Articles: Six Canadian Sailors Make Headlines (6)

Buryl McIntyre, RCNVR/Combined Operations, Norwich, Ontario

Buryl McIntyre, top left, age 13 approx., Norwich Public School, 1933 -1934.

Introduction:

I can say little about Buryl McIntyre from a personal point of view even though he was a good friend of my father Doug, and his eventual wife Mary was a good friend of my mother Edith.

I can only recall that Buryl and Mary visited with my parents in our home in Norwich when I was a young boy, about age 8 - 10 years old, that my father and Buryl worked together at the Norwich Co-op and that he died rather young. 

Edith and Mary, 1942, the year of Dieppe Raid and invasion of N. Africa

Peaceful times could still be enjoyed on Tidey Street, Norwich ONT

Fortunately, Buryl and my father were interviewed together by a reporter of The (London) Free Press shortly after they returned home to Norwich after serving two years overseas with the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve and the Combined Operations organization, from January, 1942 - December, 1943. In that two-year stint they were involved in Operations Rutter (Dieppe; cancelled) and Jubilee (Dieppe), Torch (invasion of North Africa beginning Nov. 8, 1942), Husky (Sicily, beginning July 10, 1943), and Baytown (Italy, beginning Sept. 3, 1943).

The news article appeared in the newspaper on February 5, 1944, and Buryl and Doug were already on Vancouver Island, B.C., at Canada's only Combined Operations training camp (HMCS Givenchy III) situated on a point of land called Goose Spit just offshore of Comox.

Buryl is also mentioned briefly in my father's Navy memoirs, and readers will find a few samples after the news article is fully presented, along with one of many weekly columns my father wrote for The Norwich Gazette back in the 1990s.

The London Free Press article begins as follows:

NORWICH BOYS IN THICK OF TWO INVASIONS BY ALLIES

LS. BURYL MCINTYRE AND LS. DOUGLAS HARRISON

WITH “BIGGEST ARMADA OF ALL TIME”

“I saw my lieutenant, the flotilla officer, ‘get it’ because he did not know the meaning of fear. I saw ship’s gunners being strafed and standing to their guns. I can remember a Bren gunner standing in plain view of wicked cross fire, pouring all he had into the Jerries to cover his mates’ landing.” LS. (Leading Seaman) Buryl McIntyre (on the left in photo below), home on leave in Norwich with his friend LS. Douglas Harrison (on the right) told what he remembered of Dieppe where he was mentioned in dispatches for his work as coxswain of a landing barge.

Buryl McIntyre and Doug Harrison (RCNVR, C. Ops.) Norwich, Ont.

From the collection of Doug Harrison (deceased), circa 1944-45

“It was a dark night in August when we crossed the Channel toward Dieppe. Just at dawn we could discern the coast of France. Out of the dark sky and into the light outlining the coast came a plane diving on gun positions on shore, the guns in his wings and cannon in the nose twinkling much like a ‘Hallowe’en sparkler’. Then as he was just below treetop height, so it seemed, he pulled out and let his bombs go. He zoomed up and set off for home, ‘a job well done’.”

Buryl’s lieutenant was shot down just as they were touching the beach and coxswain Buryl took command of the barge. After landing the troops, he pushed away to find the nearest destroyer to get help for his officer. He picked his way through the maze of boats, all moving as quickly as they could to avoid the bombing and strafing of enemy planes. Another barge drew alongside and tied up to see if there was anything they could do. As it pulled away its tie rope became entangled in the propellor of Buryl’s barge, stopping the engine. Buryl dropped into the water, swam around to the stern of the tossing barge and slowly unwound the rope. Then they pushed on.

Original caption w above photo*: “Soldiers pour out of landing barges. Note

ladders used to help scale obstacles” (Feb. 5, 1944, The Free Press)

[Editor's note - The photograph is not of the Dieppe Raid but of training drills under cover of smoke, to the south and offshore of Inveraray Scotland, at HMS Quebec, No. 1 Combined Operations Training Camp. Buryl and Doug would have been there in spring - summer, 1942.]

Details from the Free Press interview continue:

He finally got his officer aboard a destroyer and stood by nine hours, waiting and watching. Finally a senior officer commanded him to take his barge home to an English port seventy miles across the Channel from Dieppe.

When the Dieppe honours were released Buryl McIntyre was mentioned in dispatches for coolness and courage in emergencies. Later he helped land the British First Army and supplies near Algiers and took part in the Allied landing in Sicily. During the invasion of Italy he was in a North African hospital.

LS. Douglas Harrison served in the invasion of North Africa, Sicily and Italy.

Both boys arrived in England in January 1942, and were attached to the Combined Operations of the Royal Navy for special training on invasion barges. For five months they underwent the stiff and constant training of combined operations, practising day and night landing manoeuvres with British and Canadian soldiers on the lochs of Scotland. Early in 1942, while still training, they had their first brush with the enemy. Coming down from Scotland in a convoy of carriers and barges, about eleven o’clock one night, they were attacked by ten Junkers 88s. One bomb struck the water and exploded just ahead of the boat they were on, splintering part of the ship and spraying the deck with shrapnel. The ship started to list badly but managed to right itself and there were no casualties.

 

After Dieppe, his seven day leave cut down to two, Buryl was almost immediately training for the next phase of the war. Late in October he and this time Douglas Harrison were in a great convoy bound for an unknown destination. Composed of all kinds of ships the convoy was loaded with machinery, bull-dozers, wire for landing sleds, jeeps, guns and the thousand other things which make up an invasion. They passed Gibraltar and proceeded along the North African shore. They saw and heard the silencing of shore batteries and presently were ready to land. Buryl handled a landing craft for the British First Army and Douglas worked with the Americans. 

For three days they worked back and forth with their cargos until the port was taken and the ships moved in. Then they enjoyed the sunshine, the fruit and the French managing to avoid the Arab snipers. They bought German films, trinkets, souvenirs and marveled at oranges selling at less than thirty dollars a ton. Barges reloaded on their carriers, they returned to Scotland for more intensive training. When not in action men of combined operations spend their time perfecting styles of landing and setting up beachheads.

Editor: Buryl and Doug likely also spent time "perfecting styles of landing

at pubs and setting up tables with a few pints of brown ale." : ) GH 

Early in 1943 they left England again, from different ports, on different dates, but both on the same mission - Sicily. After touching Cape Town and Durban, they met in Suez where they saw mainly sand. Then through the Suez Canal, into the Great Bitter Lake, called “second saltiest in the world,” the ships were gathered and furnished for the invasion. The Norwich seamen spent lazy nights in Egypt until the time to strike arrived.

Douglas had left his ship in Suez and had come by truck to the rendezvous. They began their journey west, on a varied course to mislead the enemy and dodge their bombs. On the night of July 10 they converged on Sicily, “the biggest armada of all time.”

Buryl’s carrier was a mile and half from the coast while Douglas’s was seven miles out. They began shuttling back and forth from ship to shore through the enemy barrage of shore batteries and bombs. They saw shore batteries being knocked out and German planes machine-gunning where traffic was thickest. Because Allied bombers had destroyed Sicilian airfields, German planes did not arrive in force for about six hours.

Until the Allies took over and prepared the Sicilian fields their fighters could not reach the invasion forces to protect them, so the landing was made under withering air attack. For four days the boys carried supplies through the thick of it, “but a barge makes a small target.”

After the fall of Sicily the boys landed and set up house-keeping. They were then able to get fresh fruit such as grapes, lemons and limes as well as fresh tomatoes. There was plenty of firewood and they did their cooking in biscuit tins. Aboard the barges they had used these tins as stoves, partially filling them with sand or cotton waste, pouring gasoline, sometimes mixed with oil, punching holes in the sides of the can around the top to provide air while cooking and stirring well before lighting. Such a fire would burn for a long time and could be given new life by adding a little fuel and stirring. They had been given rations aboard the barges but had to do their own cooking and make their own tea. On shore they swung their hammocks between the trees and since there were not enough nets to go around, treated themselves with anti-mosquito ointment. While camping here they met LAC Bill Donnelly, also of Norwich, an air-frame mechanic of fighting planes. He had been with the Eighth Army in Egypt, through Tripoli and Tunis and then in Sicily. He is now in Italy. He slept nights in an almond grove, his mosquito netting suspended from the lower branches of the trees. 

Another Norwich boy, Reg Cole, with them in that convoy, was later killed in action in Italy.

Buryl was invalided from Sicily to a hospital base in Africa. Douglas went on to help the Canadians, the first invaders, land in Italy. Buryl was moved by ship from his hospital in Tripoli up the coast to Bone and from there by train to Algiers. There he met Douglas and they took the same ship back to Scotland. After 14 days’ leave in Scotland they started for Canada, arriving in December. When they leave Norwich they expect to go to the west coast.

They both maintain firmly that “the experience gained in the Dieppe invasion has saved thousands of lives in other larger-scale invasions.”

.   .   .   .   .   .

Buryl and Doug enlisted for RCNVR at Hamilton Division 1 (home today of HMCS Star Navy base) in the summer of I941 and in January, 1942 were transported to Greenock, Scotland, aboard the Vollendam. They stayed in barracks at HMCS Niobe (several miles from Greenock) for only a few days before being sent by train to HMS Northney III on Hayling Island (near Havant, S. England coast).

Doug and Mac (Buryl) outside Wellington Barracks, Halifax 1941

In The Beachhead Commandos by A. Cecil Hampshire we can find a few details about the early days of Combined Operations:

Again, Operation 'Collar' had shown up not only the necessity for proper landing craft, but also for the provision of specialist naval crews trained in their handling. 'The business of keeping a ship beached but not stranded, shuffling it on its belly up and down the shore while it is being loaded or unloaded, possibly under fire, is no game for any but the trained,' it was emphasised. Thus while the landing craft building programme was being got underway, a six-week course of basic naval training in the operation and maintenance of the new vessels was inaugurated in a former holiday camp at Northney on Hayling Island, in Sussex.

The camp had been requisitioned by the Admiralty early in June 1940 and was commissioned as HMS Northney that same month. Unhappily the capacity of the drains in the camp were sufficient to allow the functioning of only eighteen lavatories. Until this state of affairs could be rectified therefore it was jocularly said that the expansion of Combined Operations was limited by the number of lavatory seats at Northney! (Page 25)

Buryl and Doug were at Northney in those very early days.

L - R: Alan Addlington (London, ONT), Joe Spencer (Toronto), Chuck Rose (Chippewa),

Doug Harrison (Norwich), Art Bradfield (Simcoe), Don Linder (Kitchener), Joe Watson

(Simcoe), Jack Jacobs (city unknown). Northney I or III*, circa Feb. 1942

(Buryl McInyre would be stationed at Northney II or IV)

[*Editor's note - re Northney I or III; Joe Spencer indicates they are at Northney 3; Doug H. writes Northney I. Who is correct?]

Doug writes:

We spent little time at Niobe but entrained for Havant in southern England, to H.M.S. Northney 1, a barracks (formerly a summer resort) with a large building for eating and then cabins with four bedrooms. This was December, 1941 or January, 1942 and there was no heat at all in the brick cabins. The toilets all froze and split. But we made out. Our eating quarters were heated.

We were issued brooms for guard duty in some cases at Northney, sometimes a rifle with no ammunition, and they were expecting a German invasion. Rounds were made every night outside by officers to see if we were alert and we would holler like Hell, “Who goes there? Advance and be recognized.” When you hollered loud enough you woke everyone in camp, so sentry duty was not so lonesome for a few minutes.

There was no training here (at Northney), so, as the navy goes, we went back to Niobe on March 21, 1942. I recall just now we were welcomed to Niobe by Lord Hee Haw (a turncoat) from Germany via the wireless radio.

Thence to H.M.S. Quebec barracks in Ayrshire, Scotland on Loch Fyne. We were all in good shape and this was to be one of the more memorable camps, with our first actual work and introduction to landing barges. We trained on ALCs (assault landing crafts) which carried approximately 37 soldiers and a crew of four, i.e., Coxswain, two seamen and stoker. Some carried an officer. 

"Dad, Well Done" (memoirs) pages 11 - 12

In other passages from my father's memoirs we get a glimpse of Buryl and his well fare.

From page 15: 

O/D ‘Gash’ Bailey, called 'Gash' because he wanted everyone’s left-overs, aka ‘gash’ in Scotland (pudding is called duff), got in trouble over something (likely at HMS Quebec) and we, all drunked up, went to get him out of cells. A little army Sgt. Major said, “Call out the guard.”

Now, in the navy you are divided into two watches or groups, Port and Starboard, and one is on duty one night and free the next. On this occasion of uprising, the watch was used as the guard, and they got a key to the armory, got rifles and fixed bayonets. We Canadians were all lined up on the road facing the little Sgt. Major when he shouted, “Fix bayonets,” and then, “Load rifles.” O/D Buryl McIntyre, now passed away, had to show the guard how to load their rifles.

The Sgt. Major said, “You Canadians, right turn, and go back to your barracks.” We didn’t move. We next heard, “Guards, put your bayonets to their bellies. Canadians, quick march.” And we did. And there was no more fuss that night.

From page 34: 

One morning in Sicily (Operation Husky, July 1943) I woke up in my hammock in our cave (the hammock was slung between two lime-stone piers and above the lizards) and I saw Hurricane planes taking off just a short distance away.

We had now begun working eight hours on and eight hours off. When we were pretty well unloaded I decided, on my eight hours off, to investigate the air strip and, behold, they were Canadians with Hurricane fighters. I arrived about supper time and explained who I was and was invited for a supper of tomatoes and bully beef... Not that again!

“I have no mess fanny or spoon,” I said, and the cook told me there were some fellows washing theirs up and to ask one of them for the loan of their mess fanny and spoon.

So I walked over, tapped a man’s shoulder and asked if I could borrow his equipment. The man straightened up and said “sure” and it turned out to be Bill Donnelly from my own hometown of Norwich, Ontario.

I got my oppo, A/B Buryl McIntyre from the cave and did the vino ever run that night. Small world. So when we had had enough Bill crawled into his hole in the ground, covered himself with mosquito netting, and we headed back to the cave. Overhead, Beaufort night fighters were giving Jerry fighters and bombers hell. We felt the courage given us by the vino and slept quite soundly in our dank old cave ‘til morning rolled around again.

Page 90: 

Aboard the Reina Del Pacifico at Gibraltar (Editor: on the return voyage to the U.K. after the invasion of North Africa, November 1942) the Captain advised us to sleep up top under cover at night and those Canadian sailors who were not taking part in the tournaments became look-outs as we sailed west into the Atlantic alone.

Naval tradition prevailed aboard the ship and at 11 o’clock each morning we were given a tot of navy rum which we didn’t have to drink under the watchful eye of some Chief Petty Officer. Buryl McIntyre and I were partners at bridge; we received good cards and placed second in the tournament; there being no main prize it was agreed that whichever team won the rubber of bridge also won their opponents’ tot of rum. Buryl and I slept quite well most nights, but with one eye open and one arm through our Mae West life jackets. Each ship has its own peculiar quirks and sounds; it is the unusual sound that brings sailors awake.

In my father's memoirs and newspaper columns I cannot find other references to Buryl McIntyre, but I do know from photos that they travelled by train to the west coast in January 1944 to continue their service in RCNVR and Combined Ops at HMCS Givenchy III on Goose Spit at Comox, B.C.

Buryl McIntyre, Chuck Rose and Doug Harrison (likely at Union Station in Toronto, "all dressed up with somewhere to go," i.e., Canada's west coast:

Don Linder, Doug, Joe Watson, Buryl, Chuck are ready for the "All Aboard."

Don Linder and Chuck light up, Buryl hides at the back of the group, and Joe Watson and Don Westbrook (far right, from Hamilton) wait for their train to take on water at Hornepayne (northern Ontario), not quite halfway to Winnipeg from Toronto. January, 1942.

Four photos of old Hornepayne train station from my trip west in 2012. I searched for the spot my father stood to take the above photograph:

I'm at the wrong end, but I can see evidence that the former grand porch

and its roof are long gone, from one end of the station to the other.

So, if I walk 50 metres north I will see where my father stood in Jan. 1944.

Whoops, I walked too far, and am beside another old and boarded building

Here we are. Porch and roof and distinctive signage are long gone.

But I was happy to be close to the right spot.

Buryl in the back row, Doug in the front. HMCS Givenchy III.

All names but one are on the back of photo!

Three other names appear, of Commando divisions to which

they have been assigned. Thus the smiles?

Earlier I shared two paragraphs from page 90 of "Dad, Well Done", an excerpt from one of Dad's Gazette columns. It begins in North Africa, ends in Liverpool, and Buryl and Doug are together in both instances aboard a ship that left them with a positive impression:

REINA DEL PACIFICO SERVED WELL IN WAR YEARS 

This is the story of a large passenger liner converted to a troop ship called the Reina Del Pacifico which carried 200 Canadian sailors and other personnel back to Liverpool, England after the invasion of North Africa, which started November 8th, 1942.

Buryl McIntyre and I were among the 200 sailors who had worked on our landing craft ferrying army supplies ashore night and day for about a week at a little town south of Oran named Arzew.

During the invasion, the Reina Del had acted as a hospital ship which we Canadian sailors could go aboard when tired. We were given excellent food, excellent rum, help to tumble into a hammock where we remained horizontal for many hours. The Reina Del served as a passenger liner again for many years after the war but unfortunately burned about 1970.

American troops climb into a landing craft assault from a doorway in the side of

the liner REINA DEL PACIFICO during Operation 'Torch', the Allied landings

in North Africa, November 1942.. Two of the landing craft are numbered

LCA 428 and LCA 447. Photo Credit - Imperial War Museum 

Troops and ammunition for light guns being brought ashore from a landing craft

assault (ramped) (LCA 428) on Arzeu beach, Algeria, North Africa, whilst another

LCA (LCA 287) approaches the beach during Operation 'Torch', Nov. 1942.

[Editor - I believe the sailor, centre, is my father.] 

Photo Credit - Imperial War Museum 

Canadians in Combined Ops (dark uniforms) man landing crafts as U.S. troops 

unload supplies. Arzew, N. Africa. Nov. 8, 1942. Photo - Imperial War Museum

The Norwich Gazette column continues:

Approximately Nov. 19th, 1942 the dark green, two funnel Reina Del lay at anchor at Arzew, and those two funnels were active enough to indicate steam was being brewed in the engine rooms, and she was as anxious as the sailors to head for home (U.K.). Our landing craft, one by one, manoeuvred to the gang-plank on the port side of the Reina Del and Canadian sailors waiting for the proper swell of the wave jumped to the gang-plank and hurried up the steps and went aboard through the large cargo door. Each one was checked off by name by a Canadian officer standing inside the cargo door, complete with clip-board. The landing craft were now manned by English sailors returning at a later date.

As my turn came to jump aboard the gang-plank, my eye spotted a large unexploded shell imbedded in the side of the ship not far from the officer’s head. I was very tired but not that tired, and inquired of the officer about the unexploded shell and he replied that the Captain had the shell examined and it was a dud. “I sure hope he is right because my mother will miss me, Mr. Wedd,” I said.

Mr. Wedd was dog-tired too and in no mood for an argument. “Your mother will miss you a lot more if you’re not aboard on the next swell, Harrison, because we are leaving. Do you hear me?” He added a bit more which couldn’t be printed and his ultimatum enabled me to time the swell of the next wave perfectly and I jumped to the gang-planks, and though tired, I found new energy at the cargo door and was soon amidships. The shell never exploded but it was sand-bagged and roped off.

It wasn’t long before the clank of the anchor cable could be heard in the hawse pipe. The anchors stowed, the gang-plank came on board and we were underway and in a few hours steaming at 27 knots (about 33 mph) we were safely inside the submarine nets at Gibraltar. In those few hours we organized bridge and crib tournaments.

The scene at Gibraltar was one of carnage, war at its worst. Nearby were destroyers which had been mauled by bomb and torpedoes, with gaping holes in their sides and deck plating, and some of the large guns were bent and pointed at bizarre angles. Miraculously they floated with pride and here and there steam came from the odd funnel. We thought of what the crews had been through and the fire and heat that had buckled the plates, how anyone could have survived. But Malta had to be fed.

Aboard the Reina Del at Gibraltar the Captain advised us to sleep up top under cover at night... (two paragraphs will not be fully repeated) ...Buryl and I slept quite well most nights, but with one eye open and one arm through our Mae West life jackets... 

The Captain wished to miss the Bay of Biscay and as we skirted the western edge heading north we ran into a severe electrical storm. Standing well inboard under cover we witnessed the worst electrical display of our lives. Also, it seemed to rain so hard it pounded the sea flat. The ship retained good speed throughout and reached Liverpool safely in about four days.

Liverpool, such a friendly city, has welcomed sailors for centuries and we went ashore soon after our arrival to a seaman’s home, a large, warm, clean barrack-like building with good food, showers, and cots with white sheets and pillow cases. Heaven! Soon mail arrived and I can still see myself and my friends discarding our boots and stretching out on the cots to read the latest from home. Everything went quiet until someone shouted, “Hey guys, get a load of this!”

“Pipe down!” The old familiar phrase. “Read it to us later!”

We shared our parcels with anyone who may have missed out and showed new photos all around. Although we had shore leave, many chose to stay where we were, get some rest, and write some letters home. We did not see the Reina Del Pacifico again. One evening she slipped quietly away, but I for one have never forgotten her, our home for a few short days.

Pages 89 - 91

Buryl and Doug and four other Canadians in Combined Ops highlighted in this six-part series are just a few of the Canadian armed forces personnel who were able to tell a bit of their story as it related to World War II experiences once they returned home from Europe. Many quickly went back to work, as did my father, raised families and did not speak much about the war to their spouses or children. Many were never encouraged to share a story or write things down or get out their small, rare collection of black and whites. And many others simply did not survive to tell a tale. 

In conclusion, I am delighted that I can share a half-dozen stories and hope they prompt others to dig a bit for hand-written stories or news articles that relate to people in their own families. And if you find a good one, re Canadians in Combined Ops, please submit it to me for placement on this site. 

And with that being said, I recently reached out to a nephew of Buryl McIntyre who also lived in Norwich in is youth, as I did, and he recalls the following details when Buryl and Doug were working together at the Norwich Co-op "shortly after de-mob." 

Larry McIntyre writes:

(This story) is somewhere in the back-issues of either the Woodstock Sentinel-Review or the Norwich Gazette .. but as I recall it, Doug Harrison after de-mob (September 1945) was working amongst others as a mechanic for the Co-op.

On a job, he pulled a cleaning rag from a rag-bag supplied by an outside service source. It was a sailor's dickey. Recognizing what it was he flipped it open, and displayed it to the others, including Buryl, and asked, "Hey, remember this?"

Examining it closer, he turned up the name tag - it was his!

It was one of those stories I remember reading at the time that caught my imagination, but, to date, as I say, I have not been able to turn up the item in any archives.

To Larry I say, as Editor I am delighted to hear stories about our WWII veterans, especially re my father and his close mates, confirmed by archives or not. Plus, I know where old copies of the Woodstock and Norwich newspapers can be found so I can add a wee note to my ever-growing 'To Do' list. If I have future success, more details will be added here.

Readers can reach me at gordh7700@gmail.com

For more about Canadian sailors making headlines, please link to Articles: Six Canadian Sailors Make Headlines (5)

Unattributed Photos GH