied invasions or D-Days, i.e., in North Africa, Sicily and Italy, in 1942 and ’43. These stories he contributed to his local paper, The Norwich Gazette, and to three books about Canada’s role in Combined Operations that were published in the early 1990s. As well, my father and mother attended several Navy reunions and often spent weekends with couples that shared common Navy bonds with father.

Until 2010, the year I carted some of my father’s ashes to Halifax, I was blissfully unaware of most details related to his Navy background. In fact, I believed at that time he had been a member of the Merchant Marine and spent his time in ships ferrying supplies across the Atlantic Ocean to England, and I knew almost nothing about Combined Operations and the landing crafts used to drop troops and all the materiel of war upon foreign beaches, often in the thick of extremely hazardous conditions.

There is a reason for my ignorance: My father and I didn’t talk about such things. And I didn’t read many of his scores of newspaper columns.

Photo of a dated photograph from The London Free Press by GH

Today, eleven years after his death, we seem very close (at least in my mind) and I am aware we have very much in common. When he was alive, however, we kept very busy with our own lives, including our homes, hobbies, sports and hundreds of other activities, and very seldom shared serious conversations about important matters. Such is life, my father would say.

About my ‘no worry, no hurry, Dad’ attitude in 2001, I say I got lucky.

As well, I say my mother’s death broke the history of silence between us and helped make the impossible possible.

"Yup. Sometimes things work out pretty good."

(But don't get too cocky) GH

More to follow.

Please click here to read Bury Me At Sea (2)

Unattributed Photos GH

Story Time: Bury Me At Sea (2)

"Bury Me At Sea": A Father's Final Voyage

A WW2 Navy veteran's request becomes a son's great adventure

Previously from...

The Bombshell and the Pain

I was then about twenty years older and still didn’t have a good, concrete suggestion or idea concerning how my parents could each have their final wishes related to burial satisfactorily fulfilled. However, with the aid of my youngest sister Jane and younger brother Kim, I began to walk my father through the initial steps of my mother’s burial arrangements, and later, armed with advice from a good friend about how to deal with my father’s wishes, I felt the entire matter could be resolved fairly easily.

And, yes, the matter was eventually resolved, far better than satisfactorily. Each parent received the burial they desired and deserved.

Fulfilling their conflicting wishes, however, turned out to be much more complicated and harder work than I imagined and would lead me to stand one day about ten years later, very tired and quite alone, on a slippery shelf of rock beside the Atlantic Ocean with a wooden boat full of ashes in my hands.

(You missed Part 1? Please click here to view the first instalment of "Bury Me At Sea."

* * * * *

Mother’s Death Breaks the Silence

Sunday, November 19, 2000 -

I visited my mother at Versa Care, an ‘old age home’ outside of London. I was accompanied by my older son David and his son Jackson. Jack was only about two years old at the time and will not likely recall the uncomfortable scene.

My mother was almost totally uncommunicative because of Parkinson’s Disease, dressed in her well-worn burgandy housecoat and pajamas, and I lifted her head and shoulders carefully so she could see Jack in David’s arms. She was quite stiff and I don’t think she recognized any of us.

I recall her shared room was quite small, didn’t smell the best, and had a window to surrounding barren fields. My mother was in her last days and we didn’t stay very long.

Sunday, November 26, 2000 - 

I went for an early morning run with friends and afterward stretched and cooled off outside the Running Room store located at the corner of Richmond and Hyman streets in London. A Running Room staff member exitted the store and unexpectedly spoke to me.

“Your wife called and left a message. You’re supposed to call home.”

So I called home, suspecting all was not well. My wife Pat gently told me my mother had died. My demeanour changed during the few minutes I spent speaking to Pat and a friend asked if I was okay as I walked toward my car.

“My mother died while I was out running,” I said, without stopping. And I was soon home.

It’s true, the best laid plans can go awry. My mother died on the day I’d planned to take my father to see her for the first time at Versa Care. He wanted to see her and I know she would have wanted to see him, because during their last visit together, at Trillium Retirement Home (mother’s last place of residence) in their hometown of Norwich, they had been very happy to see and visit with one another. Their conversation had been close, heart-felt and - to a degree - animated, and when it came time to go my mother declared she wanted Doug to stay longer.

“Don’t leave me,” she said.

My parents' wedding picture circa February, 1946

But there was nothing to do but go.

And on November 26, instead of taking my father to see his wife I visited him with tragic news.

Once home from the Running Room I asked siblings who lived nearby - and already alerted that our mother had died - to join me in the trip to my father’s small room at London’s Psychiatric Hospital on Highbury Avenue.

Before I visited my father, however, my brother Kim Douglas and I drove to Versa Care to see our mother for one last quiet visit. The two hours that passed there were likely full of dramatic weight from front to back but I can only recall four things.

First, my brother and I had to wait to see our mother’s body and have it released to a funeral home because a coroner had to see her before we did. Because mother was the third person to die at Versa Care during the week, her death had to be investigated. I doubted anything suspicious had happened. Parkinson’s had done its job. But I minded what seemed like a very long wait, and all the while I felt helpless, and out of sorts.

Second, when I had a private minute or two beside my mother’s bed, I stroked her arms as I’d done when she was alive but drifting away, and noticed her arms and hands looked in many ways like mine. We were indeed mother and son.

Third, when I lifted her in my arms and placed her upon a waiting gurney I realized how light and frail she had become. Surely she weighed less than ninety pounds.

Finally, I watched intently as the back door of a waiting hearse closed and she was taken away. As the car turned onto the county road I felt I’d seen my mother for the last time.

(I didn’t know at the time, but family members would be given the opportunity to see her momentarily just hours before she was cremated.)

The next thing I recall about the day's events is the walk my sister, brother and I shared in the hallway leading toward my father’s room at London Psychiatric Hospital on Highbury Avenue. We were dressed in our Sunday clothes and I was anxiously wondering what to say and how my father would respond.

But I needn’t have worried. He was braced for bad tidings. He was aware we were going to deliver serious news before we even reached his door.

“I could hear your leather shoes and the way you walked coming down the hall,” he said. And together we mourned our shared loss.

The countless remaining events of that day in November, 2000, are nothing more than a blur. I spent hours tracking down the whereabouts of an older sister and dealing with an all-knowing uncle and controlling aunt. I welcomed an array of guests to our home, fielded numerous phone calls and attempted to sort out many inevitable and pressing details. On more than one occasion I felt overwhelmed and recall snapping at a brother-in-law who just offered a small bit of advice.

However, later that day and through the next week my family (including our marriage partners) can be described as supportive and helpful. Together we made many necessary arrangements concerning the preparation of Edith’s obituary, her cremation, and a family gathering or wake in the family home according to her wishes. Without incident we assembled to read and act upon her last will and testament.

That being said, at some point, perhaps in early to mid-December, I realized storm clouds were very likely upon the horizon. Burial plans would have to be made, a grave site purchased, a grave stone engraved, and I recalled my mother didn’t want to be buried alone. About that she had been adamant. 

As well, my father still wanted to be buried at sea, as he had wished and vividly expressed twenty years earlier.

Most of the pressures I felt on November 26 paled in comparison to what I thought lay ahead during discussions with my father.

Fortunately, while anxious thoughts filled my mind I received two gifts that brought some relief.

The Italy Star, one of a few among my father's WWII medals

More to follow.

Edith and Doug, an early Christmas together circa 1953

Please click here to read Bury Me At Sea (1)

Unattributed Photos GH

Story Time: Bury Me At Sea (1)

Bury Me At Sea: A Father’s Final Voyage

A WW2 Navy veteran’s request becomes a son’s great adventure

Staff photo from The Brantford Expositor, Dec. 1943

Introduction: 

I have composed a few stories while organizing material for my blog "1,000 Men, 1,000 Stories: Canadians in Combined Operations" beginning in February, 2015. I describe the stories as "written along the way" as I grew more interested in research related to my father's 'Navy days.' He was a proud WWII veteran of not only the RCNVR but of Combined Operations from June, 1941 to September, 1945, one of about 950 - 1,000 Canadian sailors to initially volunteer for the unknown. Thus the blog and a goodly number of stories of my own, to help myself and others get from the unknown to the known. Curious, I say.

Preface:

“It would cost a small fortune today to retrace the places I

had been to and seen under the White Ensign.” (1941 - 45)

Leading Seaman Coxswain - Gordon Douglas Harrison

“I can afford to retrace the miles I travelled to bury my

father at sea in 2010. But I don’t know if I possess the

strength and determination to find the exact spot on

Pennant Point, south-east of Halifax, N.S.” (2104)

Son of a Leading Seaman Cox'n - Gord Harrison

Bury Me At Sea (1)

The Bombshell and the Pain

The Navy was in my father’s blood and when he spoke his mind, on a Sunday afternoon during the early 1980s, about wanting to be buried at sea, his voice rang with surprising intensity and passion. His plea was made forty years after his service with the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve (RCNVR) had ended, and produced the same shocking result inside my parents' house in Norwich, Ontario as a firecracker thrown into a crowded elevator.

My mother spoke next from her seat at the dining room table with equal intensity and passion. I can hear her voice to this day.

“What is going to happen to me?” she said. “Am I going to be buried alone? I want to be buried with my husband, not alone.”

The expression on her face was pained and riveting. “Husbands and wives are supposed to be buried together,” she said.

Uncomfortable silence reigned momentarily. My wife Pat and I looked back and forth at one another a few times, eyes as big as saucers, and expertly glanced out the nearest windows, in search of our two sons (they had earlier run across the street to play at a school yard), while wondering how to respond to what my parents had just said.

My father likely didn’t realize he was only adding fuel to the fire when he stood, collected a postcard from a nearby shelf and gave it to me with some explanation. I looked for the first time at a now well-known photograph of the statue of a Canadian sailor that stands outside The Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, a city to which he had travelled (I learned later) in 1941 to continue his training, begun a few months earlier in Hamilton, with the RCNVR. Seeing the photo helped me understand my father was doing a bit of thinking about his past connection with the Navy, but it certainly was not a salve to the wound he’d opened in the heart of my mother, his wife of forty years.

Statue at base of Sackville St., Halifax: More details here

I cannot recall one word I added to the ensuing, prickly discussion, but during the drive home I expressed the feeling to my wife that I was supportive of both parents because I loved them equally and wanted each to have their final wishes fulfilled. I also cannot recall having even one sensible idea concerning how the conflict between my parents could be resolved.

Within the year, I believe, my mother tried to deal with her seemingly imposed lot by pursuing a plan to be buried at her mother's grave site, situated in the Norwich Cemetery, about six blocks from my parents' house, but the idea was rebuffed by at least one of her three brothers. Whether my parents ever got closer to resolving the issue together, I do not know. I didn't often think heavily about the day of my father's bombshell and mother's pain in the ensuing years but was forced to revisit the issue shortly after my mother died on the morning of November 26, 2000.

I was then about twenty years older and still didn’t have a good, concrete suggestion or idea concerning how my parents could each have their final wishes related to burial satisfactorily fulfilled. However, with the aid of my youngest sister Jane and younger brother Kim I began to walk my father through the initial steps of my mother's burial arrangements, and later, armed with advice from a good friend about how to deal with my father's wishes, I felt the entire matter could be resolved fairly easily.

And, yes, the matter was eventually resolved, far better than satisfactorily. Each parent received the burial they desired and deserved.

Fulfilling their conflicting wishes, however, turned out to be much more complicated and harder work than I imagined and would lead me to stand one day about ten years later, very tired and quite alone, on a slippery shelf of rock beside the Atlantic Ocean with a wooden boat full of ashes in my hands.

More to follow in this short but mighty story.

My parents did occasionally put their heads together

My parents' grave stone in Norwich, Ontario

I did bury my father at sea on a Sunday in June, 2010

Now older and wiser than in the 1980s? GH

Please click here to link to Gord's Journal: "Buried my father at sea"

Unattributed Photos GH

Story Time: The Invasion of Sicily and Italy, 1943 (2)

Canadians in Combined Operations Move into 'The Savoy'

"Tremendous Bonfire in the East... HMHS Talamba was Gone"

HMHS Talamba (His Majesty's Hospital Ship) Sailing into harbour. 

Location not known. © Imperial War Museum (IWM) E 240348

Introduction:

In looking for online photographs of HMHS Talamba I discovered a bit of controversy surrounding the number of hospital staff and wounded soldiers that were killed during the bombing of the ship when it was stationed off the east coast of Sicily on July 10th (or was it the 11th!?) near HOW and GEORGE sectors (or beaches) served by the Canadian 80th and 81st Flotillas of Landing Craft.

My father, Doug Harrison (RCNVR/Combined Operations) was among those sailors onshore the night it was hit by German bombers and he mentions a few details in the video that follows.

Please link to Story Time, WWII (2) as found on YouTube.

About the sinking of HMHS Talamba: 

Wikipedia shares the following - During the amphibious invasion of Sicily, she was attacked twice by the Italian Regia Aeronautica and German Luftwaffe. A bomb fell into her engine room which caused an explosion that killed 5 of her crew but all 400 wounded were evacuated to safety. HMHS Talamba, sank off Syracuse on 10 July 1943.[2] Link - Wikipedia

That only 5 of her crew were killed is not supported by a few sources in my possession, stories by Canadian WWII veterans of RCNVR and Combined Operations (British organization).

An article "written by Stan Fernando, a Junior Engineer from Sri Lanka (Ceylon as known then), who was serving on S.S. Talamba at the time when disaster struck" reveals that many more than 5 lost their lives and goes on to suggest why such a low number was given. Readers may find the comment thread under Stan Fernando's story interesting and informative as well. 

The maps below provide details about the location of HMHS Talamba at the time of its arrival on July 10, 1943:

The above modern day map features the town of Fontane Bianche (upper right) approx. 5 - 6 km. south of Syracusa. The one kilometre long beach ('C' shaped) was designated as George Beach during Operation Husky and the Canadian 80th Flotilla of Landing Crafts (LCMs - landing craft, mechanised) transported all materials of war to three designated areas (Red, Amber, Green) on GEORGE. My father made a cave his home near the kilometer-long beach for 2 - 3 weeks, 80 years ago. He referred to it as "The Savoy."

Please note the city of Gallina in the lower left section of the above map. It was one of the three designated areas of HOW Sector (or beaches) to which the 81st Flotilla of Landing Crafts transported goods beginning July 10. More details below.

Map found in WWII Canadian veteran's story re the invasion of Sicily.

(Email Gord H. for a link to St. Nazaire to Singapore, Volume 1)

The Red and Amber sections of HOW Sector is where Gallina is today.

(The cities of Noto and Avola are misplaced, and are 5 - 6 km south).

My father made a short reference to the hospital ship in his story:

We had a hospital ship with us named the Alatambra (sic: Talamba) with many nurses and doctors aboard. She came in to about three miles in daytime and went out to seven miles and lighted up like a city at night. No one was to bomb a hospital ship and for days on end we took the wounded out to her, many being glider pilots with purple berets. Never a sound out of them, no matter how badly they were hurt. Mostly Scotch soldiers.

One night we saw what appeared to be a tremendous bonfire in the east, offshore a long way out. In the morning, the Alatambra was gone, nursing sisters, doctors, wounded and all. Seven hundred and ninety were killed or drowned. The Germans had either bombed or torpedoed her that night. So goes war. Page 33, "Dad, Well Done"

Admittedly, I have no idea where my father came up with the figure, "seven hundred and ninety were killed or drowned." There would have been lots of talk amongst the crews of the 80th and 81st Flotillas, because they were doing the transport of the 'sets of survivors', but unless somebody was keeping a list and checking it twice...

That being said, a higher number than five casualties is certainly suggested in a file of Lt. Cmdr J. E. Koyl (RCNVR/Combined Ops:

It was with great relief that the troopers who had landed the assault forces were sailed away. There was still a tempting assemblage of shipping off the beaches, perhaps fifty vessels, and the stores they carried were vital to the operation of the 8th Army now advancing towards Syracuse.

The exact scene Koyl describes above may be depicted in the photo below:

Liners right inshore, 4 miles south of Syracuse unloading troops
and landing craft. Photo - Roper, F G (Lt) © IWM A 18090

Koyl continues:

At 1530 the first serious air raid took place but a number of dive bombers and medium bombers achieved no success with attacks which were directed mainly against transports.

From then on the blitz continued throughout the night and at frequent intervals during the next 48 hours. Although the bombing attacks were so numerous, there were never many aircraft in any one attack - about thirty aircraft, mostly German, in the heaviest raids on "HOW" sector - and the raids were surprisingly unsuccessful. Not until the evening of the 11th was any ship sunk or severely damaged. Then, in a dusk attack, dive bombers selected a hospital ship lying lit up some distance to seaward of its transport anchorage and sunk her in twenty minutes. According to a record kept by a stoker of the 81st Flotilla, there were twenty-three raids on "HOW" and "GEORGE" sectors in the first three days.

The hospital ship sunk at dusk on the 11th was the "TALAMBA", to which Lieut. "Koyl" had taken casualties from the LST. It was a grim business for him and his Flotilla to search the wreckage for survivors during the night. Sub Lt. Barclay of the 80th took a prominent part in this work and describes the great difficulties of transferring wounded men from an LCM to the cruiser, H.M.S. "UGANDA", in the heavy swell that was running. Stretchers were improvised and the "UGANDA'S" aircraft derrick used for hoisting them inboard. Although a large number of the wounded were saved, most of the medical and nursing staff went down with their ship - a tribute to their heroism and devotion to duty.

Page 177 - 178, Combined Operations by Londoner Clayton Marks RCNVR/Comb.Ops

From the same book re the role of Canadians in Combined Operations, we read the following from a LCM Flotilla Engineer Officer, including casualty reports re Talamba:

In the twenty-eight days we spent there (Sicily) I only saw three ships sunk. This figure excludes a hospital ship which was deliberately lit up by flares and dive-bombed until it sunk with considerable loss of life.

It was in the second air attack on 'D' day (D-day Sicily, July 10, 1943) that our Flotilla Officer Jake Koyl and his crew narrowly escaped annihilation. Jake had just beached his boat and was engaged in off-loading the vehicle it carried when a dive-bomber attacked the beach. An LCT was unloading a few yards to port and an LST only a few yards to starboard. The bombs dropped so close to Jake's LCM that the blast carried right over their heads, but completely wiped the bridge of the LST and killed the entire personnel on the LCT, with the exception of one Officer, who was very badly shrapnelled and burned.

In a shorter time than it takes to tell, Jake and his boys had their craft off the beach and rushed to pick up injured from the two unfortunate large craft. This occupied them for the remainder of the afternoon and it was to the hospital ship I have already referred to that the wounded were taken.

That night she (i.e., Talamba) was sunk and the next morning Jake had the gruesome business of taking what few survivors that were still alive from the two instances (i.e., the sinking of the two troop ships and the later sinking of the Talamba) to another hospital ship. My one and only hope is the crews of the enemy planes that sank the hospital ship stink in the hubs of hell forever and ever! Or should I rather bring my curses onto the heads of those who are responsible for the training of human robots to do such damn brutal and down right cowardly deeds! But all the cursing (it will likely be censored) in the world won't bring back those lads who were twice battered in battle, nor the Sisters, nurses and doctors who lost their lives from such treachery.

Page 95, Combined Operations by Londoner Clayton Marks RCNVR/Comb.Ops

My trip to Sicily approaches but there will be a few more items to follow before readers are bombarded with a few 100 photos of GEORGE Beach, near which the sinking of HMHS Talamba took place 80 years ago.

Please click here to view Story Time: The Invasion of Sicily (1)

Unattributed Photos GH

Story Time: The Invasion of Sicily and Italy, 1943 (1)

Operation HUSKY: "This Was to be Our Worst Invasion Yet"

"Utter Death and Carnage," on the Beaches of Sicily

Happier times, as five members of RCNVR and Combined Operations

prepare to board a train for the West Coast of Canada, December 1943

Introduction:

After the invasion of North Africa, Operation TORCH (beginning November 8, 1942), Canadian sailors in Combined Operations who were involved - delivering troops and all materials of war to shore - returned to the United Kingdom, likely for a well-deserved leave before returning to various Royal Navy and/or Combined Operations training centres. Moves to this camp or that camp were so numerous many sailors could not keep track of all the locations they visited. New Landing crafts were being developed and the growing number of recruits needed to keep up-to-date.

In the spring of 1943, the next Allied operation - during which many Canadians in Combined Ops spent three months in the Mediterranean - was on the horizon.

My father writes: 

Back to England I went for more training in May, 1943 with barges aboard the S.S. Silver Walnut, a real dud. We formed up and headed to sea again, this time from Liverpool. We didn’t know but Sicily was next. ("Dad, Well Done" page 27)

I get the impression from his memoirs that he spent time at HMS Weymouth (near Southend-on-Sea, east of London on the River Thames) after Operation TORCH, but there are a few stories about being in Scotland as well. When he arrived in Liverpool with landing craft aboard the Walnut he likely thought "more training lies ahead. What camp will we visit next?" 

How about Sicily? And on such a troubled ship it will take 5 - 6 weeks to get there. As usual, the sailors were not likely told their destination until they arrived in Alexandria, after a worrisome, at times downright dangerous, trip around Africa.

Story Time, The Invasion of Sicily, Part 1, follows:

YouTube - https://youtu.be/GUe9A3zH1sI

S.S. Silver Walnut.  Photo from the collection of Doug Harrison

Doug Harrison (right) with Jim Malone, Canadians in Combined Ops

As found in The Norwich Gazette, early 1990s

While travelling on the Silver Walnut around Africa, my father enjoyed a few rare adventures (and misadventures) with 'a Scottish engine room engineer named Hastings.' One story about the lengthy trip and his eventual arrival in Alexandria aboard Silver Walnut can be found here.

The Scottish engineer is hidden by a headdress? Mr. Harrison smiles a bit.

The Navy cap worn by my father can be seen behind me in the videos

Photo as found in The Norwich Gazette, early 1990s

A Navy hammock, originally belonging to Bill Katanna, who

worked aboard the same landing craft as my father in Sicily.

It can now be found at the Navy Museum in Esquimalt, BC

More to follow from my father's three months in the Mediterranean, July - early October, 1943.

Please click here to for Story Time: "Stealing Chickens" by G. Douglas Harrison

Unattributed Photos GH

Story Time: "Stealing Chickens" by G. Douglas Harrison

While in Messina, 1943, Canadian Sailors Grew Hungry

"Lt. Andy Wedd, RCNVR, Spotted Some Beautiful Hens"

Dad, 'The Master,' knew how to keep a chicken quiet in stressful times

Introduction:

My father, Gordon Douglas (Doug) Harrison, was a member of RCNVR and Combined Operations from 1941 - 1945 and recorded many stories of his varied experiences - in memoirs, news columns for his hometown paper (The Norwich Gazette) and submissions to two rare volumes of Canadian Navy veterans' stories, i.e., St. Nazaire to Singapore: The Canadian Amphibious War 1941 - 1945. Click here to link to Volume 1.

In the top photo he is standing in front of his barn, home to a chicken coop and, usually, several laying hens.

Doug Harrison's barn, in Norwich ONT. As painted by Edith Harrison, his

wife, my mother (a talented painter and writer). Chicken coop is attached

to the barn, behind bent tree, far left. From the collection of GH. 

Coming soon to a theatre near you, "Stealing Chickens": Please click here to link to one of Doug's stories, now on YouTube. [Length - 3min:00sec.]

Here is the same video in 8 seconds! Please maintain a sense of humour at all times:

Proof that I do not know how to use all features on my iPhone!

I include the written version below for those who prefer written versions:

Here’s a Canadian WW2 story from Sicily called “Stealing Chickens”

In mid-September, 1943 at Messina, after Operation Baytown was well-underway, members of the 80th flotilla of Canadian landing crafts settled into a less-stressful routine.

My father writes the following:

We weren’t too busy and the officers (who ate separately but had the same food as the regular sailors, like me) were growing tired of their diet, the same as we were, even though they had a Sicilian cook.

One day Lt. Andy Wedd asked me if I knew about poultry. I informed him that the subject was right down my alley. He then told me of the location of six or eight beautiful hens and asked if I would help him.

He said, “How be we put on some sneakers and gaffle them.” (Or steal them).

I said right then, “Okay by me, but I get a portion for my part of the deal.”

When he asked me how we could keep the hens quiet, I told him, with an axe! Or, we could firmly grasp their necks and tuck their heads under one wing and rock them for awhile. We chose the second plan because it actually works. By now, of course, our mouths are watering.

We went in at dark, like another raid, and entered the outside pen with a flashlight, a kit bag and wearing mitts. Andy slowly caught each one by the neck, handed them to the master who rocked them to sleep and lowered them quietly into the kit bag. Without a squawk we cleaned the roost and proceeded to the officers’ mess, with the kit bag between us. Lt. Wedd asked the Sicilian cook to prepare them. And a little while later a couple of drum sticks were handed out the window to me.

Next morning, the Sicilian cook came in as mad as could be. Someone had stolen his chickens. Little did he know when he cooked them that they were his own - because his wife and his mother looked after them. Lt. Wedd and I kept that story secret for many years.

The story is from “Dad, Well Done,” pages 36 and 70

For those who wish to know more re Doug's memoirs,

please connect me at gordh7700@gmail.com

Doug Harrison loved his bantam ("banties") roosters and hens

Please click here to view another video re Doug Harrison's 'Navy days' entitled Video: "Faint Footsteps, WWII" (Part 9)

Photos, Videos by GH