Comox: Canadian Sailors Mentioned in Despatches

Sailors Honoured at Comox for Special Efforts While Overseas

A. Warrick and V. Henshaw Receive Certificates at Givenchy III

Art Warrick (front, 2nd from right) with WWII mates on Navy No. 1 baseball team

Back L - R: Unknown, E. Chambers, Unknown, Bill Grycan, George Hobson

(coach), Chuck Rose. Front L - R: Don Arney, Joe Malone, Doug Harrison,

Art Warrick, Joe Spencer. Photo - 1944-45, Comox, B.C.

Introduction:

Approximately 1,000 members of RCNVR volunteered to join the Combined Operations (C. Ops) organization during WWII.

For the first 100 sailors - who joined C. Ops in late November, 1941, while completing initial training courses on Canada's East Coast, in Halifax - it soon meant rigorous training in southern England (Hayling Island) and north-west Scotland (e.g., Inveraray and Irvine) associated with handling various types of landing craft beginning in February, 1942. Unbeknownst to those 100 men, their first action would be during the Dieppe raid, August 1942.

More seasons of training would follow as would their participation in the invasions of North Africa (1942), and Sicily and Italy (1943), with more Canadian Navy officers and ratings gradually being added to their ranks.

In January 1944, after Christmas leave back in Canada, scores of sailors who had completed two-years of service overseas were selected to serve at Canada's Combined Operations training grounds situated at HMCS Givenchy III (formerly HMCS Naden III, I believe) on The Spit near Comox. And while there the 100 - 200 sailors completed various duties, played some baseball, enjoyed an atmosphere quite different from camps in the U.K. and from invasion sites in the Mediterranean theatre of war.

Navy base, pier, and oyster beds are visible on The Spit, linked to Comox by 

a land bridge, far right. Photo - Postcard purchased in Courtenay. 

While I was in Comox and the nearby city of Courtenay a few years ago I was able to comb through back issues of The Comox Argus newspaper - at the Courtenay Museum/Archives - and find a few items associated with Canadians in Combined Ops, including my father, who not only formed an outstanding ball team but were recognized, in part, for outstanding efforts made in the line of duty while overseas.    

News clippings from the March 23, 1944 issue of The Comox Argus:

Because the edge of the newspaper was clamped into place, the right edge of page 4 was hard to see (view sample below), so I have typed the rest of the news article under the sample:

The barge which Warwick (sic: Warrick) was steering was within a few feet... of a munition ship when a bomb from a dive bomber struck it square and blew it up. Everything was flying into the air. Three-inch shells fell on the deck of the barge. In spite of the danger to himself and the continued attacks from the air Warrick picked up the live shells and threw them overboard thereby saving the lives of many men in the vicinity and further damage.

Henshaw had just taken a man to a Canadian hospital ship and was rowing back to his barge when a squadron of bombers came over and began to drop their eggs. Although the hospital ship was fully lighted and marked with a red cross the bombs fell on the hospital ship and sank it, killing many doctors and nurses and patients on board. The dive bombers were probably after cruisers which were lying close to the hospital ship.

At Sicilian Landing

In spite of the continued bombardment from the air Henshaw went ahead picking up survivors from the hospital ship and was undoubtedly the means of saving many lives.

Both men were at Dieppe and were lucky enough to get away without hurt. The Jerries, they said, had the beach enfiladed with (mortar) and machine gun fire, and snipers were posted in every vantage point along the cliffs. The expedition ran into a German convoy when they were going out (across the English Channel to their designated landing site), and from that time they were under hot attack.

They were also at Algiers (North Africa) when the United Nations made their landings there (Nov. 1942). The Sicilian invasion (July 1943) was easy for the infantry. The whole coastline had been protected like a fortress with concrete pillboxes at strong points but there was no one in them. Very soon after the first landings the Germans came down with their planes and attacked the landing barges and ships of the convoy regularly every day.

Leading Seaman Warrick was a miner at Britannia Beach mine near Vancouver before he enlisted while leading Stoker Henshaw worked for the Canadian Westinghouse at Hamilton, Ontario.

From The Comox Argus, Page 4

Readers interested in more details concerning the sinking of the hospital ship HMHS Talamba off the coast of Sicily in July 1943 can link to the following entry on this website:

Audio re Combined Operations: Norm Bowen, SICILY as found at The Memory Project.

Doug Harrison, pictured beside Art Warrick in the "Navy No. 1 baseball team" photo at the top of the page, writes the following re Sicily and HMHS Talamba in his navy memoirs:

July 10, 1943. We arrived off Sicily in the middle of the night and stopped about four miles out. Other ships and new LCIs (landing craft infantry), fairly large barges, were landing troops. Soldiers went off each side of the foc’sle, down steps into the water and then ashore, during which time we saw much tracer fire. This was to be our worst invasion yet. 

We started unloading supplies with our LCMs about a half mile off the beach and then the worst began - German bombers. We were bombed 36 times in the first 72 hours - at dusk, at night, at dawn and all day long, and they said we had complete command of the air.

We fired at everything. I saw P38s, German and Italian fighters and my first dogfights. Stukas blew up working parties on the beach once when I was only about one hundred feet out. Utter death and carnage. Our American gun crews had nothing but coffee for three or four days and stayed close to their guns all the time. I give them credit.

Ephus P. Murphy’s pet monkey went mad and we put it in a bag of sand meant to douse incendiary bombs and threw him over the side. The Russian Stoker on our ship, named Katanna, said Dieppe was never like this and hid under a winch. Shrapnel and bombs just rained down...

Once, with our LCM loaded with high octane gas and a Lorrie (truck), we were heading for the beach when we saw machine gun bullets stitching the water right towards us. Fortunately, an LST (landing ship tank) loaded with bofors (guns) opened up and scared off the planes, or we were gone if the bullets had hit the gas cans. I was hiding behind a truck tire, so was Joe Watson of Simcoe. What good would that have done?

Our beach had machine gun nests carved out of the ever-present limestone, with slots cut in them to cover our beaches. A few hand grenades tossed in during the night silenced them forever.

Slowly we took control and enemy raids were only sporadic, but usually at dawn or dusk when we couldn’t see them and they could see us..

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.

From "Dad, Well Done" pages 33 - 33

More photographs related to Art Warrick:

Early Days: 24 of about 50 members of Effingham Division, Wellington Barracks.

Art Warrick is 2nd from left, middle row, at HMCS Stadacona, Halifax. Fall 1941

Art Warrick at HMS Quebec, Combined Ops Training Centre,

near Inveraray Scotland. Spring 1942

Art is back row, far right, with eight other sailors, Comox 1944.

Four of the eight are Navy No. 1 baseball team-mates

A. 'Hadie' Warrick, Hamilton, 5th name down, in above photo.

Next name down is D. 'Cactus' Harrison (my father)

Back L - R: Don Westbrook, Chuck Rose, Joe Spencer

Front L - R: Joe Spencer, Doug Harrison, Art Warrick

Photo - in my father's collection, approx. July 1945

The navy records of the six men above would be very similar. They enlisted at about the same time (summer 1941) in Hamilton, Ontario, and were discharged together after passing through HMCS Naden (Victoria, B.C.) together in July 1945, on their way back to HMCS Star in Hamilton, prior to discharge.

My father's Navy records, in part, reveal the length of their service at HMCS Givenchy III at Comox, after two years overseas. 'Copra', seen below, means Combined Operations, Payments, Records and Accounts, and all entries relate to land establishments. 

Questions or comments can be addressed to Gord H. via email. See the "Submissions" box at top of page for a current email address. 

For more information about Canadians in Combined Ops who spent time on Vancouver Island (1944 - 45) - after service overseas, including efforts during the Dieppe raid and invasions of North Africa (1942), and Sicily and Italy (1943) - please link to Presentation: Dad's Navy Days (Part 11).

Unattributed Photos GH