Presentation: My Dad's Navy Days 1

My Dad's Navy Days, 1941 - 1945

By G. A. Harrison

Canadian sailors on their way by train to Comox, B.C., Jan. 1944

(One of several photos* that has inspired my curiosity about

Dad's four years in RCNVR and Combined Operations)

Introduction: I will be making a presentation at a local library prior to Remembrance Day 2016 regarding my father's WW2 service with the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve (RCNVR) and Combined Operations organization.

I will share facts and details related to his initial training in mid-1941 at HMCS Star in Hamilton, subsequent training in Halifax later the same year, and how he came to volunteer for Combined Operations (under the heading of 'Hostilities Only' or "dangerous duties overseas"). With the Combined Operations organization he trained aboard various landing crafts at various sites in England and Scotland, all in preparation for raids (e.g., Dieppe) and the subsequent and significant invasions of North Africa, Sicily and Italy. I will share stories written by veterans of Combined Ops concerning their adventures associated with training programs, raids and invasions.

After the invasion of Italy in September, 1943 many Canadian members of Combined Operations (including my father and mates seen in the top photo) returned to Canada for further duties or 'general service' (e.g., at a Combined Operations training centre on Vancouver Island), while others prepared - in the UK - for the invasion of France in newer and larger forms of landing craft. I will share sailors' personal memoirs and stories related to their service both in Canada, the UK and Normandy.

The following posts related to my presentation will link to several of the books, stories and photographs mentioned and displayed on the '1000 Men, 1000 Stories' website and may provide for readers a concise way of learning, i.e., all in one place, about how some Canadians valiantly and faithfully served during WW2 - without skipping from heading to heading, etc., all over the website.

MY DAD'S NAVY DAYS

Part 1 - Signing Up for the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve

My father, Doug Harrison, was born September 6, 1920 and he celebrated his 19th birthday within a few days of the time both England and Canada declared war on Germany in 1939. He had a steady job at the Norwich Co-op, just a block from his mother's house in the west end of Norwich, Ontario, and stayed in its employ for about another year and a half before volunteering to serve with the RCNVR, the Wavy Navy.

He was, like many other young men, undoubtedly influenced in a variety of ways to 'sign up' and support the Allied forces against their declared enemy. Newspaper stories of the war, radio broadcasts, enlistment posters, news reels in movie theatres, Sunday sermons and more would have bombarded his senses and made him wonder if and when he should enlist.

My father didn't have a father of his own at the time. Roland Sr. had passed away when Doug was ten. But he had older brothers who surely bent his ear with an opinion or two, and there were at least two older gentleman in town that influenced or motivated him in some way to sign his name. Both are mentioned in one of the many newspaper columns he wrote for the Norwich Gazette in the 1990s.

In an article entitled Merchant Mariner ‘TRUE NORWICH HERO’, Doug writes:

Norwich has its pioneers and its heroes. One of the heroes, according to this observer, is Lorne ‘Skimp’ Smith, a wireless operator once attached to the United States merchant marine during the Second World War. Skimp was born in the only house on Mary Street....

Photo credit - The Norwich Gazette

I know little of Skimp’s early years, possibly because he spent quite a bit of time in the U.S. He was already a wireless operator aboard an American yacht, the Acadia, when we met while he was home visiting with his parents, probably in the summer of 1941.

The war was on and I was working at the Norwich Co-op, about 60 hours a week. Skimp was laying on the lawn enjoying the sun as I rode by on my bike. I knew he was connected to the sea, so I stopped and began to chat with him; I was seriously thinking of joining the service.

Skimp was a tall and happy man, and like so many people of Norwich, I immediately liked him. He was a magnetic character.... I asked him where he had learned to operate a wireless, and he recalled acquiring most of his skill from Al Stone, the likeable station agent at the west end railway station....

Jim Malone (left) and Doug Harrison cross the equator aboard the

Silver Walnut. Photo credit - The Norwich Gazette, Doug Harrison

I told Skimp that my high school principal, the late J. C. St. John, wanted me to join the army in the Elgin Regiment. He must have forgotten how much I disliked high school cadets. After further conversation I recall Skimp asking me what I wanted to do. “Join the navy,” I replied. His response was akin to ‘then go for it.’

I would curse him later, many times, but on that day and with the urging of Skimp, the die was cast. It was to be navy blue for me.*

* * * * *

Add in the facts that one of my father's boyhood heroes was Admiral Horatio Nelson, and one of his favourite war stories as a boy concerned the raid on Zeebrugge in 1918 (featuring HMS Vindictive and - unknown to Dad - Sir Robert Keyes, who later commanded the fledgling Combined Operations organization). Consider also that his own father had been a stoker, for over ten years, with the Royal Navy for a time, and indeed 'the die was cast'.

And off to HMCS Star in Hamilton, Ontario he did go in the spring of 1941.

More to follow.

*The full article appears in "DAD, WELL DONE", my father's navy memoirs, a compilation of his hand-written notes, newspaper articles, newspaper interviews and submissions to St. Nazaire to Singapore: The Canadian Amphibious War 1941 - 1945.

Please link to D. Harrison's Memoirs re Combined Operations