Chapter 13- A Boy Goes to War
There she lay - the 'Mighty 'ood', as sailors called her, the world's most famous and powerful warship, which had been the impetus of my ambition to join the Royal Navy. It was 29 July 1939, early, bright and sunny. The Hood was to be my home for the next two years, and the war, which was to bring her disastrous demise, was just thirty-six days away.
I had signed on as a signal boy just a week after my fifteenth birthday, on 7 March 1938. During sixteen months in the whitened sepulchre of HMS Ganges, the boys' training ship at Shotley Gate, Ipswich, I had hardly dared to hope that I would be sent to the ship of my dreams at the end of my 'apprenticeship ashore'. Then came the joyous listing of my name with twelve other boys from Ganges as a draft to the Hood.
We were packed off to Portsmouth, where disappointment awaited us. The Hood had just completed a six-month refit and apparently could not accommodate in her bulk thirteen eager, bumbling amateurs. Instead we were dumped on board the old battleship Iron Duke, which was acting as a depot ship. For a fortnight we were cooped up in this veteran of the First World War, and with each day our enthusiasm drained away. But then, at 8 a.m. on 29 July, we were decanted, like immature, tangy wine, into a three-ton lorry, which was to take us to the South Railway Jetty - known to sailors as 'Farewell Jetty' because it was usually the last berth of a capital ship before leaving for a foreign commission of 2½ years. As the lorry dawdled along the wharves, cruisers and destroyers came into view, and we chanted out each name as we passed them. Then ahead there loomed a long forecastle with three gigantic gun turrets at the end. 'There she is,' cried my closest friend, Signal Boy Don Proctor. Ship identification had not been of paramount importance in our training: this was HMS Nelson. We cheered as we went by her.
The excitement was making me queasy; my stomach seemed empty, although I had just breakfasted, and my lips were dry where I had been biting them in expectation. And then we saw her. This time there was no mistaking her. That enormous forecastle could belong to no other ship. She was awe-inspiring. She dwarfed everything around her. I had never felt so small and insignificant, yet at the same time there was an immense surge of pride and patriotism through me. I truly believed that at sixteen I had achieved my lifetime ambition. I was staring at my destiny, obviously unaware of the part that this grey, gargantuan creature of beauty, grace and immaculate power was to play in my life. 'Beauty' and 'grace' may seem ludicrous to describe a vessel whose primary function was destruction, but to me there was no menace in the huge A and B turrets from which one shell could blast a destroyer out of the sea. She epitomized pride - pride of the Royal Navy, of King and country and Empire, to a boy who had yet to have his ideals blown away in two devastating minutes.
The rough reality of Navy life was bawled back at us as we were ordered to jump down from the lorry and 'fall in' on the jetty with our kitbags and hammocks. Then we were marched up the long gangway to be swallowed by this whirring monster. Everything seemed twice as big as normal. The mess decks were colossal; a series of scrubbed wooden mess-tables reached out at me like massive conjuror's fingers; mess-kids gleamed in imitation of sterling silver; even the overhead hammock bars glinted, while the faint whiff of fuel oil and the constant humming of the air vents engulfed me. This sense of space and clean-cut lines did not diminish in the boys' mess deck, where we were deposited to make ourselves at home.
One of the first tasks of a newcomer to the Hood was to find his way about the thousand-plus compartments, although to my knowledge no one had ever seen all of them! There were horrendous stories on the mess decks about lost boys, particularly of a youngster who became seasick and crawled into a funnel casing on the upper deck. He was found dead several days later by a stokers' repair party after he had been reported lost overboard to the captain. My only official tour around the ship was conducted by one of the petty officer instructors. Again, I was too overawed to take it all in.
Yet we soon slipped into the routine, which included long sessions in the schoolroom, studying for educational tests, washing down the long passages of cortecene and sprucing up the paintwork and brass. In addition we were required to keep watch with the rest of the communications branch, which included the yeoman, leading signalman, two signalmen and two boys, or ordinary signalmen. To me it was all a delight in these early days, because the Hood always had a friendly family atmosphere about her, something which was unusual for a capital ship and normally found only in destroyers and smaller craft.
Most of the senior ratings were kindly, yet firm, to us boys. On our initial visit to the flag deck my first non-commissioned boss, Yeoman 'Shiner' Wright, assembled us to ask our names. One of my pals who, like the rest of us, was used to addressing everyone as 'sir' above leading seaman at Ganges, replied: 'Bell, sir.' He was told immediately: 'Don't call me, "sir". I'm not a commissioned officer, and you are not under training now. You're all sailors.' It was a wonderful way of making a youngster suddenly feel ten feet tall. We had confidence in the ship - albeit, on hindsight, false confidence - and now it was beginning to grow in ourselves.
The refit which the Hood had just completed was mainly to improve her armament, particularly the aircraft defence. In our eyes there was not a chink in her armour. Not so in Admiralty eyes. Nine years earlier Admiral Sir Frederic Dreyer, who had flown his flag in the battle cruiser and was then Director of the Gunnery Division, had stated: 'It has become quite obvious to all of us that the improved type of armour-piercing shell with which we had equipped the Grand Fleet in 1918 could easily penetrate and detonate in the Hood's main magazine.' I wish he had told us, for I am certain that few officers aboard were aware of the fact that plans for extra armour for the main deck and over the magazines and machine spaces had been cancelled.
August 1939 brought the beginning of the Polish crisis, as Hitler, backed by a German Press campaign, called for the annexation of the Danzig corridor. For the Hood it was a month of hustled preparation and many days at sea on manoeuvres, training a green crew. We exercised with the carrier Courageous and the destroyer Sturdy, and for my colleagues it was 'darken ship' and 'light up ship', interspersed with full-calibre shoots. But I missed most of this for I contracted impetigo through a rusty razor blade and was sent to isolation in the sick-bay, which was under A turret. My purple, blistered face prevented my applying a razor to a fuzz of brownish hair, and I was reputed to be the only bearded sixteen-year-old in the Navy at that time. The quarters resembled a cottage hospital and included a main ward, composed of twenty bunks, an operating theatre, treatment room and consulting spaces. I lazed in luxury, for the bunks could be unclipped to swing freely if the ship rolled prodigiously.
I was joined in the sickbay by my old classmate Don Proctor, who had appendicitis. Medicine did not improve his condition, and he was operated on at sea by a surgeon commander. After rapid preparations, the sickbay suddenly became quiet. Don had died. With other patients in the ward I was ordered to assemble in the treatment room. While we were there, unknown to us, his body was carried through the ward into a nearby cabin. When we returned, I was told by the sickbay petty officer to wash the floor of the operating theatre. I froze in the doorway. The petty officer realized then that I had been Don's pal. He took me by the arm, led me to the other end of the sickbay, sat me down and said sympathetically: 'You should have told me, lad, that you were his mate. After you went as white as a sheet and your eyes were like saucers, I knew he was a friend of yours.' He spent the next five minutes placating me. Again it was a timely example of the family spirit in the Hood . This was the first experience I had had of death at close hand. The date was 21 August, the very day that Germany and Russia were signing a non-aggression pact as the Wehrmacht prepared for the invasion of Poland.
Yet there seemed no crisis in the Hood for me. My most anxious moments were going to the lavatory - the 'heads'. I found it embarrassing to sit on the throne with only my genitals covered by the tiny cubicle doors and being able to see over the top the straining faces of my shipmates, squatting in long rows like roosting birds. I was too shy to have discussion with other matelots, which was the general practice, and in heavy weather tried to contain my motions, otherwise one risked a sudden dowsing of urine from a neighbouring lavatory as the ship rolled. The bathroom could be equally as wet and a trial to my modesty at peak hours. The drains and scuppers could seldom cope with the ablutions and laundering of scores of naked matelots, and the result was a constant flood of four inches of murky water on the floor. Hence the old expression: 'For you I swim the stokers' bathroom in full flood backwards.'
Gradually we boys began to settle down to our duties and to show we could play our part in the running of a fighting ship, which was just as well, for Rear-Admiral Sir William Whitworth had just hoisted his flag in the Hood , as second in command of the Home Fleet. Nevertheless, we blundered on, sometimes the faults being our own and at others those of our superiors. One of my jobs was being 'boat boy'. This meant keeping the officer of the watch informed of approaching craft when in harbour, so that the appropriate courtesies of piping or sounding bugles could be performed. We were given binoculars and a pendant list and stationed on the quarterdeck. I was so obsessed with my importance the first time I did the duty that I ignored a destroyer which was under way and about to pass the quarterdeck. At that moment, Captain Irvine Glennie appeared on deck and yelled: 'Boy! What's the name of that ship?' The four gold rings under my nose and the sight of the captain's authoritative figure brought complete panic. 'H47, sir,' I stammered, forgetting the pendant list which had been given me to spell out the destroyer's name. 'I can see that, you young fool,' barked the captain. 'What's her name?' A few minutes later a relief arrived on the quarterdeck and I, thoroughly demoralized, was back washing paintwork.
Another of my special duties I performed more adequately. As 'cable flags' I had to set myself up on the forecastle whenever we moored or weighed anchor and signal by flags to the chief yeoman on the bridge the number of shackles of cable on deck or whether the anchor was down, away, clear or foul. To be such an important linchpin in the communications system did my ego the world of good, even though the very information which I was signalling was also being sent to the bridge by voice-pipe and telephone!
I have always had a head for heights and enjoyed climbing the ninety-two-foot main mast. Because of this it was I whom the bridge normally detailed to strike the foretop mast whenever the Hood passed under the Forth Bridge at Rosyth. I was also sent aloft when a halyard was 'lost' accidentally by one of my fellow 'bunts'. The masts were not difficult to scale, and only the last six feet of the main one, which was a sheer pole, had to be shinned up. One day when a halyard had been blown away on the starboard forward upper yardarm, I was ordered to go up for it. I had inched my way to the end of the yardarm to retain the Inglefield clip when the safety valves in the engine-room were blown. A large cloud of steam swirled up towards me. I clung on grimly but decided that, if the white mist spiralling upwards was hot, I would let go and drop into the sea. I preferred drowning to being boiled alive. But by the time it immersed me the steam had turned into a cold shower.
All the boys, whether they were to become stokers, seamen or signalmen, were subjected to the normal apprentice-type jokes, like getting green oil for the starboard lamps, but I was not expecting to be the target of a hoax on 31 August, the day the fleet mobilized. The Hood was entering Scapa Flow to join the Repulse and Renown as the Battle Cruiser Squadron. It was a serious - and for me emotive - occasion, until I noticed Yeoman Wright and Ivor Holding, a Royal Marine signalman, directing their binoculars towards the shore. 'Quick, there's one over there,' shouted Wright. 'What is it, yeo?' I asked. He handed me a telescope, put the binoculars to his eyes again and replied: 'Just look at them - they're wild haggis. They have webbed feet, a duck's bill and are covered in brown fur.' I scanned the shoreline for several minutes before the guffaws of the two men forced me to realize that I was 'being had'.
During the next twenty-four hours frivolity turned into fervour when we prepared for war, as unit by unit the biggest fleet I have ever seen gathered at Scapa. Battleships, cruisers, carriers, destroyers came and went until it was time for the Hood to go. We weighed anchor at 0400 on 1 September and immediately went to action stations. For the next nervous forty-eight hours we were standing down constantly and then being called back again. No longer were there great, wide open spaces below decks: the full wartime complement of just over fourteen hundred men were embarked. At night hammocks were slung in every passageway, in every nook and cranny. Sleeping space was guarded jealously, and once a claim had been staked, it was rarely relaxed. At first I slung my hammock in one of the boys' locker spaces. Later I acquired the 'luxury' of hooking up in the warrant officers' cabin flat aft. Black-out curtains were rigged, and 'darken ship' was piped at sunset. Polishing was down to the minimum, and apart from the working parts of the guns, equipment that sparkled was dulled by gallons of grey paint. The once white decks began to take on a greyish tint, and most of the other woodwork was toned down. All the hangings and 'niceties' - including the many mess pianos - were landed. The Hood was never to know peace again.
At 11 a.m. on 3 September, in company with the Renown and a group of the fleet, we were on watch with the intention of shadowing German surface raiders which might slip through the Iceland-Faroe Island Channel into the Atlantic. I was on the point of making my first signal in a warship. The flag 'E' was hoisted as a preliminary for a general semaphore message, and Chief Yeoman George Thomas ordered: 'Briggs, get a pair of hand-flags and get up to the fifteen-inch director and show up 46.' It was with a strange sort of pride and yet a sinking feeling in my belly that I spelt out to the fleet: 'Commence hostilities against Germany.' Over the tannoy to all parts of the ship came Prime Minister Chamberlain's almost somnolent, low-key announcement that Britain's ultimatum to Germany to withdraw from the invasion of Poland had expired. It seemed an anticlimax that soon after the Hood was ordered to return to Scapa. Our patrol to bottle up the German pocket battleships was in vain, for the Graf Spee and Deutschland had slipped out into the Atlantic before the end of August. We had been hunting phantoms.
After three days refuelling and revictualling at Scapa, the Hood was detailed for her first fully wartime errand. With the Renown, the cruisers Belfast and Edinburgh and four destroyers, we left at dawn for a sweep to the Faroes and Iceland. Our orders were to intercept blockade-running German cargo ships, but fog hampered the mission. On 8 September, the first day at sea, the destroyer Fury was despatched by Admiral Whitworth to investigate a false Asdic contact. Two days later the Fearless halted a Swedish oiler, which was allowed to proceed, while on the last day of the trip the Fearless was sent to search for lifeboats of SS Kirby, which had been torpedoed by a U-boat off the Faroes. By 12 September we were back at Scapa to refuel from the tanker Wardware. It had been an unspectacular, though tremulous start to the war for me.
From now on the Hood seemed to be operating a shuttle patrol out of Scapa. On 14 September we were en route to Loch Ewe, on the north-west coast of Scotland, only to return immediately to Scapa, where we rested for a week. The first real piece of excitement, as far as I was concerned, came on 22 September, when we were on patrol in the North Sea. The Fortune made contact with a U-boat at 1320. This was confirmed by Firedrake, and the bells for action stations awoke the Hood from her after-rum slumbers. We zigzagged at twenty-two knots for an hour and then returned to normal conditions. The next day the Express sighted a mine off the Hood's port bow and exploded it with rifle fire.
In the boys' mess deck we prattled on about war being a bore, but despite the bravado, most of us were glad to be back at Scapa for divisions on Sunday 24 September, when Admiral Whitworth cleared the lower deck and proceeded to keep the ship's company on their guard by speaking of the necessity for the humdrum patrol work which would be in front of us. Two days later the Hood was to smell the enemy s powder.
Chapter 14- Look What Just Missed Me
Our bombing baptism came on 26 September during a curious, swashbuckling foray into the North Sea by the Home Fleet. The previous day Admiral Forbes, the commander-in-chief, had learned that the submarine Spearfish had been depth-charged off the Horns Reef, the shoal shaped like a hand which points out from Denmark towards the Dogger. She was unable to dive and began to head for home on the surface. Forbes ordered out the Second Cruiser Squadron with an escort of destroyers to assist her. We and the Repulse sailed in company with the Eighteenth Cruiser Squadron to give heavy cover, in case the German capital ships were enticed out. Throughout my time in the Hood the captain and commanders believed in keeping the ship's company informed of what action might be ahead of them and what was expected of them. On this occasion we were well briefed on the situation over the tannoy from the moment of leaving harbour.
For most of that day we were at standing action stations also known as 'second degree of readiness' - but the full call to arms did not come. The force penetrated deep into the North Sea to contact the Spearfish, and then we turned about and headed for Scapa. The way home was led by the Nelson , the Home Fleet's flagship, and the Rodney in the northern column, with the famed aircraft-carrier Ark Royal in the centre and the Hood and Repulse to the south. In the forenoon our group were spotted by a Dornier flying-boat, but at this stage of the war the Navy lost little sleep over the Luftwaffe, and the Dornier headed for base without a parting shot from the fleet.
Fortunately for us, only thirteen bombers from Westerland, Sylt, could be got into the air, and four of them - Goering's 'wonder aircraft', the Junkers 88 - were aimed at the Hood's section of the fleet. They arrived in eight-tenths cloud at nine thousand feet. The attacks were uncoordinated, and the first I saw of them was from the flag deck when the Ark Royal disappeared behind high walls of bomb burst spray. It was while I was 'goofing', like everyone else, at this explosive display of cascades that I heard someone yell, 'Look at that bastard.' I did - and was transfixed by the sight of a JU 88 almost overhead at about five hundred feet. A massive, black object, which seemed to be as big as a London bus, tumbled gently from it and almost in slow motion fell towards the Hood's quarterdeck. A great flash, a crump and a cold clamminess unfroze me, and I found myself blown to the deck. I got to my feet, and below and abaft the flag deck I could see the crew of the pom-pom shaking from their clothes the black, dirty water spewed up by the explosion. They had not fired a shot at the bomber, which had been piloted bravely by Leutnant Storp of the Adler Geschwader (KG 30), who cost me a clean pair of underpants. In fact, not one of the Hood's guns had opened up. The bomb caught us a glancing blow on the port quarter, bounced off and exploded harmlessly in the sea. Rivets were sprung in the torpedo bulge, there were minor breakages in the stokers' bathroom, and the port gash chute and boom were peppered with shrapnel. If the Hood had been a few yards further ahead, it was likely the bomb would have penetrated the quarterdeck. We were lucky to escape so lightly in this first encounter of the war between bomber and battleship.
It served as a warning to the ship's company to be on the alert for air attack and prepared us for stormier days ahead in the Mediterranean. The immediate effect was for Admiral Forbes, in the Nelson, to make a general signal of 'Negative DC', which meant 'Manoeuvre badly executed'. Later all ships were told to 'buck up' while in his official despatch he stated that the control personnel were unprepared obviously for such high-performance dive-bombing. In fact, all of our gunners had been waiting for permission from the bridge to open fire.
The next day in harbour we boys were digging out with jack-knives the bomb splinters in the lower boom. My piece of metal found its way home to my mother with the note: 'Look what just missed me.' She probably needed the assurance, for already Lord Haw-Haw was proclaiming on Hamburg Radio that the Ark Royal had been sunk and that the Hood was badly damaged. So much credence was given to later German claims of the Hood's being repaired in dry dock that Prime Minister Chamberlain had to reassure Clement Attlee in the House of Commons: 'It is not true and I must repeat it once again - though by now the news grows stale through repetition - that neither the Hood nor the Repulse , nor any other capital ship has suffered the least damage.' Reports of this in most of the popular newspapers of 19 October stated that Chamberlain's reply was followed by laughter and cheers - and that in turn was echoed in the Hood's mess decks.
It was in October that Winston Churchill, then the First Lord at the Admiralty, paid his first visit to us. I was on the flag deck and only saw him leave the ship in the admiral's barge, giving one of the first of his famous victory signs.
For the next six months the Hood's routine became long days and piercingly cold nights at sea, punctuated with unsuccessful sorties and unfulfilled scares. We boys were being honed not only to razor sharpness but also to a keen sense of survival. When we went to our stations during the Atlantic patrols, there was a scramble for the lee side of the flag deck. It was usually very unwise to be on the weather edge for more than an hour at a time because it took a further two hours to thaw out. One unofficial punishment if we did anything wrong was to be sent to the side which caught the worst of the weather. 'Telescope soup' was also dished out as a penalty. This meant receiving a sharp blow with the leading signalman's telescope on the elbow or funny bone. The consequence was that we were guilty of few misdemeanours.
It was in the schoolroom that we did not care. Although we had instructor officers aboard, Able Seaman 'Tommo' Thompson taught us most of the elementary subjects which would push us through ET1 (Educational Test One). He was a three-badge man and one of the longest serving of the ship's company. He was highly intelligent and should have been commissioned, but strangely he preferred to remain an able seaman. Yet when my attention wandered, he would tell me: 'Look at me, son. If I had not been like you and paid attention at school, I would be a warrant schoolmaster by now.' It was these words of wisdom which gave me an education and which eventually led me to a commission. I never forgot old 'Tommo'.
The Hood was always held in readiness to thwart a break-out by an enemy surface raider, and on 8 October we were despatched at high speed, with the Repulse and the cruisers Sheffield and Aurora, to cover the Northern Approaches a hundred miles off Bergen, Norway. Over the tannoy Captain Glennie explained that a Coastal Command aircraft had spotted the battle cruiser Gneisenau, with the heavy cruiser Köln and nine destroyers, steaming north out of the Skagerrak. Admiral Whitworth's orders were to prevent any outflanking movements by the Germans.
For two days we swore and grumbled about the cold on the flag deck, while Whitworth waited for more intelligence reports. When no news of the enemy was received, he headed the Hood for the Butt of Lewis. In the afternoon of 10 October a signal reached us that the Gneisenau and escorts had retreated two days earlier and had entered the Skagerrak again. There was no quarry to chase. Later we learned that it was a ruse by Admiral Raeder to draw out the Home Fleet as targets for Goering's bombers again. Normally we would have returned to Scapa Flow, but this time with the Rodney and six destroyers we entered Loch Ewe, another barren naval outpost on the west coast of Scotland, facing the Outer Hebrides.
The Hood wasted little time at Loch Ewe. After twenty-four hours we were raising steam again to join the Nelson, Rodney, Furious, Aurora, Belfast and nine destroyers to help the Northern patrol intercept German merchantmen on their way back to their homeland through the Denmark Strait. The very name still chills me like the winds which knifed this barren edge of the Arctic Circle. To keep the hunt going, we refuelled the destroyers at sea and learned to curse the cold and the enemy but we had no regrets that we searched in vain. Elsewhere the Germans were hunting for us, for in an air raid on Scapa the Iron Duke had been damaged by three near-misses and forced to beach. Scapa was deemed to be unsafe for us, so we returned to Loch Ewe.
As Hitler's U-boat packs swarmed out of the Jade, the waters around the Orkneys were becoming more hazardous for the Hood , although I did not know of one particularly close call until after the war. On 30 October we set out with the Rodney and Nelson , who were 'our chummies', as part of a covering force for a convoy carrying iron ore from Narvik to the Firth of Forth. Apparently at 10 a.m., when west of the Orkneys, Leutnant Wilhelm Zahn, the skipper of U56, found he had penetrated accidentally our zigzagging destroyer screen. Through his periscope he was horrified to see the Hood , Nelson and Rodney heading towards him. Suddenly we turned through an angle of nearly thirty degrees, which put the 1156 in perfect firing position. The Rodney , which was the leading ship, passed out of the field of fire, and this made the primary target, the Nelson , which was close to the Hood . From nine hundred yards Zahn aimed three torpedoes at her. The first two clanged against the Nelson 's side but failed to explode. The third missed.
Blissfully ignorant of this escape, our force bucketed in a heavy swell towards the Lofoten Islands, Norway. Tons of water thrashed over the Hood's forecastle and then boomed on to the quarterdeck. At times it seemed that the stern would never reappear again. On the flag deck the scathing wind and spray turned cheeks numb in minutes, while in the fug below decks the groaning of her frames, plating and superstructure gave notice of the Hood's age. Twenty-four hours in these seas were enough for man, boy and ship, and thankfully we put in at Greenock.
During this period of the incongruously named phoney war - at least for the Navy - the Admiralty became increasingly concerned of the danger of a breakout into the Atlantic by the Gneisenau and Scharnhorst, currently trapped in Wilhelmshaven. For this reason the Hood was sent to Plymouth during November. It was a welcome change from the icy blasts of the Shetlands and enabled us to enjoy the doubtful delights of Devonport and Union Street. We even began to hope that there would be Christmas leave. Then, on 21 November, the Admiralty's fears became reality. The Gneisenau and the Scharnhorst, with the cruisers Köln and Leipzig and a strong destroyer escort, swept into the Skagerrak. Without being detected, the two bigger warships penetrated the Shetland-Norway passage. Two days later the merchant cruiser Rawalpindi, a former P & 0 liner, armed with eight old six-inch guns, engaged them in her famous suicidal fourteen-minute battle, which ended in her obliteration. With the cruisers Newcastle and Delhi approaching, the German pair sped off.
The alarm bells were ringing now in most of the ships of the Home Fleet - and that included the Hood at Plymouth. Admiral Forbes wanted every available vessel at sea immediately.
As the Hood scythed out of Plymouth in heavy weather, we on the flag deck heard that for the first and only time Britain's mightiest ship was to come under the command of a French admiral, based in Brest. In mid-Channel we rendezvoused with the French battle cruiser Dunkerque, in which Vice-Admiral Gensoul was flying his flag, and the cruisers Montcalm and Georges Leygues, soon known to our ship's company as 'Gorgeous Legs'. Both forces had their own destroyer escorts. From the flag deck I managed to get glimpses of the Dunkerque, which, although smaller than the Hood , had a Continental rakishness about her that I admired. My fellow signalmen were scornful of the fact that she possessed only thirteen-inch guns. Even if we had been warned that in eight months time she would be an enemy and that we would be firing at her, instead of signalling friendly courtesies, none of us would have heeded. This was the first combined Franco-British naval operation of the war, and everyone was determined that it would be a success. The ship's company were fully aware that in the next two days they might be in action against the German hit-and-runners, as we ploughed through tremendous, troughing seas towards a position sixty degrees north, twenty degrees west.
In this area, just south of Iceland, was a shoal known as 'Bill Bailey's Bank', and it was here that we were to wait for an 'interpose' between a convoy and the German raiders. We were supposed to be in unison as the combined force pitched off the west coast of Ireland, but so high was the sea running that it appeared from the Hood that we were alone as the other vessels became shrouded in grey spray. For two days the battering continued, and then came the blessed relief of a recall. The Gneisenau and Scharnhorst were safely tied up in Wilhelmshaven. As the weather deteriorated, they had doubled back on their course, evaded the cruiser patrols and slipped far to the south before Forbes' storm-hindered battleships could arrive.
Back in Plymouth we appreciated the snugness of the haven even more. Christmas in Plymouth? We were too optimistic, for by 3 December the Hood had returned to Loch Ewe for refuelling in readiness for convoy protection work. I hated the place. Scapa, which was desolate enough, was a beauty spot in comparison. Few of us bothered to go ashore. The loch was being used as the Home Fleet's main base because the defences of Scapa were being improved after the torpedoing of the Royal Oak there two months earlier. Strangely, this switching of bases brought Admiral Forbes more trouble, and on the day after our arrival the Nelson was damaged by a magnetic mine as she was entering the loch. With the Rodney incapacitated because of serious defects, it meant that the Hood was the only capital ship available to the Home Fleet.
We, too, were in dire need of a refit. The maximum speed was down to twenty-five knots, rust, that creeping brown peril, was fingering up the sides, and our superstructure was caked with salt. We were putting in more sea time than any other ship in the world, and we could not, and would not, be spared.
While we were at Loch Ewe there came the 'buzz' that something big was on. Indeed, there was. Five liners carrying 7,450 men were in mid-Atlantic. This was the first Canadian troop convoy of the war from Halifax, in the care of the Furious, Repulse , Emerald, Hunter and Hyperion. The Hood and her destroyer escort were to provide extra cover. Our orders were to steam to the Clyde and leave there on 13 December, but twenty-four hours earlier we were heading north to lock up another suspected Atlantic breakout This time the light cruisers Leipzig, Nürnberg and Köln, accompanied by five destroyers, had been sighted by Coastal Command aircraft and the submarine Salmon in the central North Sea. Admiral Forbes misinterpreted the intention of this foray, however. It was a minelaying sortie towards the west, and as soon as this was revealed, the Hood was ordered back to the Clyde and then out to the Atlantic with the Warspite, Barham and six destroyers to meet the Canadians. The only piece of excitement after our rendezvous came from an allied ship, when the SS Samaria, which was steaming in the opposite direction, steered into the convoy and collided with the Furious and the liner Aquitania. The Hood stood by, but we were not needed and returned to port two days afterwards.
We were now spending more time at sea than in harbour, with most of our duties involving the Northern Patrol. It was a lonely existence, for rarely did we come into close contact with convoys, but we were strategically placed to intervene if surface raiders threatened. The grey days stretched interminably before us on the flag deck. Christmas Day and New Year's Eve were almost indistinguishable from the rest. For most of February we worked from Greenock, with Clydeside a reassuring respite to Loch Ewe, to which the Hood was never to return.
By now I was messenger to the flag lieutenant, a plum job for a signal boy. I had to follow Lieutenant-Commander J.M. Villiers at a discreet distance, run his errands and supply him with copies of signals throughout the day. I was given the grand title of 'staff signalman' and felt extremely smug about my position - until one night on Atlantic patrol. During the first watch, at around 2230, I was given a message by the flag lieutenant to take to Commander Davies, who was in his cabin aft. I dashed down the ladder from the compass platform to the admiral's bridge and was trotting across to the ladder to the flag deck when I bumped into a soft body. There was a crash, a strangled grunt and the shout 'Yeoman!' On the deck I could just make out the stretched-out figure of Admiral Whitworth. I was escorted away from the scene by 'Shiner' Wright, who promptly blasted me for being so careless. Within the next hour I was given a 'rocket' by everyone on the bridge from Captain Glennie downwards. The admiral was about to leave the Hood , and I thought that this faux pas would be removed from my record the day he went, for rarely does an admiral remember a boy, but Whitworth, who was something of a martinet, was kind enough to remember me more than a year later when we met again in more emotional circumstances.
In March 1940, with signs of a German build-up for the invasion of Norway, the Hood's operational zone was based on the east coast again, and we alternated between Scapa and the Firth of Forth. The first mission was on 2 March with the battleship Valiant and six destroyers. We provided assistance for a convoy from Norway. It was an uneventful five-day stint, and we returned to Scapa yawning from lack of sleep and boredom. But within twenty-four hours we had to be on the top line for another visit by Churchill. The old warrior was aboard the Rodney , which was prevented from entering harbour because two magnetic mines had been dropped by a German plane the previous night. I understand that Churchill was never informed that it was the Hood's fault he had to transfer by admiral's barge. We had been the anti-aircraft guard ship on the night of the raid and had allowed in a 'Jerry', who circled the Flow and then let loose the mines. A week later fourteen Heinkel 111s attacked the Flow. No bombs fell near us, but the commander of the Nazi squadron claimed direct hits on the Hood, Repulse and Renown.
When Admiral Whitworth struck his flag on 11 March and transferred to the Renown, it was obvious to everyone on board that at last the Hood was to have that long overdue refit. Our lovely old girl was beginning to show signs of engine strain, and many times A and Y turrets had to be drained by deck tackle because the argoline oil and distilled water hydraulics systems had filled with salt water. Air raids had also proved that the antiaircraft defences were still not sufficient. Our last trip north was around the Shetlands and down to Greenock, where we stayed for several days.
As one Hood moved out of Clydeside on 30 March, so another moved in. The newcomer was one of Churchill's decoys. On his third day back at the Admiralty he had revived the First World War idea of constructing dummy capital ships to fool enemy reconnaissance planes. With the approval of Admiral Pound, he had ordered six decoy frames to be set up on merchant ships, but only three were built. We considered ourselves fortunate that we had a 'double', and indeed it served its purpose because I understand it took the people of Greenock several days to tumble to it that the real Hood had gone. My older 'oppo' on the flag deck, Marine Holding, was in trouble with his girl friend ashore because of the dummy. She, too, believed that the Hood was in port and thought that, because she was not seeing him, he had ditched her!
Chapter 15- Force H For Hood
Leave, which was long overdue, was given to half of the crew after we had been dry-docked at Devonport at the end of March, but 250 of those unfortunate enough to have been left on board were to be involved in a disastrous adventure, for which they were not trained.
We in the signals branch knew something was 'on' during the forenoon of 12 April when secret orders code-named 'Primrose' began to arrive in the ship. Our howitzer was swung over the side on to the quay soon after. Then came the news that 250 marines and matelots were to pack their kit immediately and prepare to go ashore that night. Three days earlier Germany had invaded Norway and Denmark, and the mess buzz kings did not take long to deduce that this sudden collecting of manpower had something to do with a mission to Scandinavia. Several boys wanted to volunteer to go - although I can't say that I was particularly keen to join them - but it was decided that only marines and senior ratings should be picked. After a day of feverish preparation the contingent boarded a special train at midnight. Some were to return a month later; others, such as Able Seamen Kelly, Harris, Thorpe and Walker, were wounded; some, like Lieutenant-Commander C.A. Awdry, Lieutenant E.D. Strand, Sub-Lieutenant Goodale, Sub-Lieutenant D.C. Salter, Sergeant J.P. Lees and Marines McPherson, Lashmar and Welch, fought on until the evacuation. Many did not leave Norway alive. One who did was my shipmate Marine Holding, and the messes heard of his and others' adventures when the Hood re-entered the war at 9.30 p.m. on Monday 27 May 1940.
It was at this time that the Hood was towed out of the T amar into Plymouth Sound after two months of hammering and riveting at Devonport. And in those fifty-seven days Norway, Denmark and Holland had been overrun by the Nazi Blitzkrieg. Belgium was on the eve of capitulation, and the French Channel ports were under siege. Britain was just a week from Dunkirk.
As we slipped the towing wires of the tug and regretfully left the leisurely life of the West Country, we were cheerfully confident that the battle cruiser was in fighting fettle again. The ack-ack defences had been bolstered and a set of five UP (unrotating projectile) rocket-launchers had been fitted, in addition to other minor improvements. What we did not know was that there was another list of comprehensive modifications, which it was not intended to do. These included new machinery, the removal of both the conning tower and the above-water torpedo tubes, the fitting of an aircraft catapult and crane and, most important of all, extra horizontal and vertical armour, which the Admiralty were doubtful about now because of the extra weight of the ship.
That morning we steamed northwards, escorted by three destroyers. We were retreating from the threatened southern coast of England to Liverpool's Gladstone Dock for a fortnight of underwater repairs and painting. It was inconvenient, to say the least, that the Hood dry-docked alongside and the ship's company were required to use the lavatories ashore as the main heads onboard were closed. Diarrhoea swept through the mess decks, and there was an incessant stream of 'bodies' going back and forth down the gangway through the day and at night. Hardly a man was not affected by it during a forty-eight-hour spell. When the bug had run its full course, Paymaster Commander DC Roe, who was responsible for victualling the ship, found a heap of bad meat chained down outside his cabin the next morning. The culprits were never discovered, but the butcher was glad to be rid of the stuff.
While Britain listened for church bells which would warn of enemy invasion, our sentries were becoming jumpy about rumours of fifth columnists and spies. This led to the shooting of an innocent dockyard matey by a Royal Marine sentry. The workman was seen to approach the side of the ship and throw something into the dock. He was challenged immediately by the guard but did not reply. The marine challenged him again and this time shattered the silence by firing his .303. The workman was nicked by a bullet in the side of the neck. After he was arrested, he explained that he had merely thrown away the remains of his sandwich lunch and had not heard the sentry because he was deaf.
The possibility of more serious shooting was ahead when on 12 June the Hood left Gladstone Dock to rendezvous with one of the most important convoys of the war. Our escort included the Canadian destroyers Skeena, Restigouch and St Laurent, and we were to meet the convoy three hundred miles west of Cape Finisterre. Two days later there lumbered into view the aircraft-carrier Argus and then on the horizon the rest of the brood gradually appeared - first the Queen Mary, then the Empress of Britain, the Mauretania, Aquitania, Andes and Empress of Canada. It was the finest array of liners I have ever seen together at one time. On board were Anzac troops, too late for the Battle of Europe but on hand for the Battle of Britain and then North Africa. Everyone expected that this treasury of ships would bring hordes of aircraft and U-boats: instead there were just two submarine scares, and on 14 June we entered the Firth of Clyde and anchored off Greenock. Why had there been no attack, we wondered ? The answer came the next day. The Germans had been too busy in France, for Marshal Pétain was asking for his 'honourable peace'.
As libertymen began to return that night, it was obvious that the ship was on the verge of another 'special mission', and just before turning in we were alerted to stand by for a broadcast by Captain Glennie. In contrast to other briefings, he did not give any indication of where we were bound. All we were told was that we were to prepare for sea and raise steam for twenty knots.
At 0230 special sea duty men were ordered to their stations. Two and a half hours later we had whisked through the submarine boom from the Cloch Lighthouse to Dunoon. From the southerly course which was set, it seemed apparent to me that the Hood was heading for the South-Western Approaches, and that meant we should be involved in the defence of southern England. How wrong I was! During the next afternoon -a bright and sunny one, which belied the normal storminess of the Bay of Biscay -we crossed the path of our old chummy the Ark Royal. It was then that Captain Glennie announced to a ship's company befuddled by rumour and counter-rumour that with the great carrier and her destroyer screen we were to make for Gibraltar, where we were to form a section of Force H for operations in the Mediterranean - just like that, for there had been no preparation: none of us had been kitted out with 'whites', and we had been issued only balaclavas and woollies!
On 23 June the Hood arrived at Gibraltar and berthed alongside the harbour mole. Astern lay the battleship Resolution, which had been waiting for us thirteen days. Soon after, the Ark Royal put in at the jetty on our port side.
By now we assumed that the Hood was to be based at the gates of the Mediterranean, just as she had been in the 1930s, to put the 'frighteners' on Italy, who had declared war on the Allies thirteen days earlier. Churchill was determined that the Mediterranean was not to become an Italian lake. That was the way it appeared to the lower deck. Again we were wrong. Our allies were about to become our enemies.
The main concern of the War Cabinet was the destiny of the French fleet, and the day after, 25 June, when Pétain signed an armistice with Germany, we were ordered to sail with the Ark Royal on another panic mission. The French battleship Richelieu, based at Dakar, had put to sea and was thought to be heading for Toulon, where she would be neutralized. We were supposed to escort her to Gibraltar, but no one seemed to have the slightest idea of what action to take if her captain refused. The policy of dealing with the defecting French had yet to be decided, and at this stage we were unaware of just how ruthless it was to be. But the Hood and the Ark were not needed in this instance. The Richelieu was intercepted by the cruiser Dorsetshire off the West African coast, and her captain was persuaded to return to Dakar. At 2200 we turned about and went back to Gibraltar. By now, after ten months of war, the ship's company were thoroughly used to these false alarms. Another followed on 28 June when the Richelieu was again reported to be about to make a run for it. Again we put to sea. For sixteen hours we rushed towards Dakar; then the emergency fizzled out to its normal frustrating end with a recall to the Rock.
But in London twenty-four hours earlier there had been held an emergency meeting of the War Cabinet to give the Hood her most murderous mission, with which few of us would be proud to be associated.
Chapter 16- Shooting Fish in a Barrel
During the next few days we watched the build-up of Force H. First came the cruiser Enterprise, then four older destroyers of the Thirteenth Flotilla and finally the Valiant, a veteran of Jutland. Our main signal office was alive with messages during this period, and the messes were hives of rumour, until after divisions on Sunday 30 June, when Captain Glennie announced mistakenly that 'within a few days' Vice-Admiral Sir James Somerville would be hoisting his flag in the Hood.
When a new admiral is expected, it does not take long for a ship's company to form a mental picture of him through the wardroom and gunroom telegraphs. We soon knew that he was a showy admiral, with a blue sense of humour, an alert brain, a penchant for keeping his men on their toes and an impatient streak which drove his flag staff to distraction. The general opinion of the veterans of the lower deck, who had served with him when he was Rear-Admiral Destroyers in the Mediterranean from 1936 to 1938, was that he was kindly to the matelot, and since Invergordon this trait in him had helped to restore confidence in the officer class. Above all - and this was like possessing a rabbit's foot - he had a link with our ship, even if in name only, for his great-great-grandfather was Lord Hood, an admiral of the fleet. To crystallize: he was a popular admiral.
Certainly he was a hustler, as we found out when the cruiser Arethusa berthed nearby at 1745 that day, and not 'within a few days' as the captain had stated. I watched from the flag deck as the dazzling array of gold braid arrived. At this moment they were nameless to me, but in the forty-six days we were associated with them they all showed their little idiosyncrasies to the crew. In order of seniority they were: Captain E.G. Jeffery, the chief of staff, who had been snapped up from the Imperial Defence College; Commander Anthony Buzzard, rakish, sandy-haired and Navy tennis champion, who two months earlier had survived the sinking of the destroyer Gurkha - his first seagoing command - during the Norwegian campaign, for which he received the DSO; Commander Keith Walter, flag lieutenant and signal officer, Paymaster Lieutenant-Commander Bill Farrell, the admiral's secretary, who had never had this type of job before and who two weeks earlier was running Jersey Airport, and Paymaster-Lieutenant John Rennie. All looked weary from hours at sea, which had been not a cruise but a gruelling spell of thrashing out a 'rough and ready' organization to administer the new fleet. Jeffery, in particular, was showing the strain of a man who lived on his nerves - a strain that was to end tragically when he hanged himself in the Renown several months later.
Although it was now twilight into the Sabbath, Somerville refused to relax, and as soon as the hardware of his command had been taken inboard, he cleared the lower deck. In no uncertain terms he informed us that the objective of Force H was to hit the German and Italian fleets in the Mediterranean as hard as we could to relieve the beleaguered garrison in Malta. We believed him because there was no mention of the French fleet. Oran was still a place on the map to us, but it was a name to become linked with treachery.
For the next two days there was a succession of comings and goings up and down the gangways of the Hood. Never had I - a decimal in a vast permutation of naval figures - seen so much 'scrambled egg' assembled in one spot. Within hours of arriving, somerville left the Hood for 'The Mount', the eighteenth-century residence halfway up the Rock, to converse with his old friend Admiral Sir Dudley North, who in effect was in command of the area but who had been superseded unofficially by his junior.
This informal get-together heralded a further 'top brass' conference in the Hood that evening. Our quartermasters were on the top line for vigilance as a bevy of braid arrived, until congregated in the admiral's day cabin were North, Vice-Admiral 'Nutty' Wells, commanding aircraft-carriers, who felt spumed because he was not in charge of Force H, Captain Cedric 'Hooky' Holland, commanding officer of the Ark Royal, the captains of the Resolution, Valiant, Arethusa and Enterprise, and the commanding officers of the Eighth and Thirteenth Destroyer Flotillas. It was a top-secret conference, and not a word of it leaked out to the ship's company. Only thirty years later, on examining official records, did I know of the full import of the briefing by somerville, who held centre stage. In a grim atmosphere and one which lacked even the odd flashes of impromptu quasi-heroic humour, he informed his command that under the terms of the armistice France was required to deliver her fleet for demilitarization under German or Italian control. The British Government, however, were demanding that the French Navy should consider four alternatives - sail all warships to British harbours and fight on, put in to British or West Indian ports, so that crews could be repatriated, demilitarize their vessels immediately or scuttle. Somerville added menacingly, but not really meaning it: 'Should the French be unwilling to adopt any of the above measures it will then be necessary to show that we are in earnest by offensive action without endangering the French ships by our own action..
In revealing the plans for Catapult, scheduled for 3 July, he said that Holland would embark in the destroyer Foxhound for Oran to negotiate with the French. If they did not acquiesce, he proposed that the Hood should 'fire a few rounds, or the Ark Royal aircraft drop bombs close to, but not actually hitting the French ships'. Should these tactics not work, he gave specific instructions that the priority targets for the guns of Force H should be the Dunkerque, the 'ami' of the Hood, with whom we had operated the previous year, and the 26,500-ton new battle cruiser, Strasbourg. The secondary targets were to be the older 22,000-ton battleships Bretagne and Provence, designed in 1912, and then other warships in order of size.
'If the French offer organised any spirited resistance we may need to develop a full offensive on their ships and shore batteries, with all the means at our disposal,' he warned. 'In this case the code word Anvil will be signalled to all our forces. Senior officers are then to take all necessary action to crush the resistance, ceasing fire as soon as it is apparent that the French are no longer resisting..
The next day, Somerville conferred again with Holland and Lieutenant-Commanders A. Y. Spearman and G.P.S. Davies, all of whom had been liaison officers with the French Navy.
But events were rapidly overhauling the sympathetic attitude of Somerville and his entourage. At 1425 that day an Admiralty message alerted him to ready Catapult for launching on 3 July. It also prescribed these four alternatives to be put to the French:
1. Sail your ships to British harbours and fight with us.
2. Steam to Britain and hand over your vessels.
3. De- militarize your ships to our satisfaction.
4. Sink your ships where they are.
Somerville was more impressed by the opinions of the former liaison officers and tried to temper the Admiralty's firmness by signalling that force should be avoided' at all costs'. As a compromise he suggested that, if the French rejected the Admiralty's first alternative, they should be invited to sail with a skeleton steaming party and allow themselves to be captured by Force H, with the proviso that at the end of the war their ships would be returned. He also wanted the third and fourth alternatives to be an invitation and not ultimatums.
The signal and cypher offices in the Hood were at their busiest of the war as detailed instructions went back and forth, but that evening in a long message somerville was rebuked by the Admiralty and icily told -if the airways could be that cold -that his proposals were unacceptable. He was informed weightily: 'It is the firm intention of HMG that if the French will not accept any alternatives, which are being sent you, their ships must be destroyed. ' This did signify that new instructions were being despatched, and sure enough they arrived in the early hours of 2 July in four 'Most Secret' messages, which superseded any other orders. On the face of it, the four alternatives had barely altered. The third one had been changed to' sail their ships with reduced crews to some French port in the West Indies, such as Martinique' for demilitarization under British or United States jurisdiction. A concession had been written in, however, that if it were suggested the French should disarm at their berths in Oran within six hours, this should be accepted.
Telegraphists in the wireless office did not sleep that night. A full version of the terms to be sent to Oran was transmitted, and then at 0113 came a third, longer message which outlined some of the arguments which could be put to the French. The Admiralty insisted that, although no time limit was being set for acceptance, it was imperative that Catapult should be completed during daylight of 3 July.
The next morning, 2 July, there was another parade of senior officers to the Hood when the final phases of the operation were thrashed out, although most were under the misapprehension still that Catapult would not become Anvil, when Force H would be expected to belch out a devastating denunciation of their reneging ally.
Even as a signal boy I had a better knowledge, although limited, of what was going on than men in other branches. We were constantly being quizzed by others with 'What's buzzing, cousin?' or 'What hunts, bunts?' It was more than we dare do to reveal classified information, and at times we smugly adopted an attitude of '1 know more than you do, mate.' But on this occasion we were all in the dark as all signals from London were in code. With the amount of fuel and ammunition that the Hood had taken on board during the last forty-eight hours, no one could deny that a 'stunt' was on. I genuinely believed that we were about to seek out and destroy the Italian fleet.
It seemed certain that we would leave that night, for our boilers were fully fired and around us curled smoke from the sixteen other ships of Force H. It was a surprise when the pipe came for sea duty men to fall in at 1600. Most of us expected to sail under cover of darkness, but it was a bright evening, with exceptional visibility for the many pro-Axis observers at Algeciras just across the Spanish border.
In company with the Ark Royal, Valiant, Resolution, Arethusa, Enterprise and screen of eleven destroyers, we cleared the Rock at 1700, worked up to seventeen knots and zigzagged. Soon after, Captain Glennie cleared the mess-deck smokescreen of speculation by broadcasting to the ship's company that we were bound for Oran - or, to put it correctly, to nearby Mers-el-Kebir - to try to persuade the French fleet to join us. He gave full details of the ultimatum and also informed us that negotiators would be conferring with our' old friend' the stocky, fifty-nine-year-old Vice-Admiral Gensoul, under whose orders the Hood had been during the Gneisenau panic in 1939 and who was known to be' a hundred per cent pro British'.
This announcement caused mixed feelings on the mess decks that night. The general opinion was that it would not come to the point when we would be firing on allies. For me it was a sickening idea, and I honestly thought it would never happen. Similar broadcasts were being made in other ships of the force as Somerville made a general signal explaining the mission. We had 195 nautical miles to go to Oran, and for most of that night Somerville was awake studying the signals that kept the cypher office at full stretch. Just before midnight the distastefulness of the operation was underlined in a message from First Lord A. V. Alexander. He wirelessed: 'You are charged with one of the most disagreeable and difficult tasks that a British admiral has ever been faced with, but we have complete confidence in you and rely on you to carry it out relentlessly.' The midnight oil was also being burnt at the Admiralty, for at 0135 Somerville was instructed that, although a time limit had not been set for French acceptance, it was still imperative Catapult be completed during daylight hours on 3 July.
In between these signals there was a more immediate emergency. A torpedo exploded ahead of the destroyer Vortigern. With her sister Vidette she was detached to hunt for a U-boat. For more than an hour they 'pinged' their Asdics, but they failed to get an echo and returned to the escort screen. This was the only scare on the passage to Mers-el-Kebir, where we arrived at 0810. Five hours earlier the destroyer Foxhound, with negotiators Captain Holland and Lieutenant-Commanders Spearman and Davies on board, had been detached from Force H with orders to push on to Oran at full speed. Foxhound beat the Hood by an hour to the harbour but had to wait for another hour before being given permission to enter .
It was a shimmering hot morning, and we were at action stations already. I was 'closed up' on the flag deck and consequently had a grandstand view of the historic events being played out before me. There were few flag signals to be executed at this stage, and it was just a question of standing and watching and trying to keep out of the stultifying sun as it turned my action rig into a cloying sack of sweat. Looking towards the dun-coloured hills cloaking Oran, the scene was tranquil enough. Three miles to the west of Oran harbour I could see a forest of masts. This then was the French fleet moored at Mers-el-Kebir. In addition to the two battle cruisers and two veteran battleships, it also included the seaplane-carrier, Commandant Teste and six large destroyers. An antisubmarine net boom screened the harbour entrance. The ships themselves had a further protection in the form of a thirty-foot high mole which ran half a mile from the shore; another half a mile was still being built, but this had a stretch of anti-submarine nets on either side, with access through a six-hundred-foot wide gate. At Santon, the highest hill at a thousand feet, was a battery of four 7.5-inch guns, of which I was soon to know more.
The peace was soon broken by the buzzing of patrols from the Ark Royal, which could put into the air thirty torpedo-spotter reconnaissance planes and twenty-four fighters. Our entire force steamed backwards and forwards menacingly in line ahead parallel to the coast, our smoke blackening the azure sky in portent of the power we had at our disposal. The Hood led the formation, followed by the Resolution and Valiant; Arethusa was on the starboard bow and Enterprise on the port bow, with the screen of destroyers outside them. To seaward, just in sight from the Hood, was the Ark and her destroyers. Occasionally I glimpsed Somerville on his bridge. He looked pallid, drawn and haggard after a night without sleep, but I heard from the messengers that he was maintaining his usual crackling banter, although the familiar crossword puzzle he kept by his chair for solving during long spells of waiting was missing. Every now and then he would come out on to the wings of the bridge and clamp his binoculars to his eyes, as an Aldis lamp winked from the Foxhound. He dare not let his attention wander, for on the one hand signals were made before him and on the other was a stream of instructions from the Admiralty. As soon as a coded message came in from London, he would be informed by telephone by the WT department. He would let a few minutes elapse and then ring his secretary, Lieutenant-Commander Farrell, and Paymaster-Lieutenant Rennie, secretary to the chief of staff, for a decoded version long before one could be reasonably expected.
As the Hood traversed across the harbour mouth, our rangefinders twirled, while all the fifteen-inch turrets were trained and readjusted at the end of each turnabout. Until the force repeated these long sweeps, like impatient caged lions, the French genuinely believed that we were on our way to tackle the Italian fleet. Through a telescope I could see the comings and goings in the harbour, although I was obviously unaware at this stage of what was actually happening. First the admiral's barge from the Dunkerque arrived alongside the Foxhound; then the destroyer weighed anchor, leaving her motor-boat, in which were Holland, Spearman and Davies, heading for the Dunkerque. Halfway between the inner boom and the mole they were met by the admiral's barge again and stopped. The French boat scuttled back to its parent ship, returned again to the negotiators' craft and then went to the Dunkerque yet again. This little charade was played out for two hours until just before 1130, when Holland and his party climbed onboard the Foxhound. Reports of proceedings and eye-witness accounts have revealed since that Admiral Gensoul refused to see the British officers but considered the ultimatum which was handed over. He adamantly rejected it but assured somerville that he would not allow his ships to become German possessions and finally resolved to' defend himself by every means at his disposal'.
The Hood was using her twenty-inch signal projector to keep in touch with the Foxhound by light, and somerville had transmitted the intention that he would not allow the French ships to leave harbour unless the terms were accepted and that the ultimatum would expire at 1430. Again we saw the Foxhound's motor-boat go in the direction of the Dunkerque, and then the destroyer take up a position outside the boom. Soon the motor-boat chugged back. For nearly an hour around noon there was an uneasy calm. By now the heat below and above decks in the Hood was of bludgeoning intensity. Although I was in one of the airiest parts of the ship, the hot deck drew my feet through the soles of thick shoes. To touch a handrail was like putting one's fingers on the handle of a poker which had been left in a fire for hours.
Captain Glennie took advantage of this lull to pipe 'Cooks to the galley'. It relieved the waiting, if little else. One rating from each position was detailed to collect action rations from the main galley on the starboard side above the boys' mess deck. Whoever devised the menu that day had little idea of the sweltering conditions we would face, for up to us came hot soup, followed by the usual great door-stepped bully beef sandwiches, or' corned dog' as we called it. Rum had been issued, but I was not yet eighteen and 'not entitled', so I sipped the 'limers' normally served to all ratings in hot climates, which by the time it reached me was warm. The officers were barely better off. Hot stew, with rock cakes as a dessert, was their fare. While we were eating, more serious developments had been taking place in the harbour. The wisps of smoke coming from the French fleet suddenly turned into spiralling plumes; bugles sounded, awnings were furled. Lights blinked back and forth from the Foxhound to the Hood, and the number of aircraft keeping surveillance over the town increased to twenty. A sudden flurry of reports to Somerville indicated that Gensoul planned to sail his fleet.
At 1236 our twenty-inch projector flashed this message from Somerville to Holland in the Foxhound: 'Presume there is no alternative to Anvil.' After a few minutes the reply came: ' Am afraid not. Am waiting in V IS touch in case acceptance before expiration time.' After this Somerville's staff hurried up to the admiral's bridge. At this snap conference it was revealed that Gensoul had ordered the opening of the harbour boom to admit three tugs. It was also reported that four submarines were on the move. Somerville's response was to signal Ark Royal's aircraft to mine the entrance. His order was soon obeyed and we could see the splashes as four mines were dropped.
The ultimatum was due to expire at 1330 local time, and fifteen minutes before this Somerville kept his options open by making this light signal to Holland: 'Does anything you have said prevent me opening fire?' A heavy-hearted Holland, who genuinely liked the French officers with whom he was negotiating, answered: 'Nothing I have said, since terms were not discussed, only handed in and reply received. I would suggest there might be a chance of avoiding Anvil if Foxhound went in to V /S touch and asked if there was further message before force employed.'
Several minutes later - after the Foxhound had moved in closer to the harbour - Somerville tried again. 'Pass to Gensoul,' he signalled. 'If you accept the terms, hoist a large square flag at the masthead, otherwise I must open fire at 1500. Your harbour is mined.'
The ship's company were being informed intermittently by broadcasts of the situation. Two loudspeakers on the flag deck kept us up to date, but most of the signalmen were reading the light messages which were being flashed to and fro. However, when Foxhound relayed Somerville's last demand to the Dunkerque, few of us could understand. To avoid mistakes, Holland had passed it in French.
The aerial mining was regarded by Gensoul as the initial belligerent act, and by now it seemed that he would open fire first, for observers in the patrolling Swordfish aircraft reported that the turrets of the Dunkerque, Strasbourg and Bretagne were trained on the Hood and that tugs were pushing them from their moorings. Most of us watching the painfully slow proceedings were realizing now that Gensoul was playing for time. From the pacing up and down of Somerville on the bridge, we could tell that his patience was ebbing. At 1415 the Foxhound's projector was active again, transferring a message from Gensoul. It read: 'I have no intention of sailing. I have telegraphed my government and am awaiting their reply. Take no irrevocable step.'
This duel of light on the nerves seemed to have been resolved without injury to either force when fifteen minutes later Holland indicated by the Foxhound's projector that Gensoul was ready to meet him in the Dunkerque for 'honourable discussion'. Unfortunately this clashed with Somerville's peremptory warning: ' Accept our terms or abandon your ships as I must destroy them at 1530.' Holland did not think it necessary to repeat this last message to Gensoul. At 1500 I watched the Foxhound's motor-boat cast off again. It was more than seven miles - or thirty minutes by boat - from the French flagship, and a strange, foreboding calm seemed to settle over Force H as the patrol was continued in line ahead.
For 2¼ hours the sun blazed down, and it was difficult not to lower one's eyelids against the glare and nod off. Boredom began to settle in for us, but Somerville was being prodded into action by Churchill. Four hours earlier Gensoul had wirelessed the French Admiralty that he was being threatened by a massive British force, and this had led Admiral Darlan to direct all ships in the western Mediterranean - especially the Third Squadron and Algiers Squadron - to steam immediately for Oran to 'meet force with force'. This signal had been picked up by British Intelligence and brought this timely reminder from Churchill to Somerville at 1646: 'Settle matters quickly or you will have reinforcements to deal with.'
Of course, the average rating, like myself, was unaware of this explosive order from Churchill. During the last six hours the dilemma of opening fire had been the continual subject of an escalating debate. I gathered that most of our officers hoped that it would not be necessary. The lower deck were not so compassionate now, and the attitude of many was: 'They've chucked it in, so we've every right to sink 'em.'
With the pressure from Whitehall building, and not wishing to attack in darkness, Somerville made up his mind. Just before 1700 I saw his messenger, Leading Signalman Lewington, who spoke fluent French, scuttle to the projector, which soon blinked out: 'If one of British proposals is not accepted by 1730 BSM I must sink your ships.' The reply was sent in English from the Dunkerque. Eagerly we all spelt it out on the flag deck. It read: 'Do not create the irreparable.'
The flag deck was coming to life again now, and a few minutes later Chief Yeoman Thomas called down the voice-pipe to us. Leading Signalman Ned Johns answered and then turned to Marine Holding, my friend Signal Boy Bell and myself to tell us to string together and hoist the series of flags ZTH I - readiness for instant action. As they fluttered to the starboard masthead, I still could not believe that for the first time in the war our fifteen-inch guns would be hurling tons of high explosives - and on helpless friends at that!
As we turned our telescopes towards the harbour again, there was a burst of searchlight activity from the Dunkerque, then from the Foxhound to the Hood. It was Holland's final communication, the basis of which was that he had managed to squeeze a compromise from the French. ' Admiral Gensoul says crews being reduced,' it ran, ' and if threatened by enemy would go to Martinique, or USA, but this not quite our proposition. Can get no nearer.' This last signal did not reach Somerville until one minute before the deadline. Still the dreaded moment of opening fire was delayed. For nearly half an hour, as the sun dipped, I clutched the cooling rail on the flag deck, watching for any sign that would mean a reprieve for both sides. Somerville came out on the wings of the bridge. Outwardly he seemed cool but then I thought that was the difference between myself and anyone who wore such heavy gold braid !
In Mers-el-Kebir tugs began bustling around the wharves; there appeared to be movement among the cram of ships; darker, thicker smoke swept skywards. Over the town, strike aircraft circled like bull-nosed vultures, waiting for the moment to descend and tear asunder. In the Hood all guns were cleared as Force H inclined more towards the coast. In the spotting-top there was a grotesque array of steel helmets with binoculars sprouting from beneath the brims. Somerville was no longer on the wings of the bridge. The Foxhound's motor-boat emerged from the harbour.
The voice-pipe squealed. Leading Signalman Johns answered it, listened, rapped out 'Yes, sir,' looked at Holding, Bell and myself and shouted: 'Flag 5 - Hoist.' The three of us took up the white and red horizontal halved piece of bunting that signified 'Open fire - may be obeyed as soon as seen.' My fingers trembled as I performed my task of putting an Inglefield clip on the flag's head. Bell was working on the bottom of it, while Holding hoisted as soon as we had clipped on. The bunting slid easily up the halyards to the starboard masthead.
The response was immediate. Just as I turned round to watch, the guns of the Resolution and Valiant roared in murderous hair-trigger reaction. Then came the ting-ting of our firing bell. Seconds later my ears felt as if they had been sandwiched between two manhole covers. The concussion of the Hood's eight fifteen-inch guns, screaming in horrendous harmony, shook the flag deck violently. In line with Somerville's original plan, the first salvoes were not intended to land in the harbour. I found myself counting off the seconds. First the shells from the older battleships erupted the sea north of the harbour, and then twenty seconds later the Hood's salvoes sent up high, cascading water-spouts. It seemed as if after all we were not to be involved in a full-scale battle, for these shots were frighteners.
Then to my horror the thunder continued and the next salvoes enfiladed the masts alongside the mole. The French were trapped in the close confines of the harbour, and for the next ten minutes the old cliche of shooting fish in a barrel kept going through my mind, as from a range of fifteen thousand yards Mers-el-Kebir was pulverized. We were using GIC (Gunnery Information Centre) concentration, with Ark's aircraft spotting our fall of shot. With the line of firing from the north-west and Force H on a steady, easterly course, it meant that Gensoul's vessels on our starboard quarter could not bring all their guns to bear because of being masked by Fort Santon.
It was an awesome sight as shells continued to plunge into the harbour area. A massive cloak of smoke hung over the town and this would change colour as great orange flashes sent wreckage up to four hundred feet. Intermingled with this were sheets of water and oil. The smell of burning fuel and cordite soured the air, even at this range. Suddenly pinpoints of amber light punctuated the blackness. Above the roar of our guns came the high-pitched, blood-curdling, crescendoing, low whine of being under fire ourselves by warships for the first time. There were vivid red flashes as a salvo fell just short of the starboard side. Within seconds came a series of blue flashes. Later I learnt that each French ship's salvoes exploded in a different colour to make it easier to judge their fall of shot. The Dunkerque's were red and the Strasbourg's green.
These first ranging shots seemed so ineffective that my terror subsided and I watched for more. This time I could actually see some approaching, surprisingly lazily, end for end and visible throughout the whole of their trajectory. I was told afterwards that one of the French capital ships must have had defective driving bands and this was causing the slow motion and tumbling phenomenon.
In the distance I spotted Holland's motor-boat clearing the harbour and running into a barrage of gunfire as it approached the Foxhound. Then the destroyer put down a smokescreen, and they were lost to view. It was also becoming hazardous for the Hood by now. Suddenly we were straddled by one salvo. Splinters thudded into one funnel and along our starboard side. But our only casualties were a lieutenant and a rating on the boat deck, who were slightly wounded. The sea around was foaming continually now as the French bombardment heightened. This further menace came from the shore battery at Fort Santon, which the Arethusa and Enterprise were not engaging too successfully, mainly because they were out of range. There were no coloured shell bursts now, and the impenetrable pall of smoke, which the evening breeze could not disperse, marked the end of the French navy's resistance. But the shore batteries continued to bedevil the Hood, and our guns were turned on them just before 1810. By now 13.4-inch shells from Forts Santon, Canastel, Gambetta and Espagnole were peppering not only the line of heavy ships but also the flanking destroyers. The bombardment was becoming more accurate, and several ships were straddled without being damaged.
I was brought back to my duties by Somerville's peremptory order of a change of course to 180 degrees port. With Bell and Holding I ran up 18 Blue. At the same time every ship was ordered to 'make smoke' to obscure us from the explosive torment coming from the shore. As we turned to seaward, I looked back on the pulsating ball of fire which was once Mers-el-Kebir.
At 1812 the voice-pipe came alive again. 'Flag six ... hoist,' yelled Johns, during a gap in the cacophony of gunfire and the screaming aircraft. We grabbed the yellow and blue vertically halved flag, and it shot to the masthead. Thankfully, it was the cease-fire. Somerville had made this decision because of repeated signals by wireless from Gensoul to halt the slaughter so that the wounded could be taken ashore. The Hood had unleashed fifty-six rounds of fifteen-inch shells and 120 four-inchers, or more than sixty tons of high explosive. A total of two hundred tons had rained on the French ships.
For the next twenty minutes an uneasy silence surrounded the Hood amid the smoke she made. Then at 1835 somerville signalled Gensoul: 'Unless I see your ships sinking I shall open fire again.' He was to admit later: 'My appreciation of the situation at this time was that resistance from the French ships had ceased and that by ceasing fire I should give them an opportunity to abandon their ships and thus avoid further loss of life. Since the French knew the entrance to the harbour had been mined, I felt positive that no attempt would be made by them to put to sea.'
Admirals are mere mortals, too. In the confusion of the smoke Somerville had confused himself.
Chapter 17- The Pursuit of Unhappiness
Throughout the operation, Admiral Gensoul had played for time, and in the immediate moment after more than a thousand of his men had died, he still bartered minutes and seconds to save a section of his fleet. Earlier he had visualized an escape route past Oran and clear of the aircraft-sown mines. He achieved this by ordering his marines to machine-gun the buoys mooring the anti-submarine nets. When they had sunk, a channel of more than three cables in width was created. Half an hour before the one-sided battle began, he had received the signal from Admiral Darlan that all French forces in the western Mediterranean had been ordered to rush to his aid. 'You will then take these forces under your command,' he was told. With this intention Gensoul had instructed all his ships to make for the gap in the submarine screens.
Behind the chaos created by British guns, the admiral attempted to salvage apart of his fleet. The super destroyers Volta, Terrible, Lynx, Tigre and Kersaint were first into the open sea, and the battle cruiser Strasbourg, which had not suffered a single direct hit, followed them.
In his self-imposed smokescreen somerville relaxed for a fateful twelve minutes. At 1818 he discounted a carrier pilot's report that a ship of the Dunkerque class was escaping and heading eastwards. Then at 1830 another sighting from the air put the Strasbourg and the five destroyers steaming to the east and opposite Canastel. It was only at this point that we on the flag deck realized that something was amiss. Staff officers began to rush in a hive of activity to and from the admiral's bridge and the compass platform. somerville had made the tactical blunder of keeping to the west, instead of maintaining a watch to the north-east of Oran to cut off a break-out towards Toulon in southern France. He had also relied too heavily on the barrier of mines. There was nothing to do now but to give chase, so at 1838 the Hood was ordered to turn about to try to catch the Strasbourg, which was ten miles to the north-west, working up to twenty-eight knots and obscured by smoke. Five minutes later the Arethusa, the Enterprise and the destroyer screen shot ahead of us into the vanguard as a precaution, in case we and the Valiant and Resolution had to deal with the Dunkerque, which might also have slipped by the nets. It soon became obvious that the Strasbourg, now joined by six more destroyers from Oran, was the only big fish to have eluded the trap, and the Hood parted company from the two older battleships and surged ahead of Force H in pursuit.
As we emerged from the smoke and just before hitting top speed of thirty-two knots, our look-outs sighted a small craft flying the strange combination of a white flag and a white ensign. It was Holland's motor-boat, which had run out of petrol after dodging the bombardment for fifteen miles. Everyone on our upper deck cheered as we swept past.
I had been at my station on the flag deck for nearly twelve hours now, and we were still to have more action, this time the bravest I have ever seen. Where there had been six destroyers in our screen on the starboard wing, there was unaccountably a seventh, and this interloper was heading straight for the Hood at full speed. It was the French light cruiser Rigault de Genouilly, which had attempted to join the Strasbourg from Oran, had failed to keep up and had turned back again. She was close to the shore and making a torpedo run on the Hood. From twelve thousand yards the Arethusa opened fire; from eighteen thousand yards the Enterprise joined in; the Hood's guns roared again, too, at this mosquito which might have a deadly sting. Three hits were observed on the lone raider, but before she veered away the Hood had to veer, too. The Rigault de Genouilly managed to unloose two torpedoes, and we swung 180 degrees off course to port to avoid them. I looked back and saw the bubbles boil by well astern of us.
It seemed poetic justice to me that this futile but gallant attempt against immense odds should end in survival as the Frenchman eluded us -but only for a day. The Rigault de Genouilly regained the shambled safety of Oran only to be sunk by the British submarine Pandora when on the way to Algiers.
By now we were told that it was hoped to halt, or at least slow, the speeding Strasbourg by an air strike from the Ark Royal. Six Swordfish and three Skuas, carrying between them four 250-pound semi-armour piercing bombs and eight twenty-pounders, found it easy to track her down by following the involuntary smokescreen she was emitting through a shell splinter hole in a funnel. But that was the limit of their success. The French anti-aircraft barrage was of such intensity that three planes were shot down. The closest they got to the Strasbourg was a bomb thirty yards off her stern. But a misleading report claimed that there had been one hit, and this prompted Somerville to continue the pursuit.
We, the attackers, were also the target for the French Air Force. From 1930 French reconnaissance planes, followed by bombers, tailed us. High-angle anti-aircraft fire warded off their half-hearted attempts to bomb. A stick of four exploded fifty yards from the Wrestler, and surprisingly the Hood was not the main target.
Meanwhile the Strasbourg and destroyers were drawing further ahead. Just after 2000 they were plotted as being twenty-five miles in front, with the distance increasing every minute. In the gloaming I could see another exodus of officers to the admiral's bridge. Then at 2020, a quarter of an hour before sunset, came the order from Somerville to return to Oran. Somerville was sick of the whole nasty business and did not relish putting any of his ships at risk just to stop the French warships falling into German or Italian hands.
Our course was altered to the west, and the Admiralty were informed that Force H would stay in the vicinity of Oran during the night to make air attacks on ships in harbour at dawn. From this message it is apparent that Somerville had no stomach for turning his fleet's firepower on the French survivors again. He did order, however, another aircraft strike on the Strasbourg. It was made by six Swordfish in the dark, and although one torpedo seemed to explode under the battle cruiser's stern and another amidships, there was no sign of her slowing. The Admiralty were confused about Somerville's intentions, for as late as 2200, when I at last left the flag deck, they signalled him to race after the Strasbourg again, if the Swordfish had been successful, but by this time the Hood was off to Oran again.
It was eerily quiet as we approached the battered French harbour. Columns of smoke were "still spuming up as the ship's company prepared for a night of vigilance, although at 2130 the devious Gensoul had signalled Somerville: 'Warships at Mers-el-Kebir hors de combat. Am evacuating personnel from ships.' Nevertheless, Somerville insisted that the Ark Royal must prepare for another strike on the stricken Dunkerque, now aground on a sandbank. Around midnight our force became shrouded in fog, and we thought that this mercy would allow us some sleep. At 0330 it began to lift, and through the gloom we sighted the Ark. But this was only a momentary clearance. By 0420 it was thicker than before. Somerville abandoned the strike, and the entire force set course for Gibraltar.
We arrived at the Rock at 1900 on 4 July. Coincidentally the Strasbourg reached Toulon about the same time to what was described later as a 'wild acclamation, not only from every ship in Toulon, but most of the population'. When I finally got below at 2200 the messdecks were quiet. Everyone was dog tired, and off-duty watches were collapsed allover the ship. Many, like myself, were too exhausted to sling their hammocks. I joined a bunch of friends dozing on top of the hammock stowage. They were still fully dressed, with anti-flash gear on.
More dirty work was being shaped for us, however. All that night we refuelled and ammunitioned ship, for Somerville had been ordered to take Force H to sea at dawn and head for Dakar, where the Richelieu was to be given the Oran treatment. Signals were already streaming backwards and forwards from London. In Tangier the British consul general sent this 'Most Immediate' message to the War Cabinet: 'French military attache has just told me French Air Force, based at Port Lyautey, immediate objective is Hood.'' It was relayed on to the Hood, and sure enough it was correct. An hour after midnight unidentified aircraft were over Gibraltar. Their efforts surprised the Hood, but their bombs fell in the sea.
During the hours of darkness Somerville had been communicating with the Admiralty about the state of the Dunkerque at Mers-el-Kebir. Reconnaissance flights over the French battle cruiser could not assess accurately her injuries. A message from the French, which had been intercepted, also stated: 'The damage to the Dunkerque is minimal and the ship will soon be repaired.' In view of this the Admiralty cancelled the dawn sailing for Dakar and insisted that Somerville should formulate new plans for attacking again, unless he was' certain that the Dunkerque could not be refloated and repaired in less than a year'. The deadline given was Saturday, 6 J uly.
All the next morning Somerville's flag staff and the commanding officers of Force H sat down around the big blue-baize table in his cabin to work out Operation Lever. I heard through the grapevine that the Hood was to open the firing, and indeed this was communicated to the Admiralty in a signal made just before the meeting broke off for lunch. Whether Somerville and his advisers ate and drank themselves into a more benevolent mood, I did not know, but during the afternoon session there was a change of opinion because it was thought that renewal of the bombardment would bring further loss of French lives ashore. At 1800 that evening Somerville wirelessed the Admiralty seeking a compromise which would not embitter France to take more active measures against British warships. Oblivious to the fact that we had been under air attack already from our ex-allies, the Admiralty's alternative was that Somerville should warn the French or get them to agree to our sending a demolition party to the Dunkerque. The Hood was only two hours from sailing, and still the method of destruction had not been approved.
At 2000 we put to sea, with Captain Glennie making the ominous announcement that the force were returning to Oran; what for, we were not told. Somerville was becoming more devious now, and the fifteen ships - the Resolution and a destroyer were left in Gibraltar - steered a feint course into the Atlantic and then at nightfall cruised back into the Mediterranean and increased speed to twenty-three knots.
In the early hours of that night, as the off-duty watches slept in the Hood, Somerville was negotiating with his superiors about the form of attack. As the Dunkerque was aground close to the village of St Andre, and he feared a slaughter of civilians if the guns of the Hood and the Valiant were employed, he suggested that the Ark Royal's torpedo bombers should be used. At 0250, just six hours before the bombardment was due to open, the Admiralty agreed to cancel it. Instead Somerville was ordered to set up continuous attacks by aircraft until the Dunkerque was 'thoroughly damaged'. Through the early hours of the morning the flag staff were sending out counter-orders for Operation Lever to the commanding officers of the force. In the Ark there were feverish preparations to ensure that the first aircraft took off just after 0500.
I awoke at six that morning - 6 July - to hear that the Hood was to stay on station with the Ark and her screen of destroyers ninety miles from Oran. We spent the next half hour or so watching the carrier's Swordfish take off in three waves. All twelve of the old' string-bags' returned after letting loose eleven torpedoes. They left the Dunkerque wreathed in smoke, although it is doubtful whether the five projectiles which skewered into her exploded. I learned later that the biggest explosion was caused by the torpedoing of the patrol boat Terre Neuve nearby. This triggered a tremendous blast through forty-four depth charges, which breached the Dunkerque's hull.
After briefings had been studied, Somerville was doubtful whether the Dunkerque had been destroyed. Nevertheless, after three hours he ordered our return to Gibraltar. We got there at 1830 on a beerless Saturday evening (a convoy had failed to arrive). I stayed on board to write home to my mother in censor's approved style that we had seen action at Oran, but we were not allowed to name ships.
In a letter to his wife, Somerville stated: 'It doesn't seem to worry the sailors at all, as they never "had no use for the French bastards," but to all of us senior officers it's simply incredible and revolting.' Somerville did not know his men. Revolting it is still to me, for the carnage of shooting into that barrel of fish which was Mers-el-Kebir was brought home to me years later when the French version of the devastation was released in Britain.
The revulsion of the French at the time was typified by a note which was sent to the Hood from surviving officers living in a villa at Oran. It said: 'The captain and officers of the Dunkerque inform you of the death for the honour of their flags on 3rd and 6th July, 1940 of nine officers and 200 men of their ship. They return to you herewith the souvenirs they had of their comrades in arms of the Royal Navy, in whom they had placed all their trust. And they express to you on this occasion all their bitter sadness and their disgust at seeing these comrades having no hesitation in soiling the glorious flag of St George with an ineffaceable stain - that of an assassin..
With the note were mementoes - cap ribbons, the ship's crest and badges - which the Hood's crew had sent to the Dunkerque after serving under the French flag the previous year. Nearly 1,300 officers and men had died; four warships, totalling around 75,000 tons had been destroyed or put out of action; the remainder of the French fleet reached Toulon but was never used by Germany. Was it worth it? I believe that, even today, the bitter memories of Oran still linger on for the French and are responsible for the hostility and recrimination against Britain which exist in the European Common Market.
Chapter 18- Testing the Italians
The buzz was that for the next few weeks Force H would be involved in a training programme off Gibraltar. At least this was the plan of Somerville, whp during the momentous happenings of the last week considered that this' scratch fleet' was just that. He sought time to develop a team spirit among the crews and to mould his commanding officers into a group who acted as one -and that meant anticipating his thoughts and obeying his orders implicitly.
The Admiralty had different ideas, and from the moment we returned from Operation Lever, Somerville was inundated with signals urging him to mount a raid into the central Mediterranean to test the power of the Italian fleet. It was to be a diversionary action to shield two convoys from Malta to Alexandria and was to involve a strike from the east by Admiral Cunningham's fleet, based at Alexandria.
In the eight days we had been under his command it had become obvious even to the lower deck that thankfully our new admiral was a cautious type who did not believe in wasting ships and men on hopeless causes. Somerville bore out our opinion by telling the Admiralty in forthright terms that their strategy was conceived wrongly. It meant taking crews who were 'green' to air attacks into the Tyrrhenian Sea, which was ringed by enemy bases, once the force had penetrated the narrows between Sardinia and Africa. Instead he proposed that Force H should infiltrate as far as the waters south of Sardinia, where the Ark's aircraft would strike at Cagliari air base. This did not satisfy the Admiralty planners. They pressed for a bombardment by the Hood and the two old battleships. At the risk of being accused of having' cold feet' , Somerville again protested because the force would be hazarded by mines, coastal batteries, submarines and air attack if we were required to close to a range of around fourteen miles.
The wrangle by wireless went on inexplicably through the nights of 6 and 7 July. The stupidity of some of the Admiralty signals caused Somerville to complain that many were initiated in the small hours and this explained their lack of clear thinking in Whitehall. Finally, as time was running out, he got his way. It was to be Cagliari and no farther, with only the A rk' s aircraft involved.
All this was outlined to the Hood's crew on the morning of 8 July, as we left Gibraltar, after only one full day there, in company with the Valiant, Resolution, Arethusa and Enterprise, the destroyers Faulkner, Foresight, Fearless, Foxhound and Escort of the Eighth Flotilla, Keppel, Douglas, Vortigern, Wishart and Watchman of the Thirteenth Flotilla, the cruiser Delhi, which had just joined the group -and, of course, the Ark. There was no , dummying' into the Atlantic this time. We were decoys, and subterfuge was not necessary. Over the broadcasting system we were warned by Captain Glennie that air attacks could be expected. At the same time Somerville signalled all ships in what was to become a laughable under-statement: 'Object of practice is to test the quality and price of ice cream.' The ice cream? This was the admiral's way of referring to the Italians. The 'practice' meant that we went immediately to relaxed action stations, and this state did not alter all that day or through the night of high humidity, when we ploughed on towards an area south-east of Majorca, where the Ark's aircraft were to fly off .
The weather was superb on Tuesday 9 July as I leaned on the flag-deck rail to watch the destroyers zigzagging on both our flanks. Was there really a war on ? Only the battle bowler-hatted brigades on the upper deck prevented this from looking a typical peacetime scene, one in which the Hood had been involved for the last twenty years. The day passed pleasantly enough, with the searing sun tempered by a light breeze, as we more or less lazed and sunbathed away the hours. We were roused in the early afternoon by the alarm to arms -three high-pitched bugle bars, dubbed by the matelots as 'There's a bomber overhead.' From the flag deck I could see a dot in the sky, circling the fleet. It was identified as an Italian Cant flying-boat and was too high to be dealt with by our anti-aircraft guns. After a minute or so this spy disappeared. We knew that this was possibly a messenger of doom who would sound the tally-ho for the hunting packs, and the opportunity of a few minutes respite was taken to detail us off for tea. I never finished mine.
It was just before 1600 when another alarm to arms stopped me in mid-sip of my mug of tea and in a mouthful of jam. I grabbed my steel helmet and dashed up the ladders to my action station. As I made for the flag deck, our anti-aircraft guns opened up. I was just clambering to the top of the flag-deck ladder when a great roar engulfed the ship. An unseen hand seemed to pummel me in the chest, and I was hurled backwards down the iron rungs. I got up off the deck and felt a trickle of blood coming from my nose. Within seconds it had become a torrent and rushed down into my mouth. Chief Yeoman George Thomas poked his head over the top of the ladder and seeing all the blood inquired gently: ' Are you hurt, lad? What are you doing down there, anyway?' I replied plaintively: '1 don't want to play any more, Chief.' The 'plaything' which had just missed the Hood was a stick of bombs from six aircraft of Italy's Regia Aeronautica, now over us at high altitude. Gingerly I climbed the ladder. I wiped the blood away from my face with a handkerchief. My nose was duly inspected by the chief yeoman, who "decided it was 'just a scratch'. This was no time to worry about it, anyway. The racket from our pom-poms and four-inch anti-aircraft weapons cancelled out my fear of the bombs which were tumbling down from the planes above. The azure sky was pockmarked with grey smudges of bursting shells as the fleet maintained a tremendous barrage. The multiple machine-guns were crackling away, although it seemed perfectly obvious, even to someone as young and inexperienced as myself, that the raiders were hopelessly out of range. The Hood maintained top speed, but even so bomb bursts alongside sent shrapnel rattling against our sides.
Approximately five miles off I could see the Ark Royal, which was the main target. At times she disappeared behind huge columns of erupting sea as bombs plummeted around her. More than once I thought: 'She's had it this time.' But then the 'unsinkable Ark' would appear again from out of the Italian-made mist, like a fiery whale, with all her ack-ack guns spuming defiance. Suddenly, it was all over; the planes had gone; the cease-fire came. Our toiling gunners, stripped to the waist, were able to relax for a smoke, but only for thirty minutes. At 1750 the Italians were back in a tight formation of eighteen planes and using altitude again.
Somerville had a healthy respect for the accuracy of the raiders by now and ordered the fleet to 'stagger the line'. Up went a general shout of 'Here they come again.' I felt helpless on the flag deck as this second attack looked more concentrated. Sticks of bombs were screaming in closer, and tons of water were cascading on our deck. The Ark had managed to fly off her fighters, but the Italians had height in their favour. Smoke suddenly spouted from a plane heading for home, but it flew on. Then came another lull.
But the raiders returned. The pattern continued like this with two more waves of twenty-two bombers until 1840, when we were able to discard our steel helmets for the first time in nearly three hours, as darkness began to close in. Somerville was realizing that the cost of his ice cream was going to be very high if he continued to press on towards Cagliari. All that had been achieved was the certain destruction of one Italian plane by fighters and a claim, later refused, that the H ood had shot down a second. While we were at supper, Somerville signalled Vice-Admiral Wells in the Ark Royal: 'In view of the heavy scale bombing and the nature of our objective, do you think continuance of operations justified?' Wells had no doubts. 'Definitely not,' he replied by light from the ten-inch signal projector. The next thing we knew was a sudden divergence in course to 246 degrees and the reassuring voice of Captain Glennie telling us that the force were returning to Gibraltar . Somerville was disappointed at what he described as' an unsatisfactory outing'l and his frustration increased just when it seemed the fleet would enter Gibraltar without casualties. Off the Rock early on 11 July the lurking Italian submarine Marconi torpedoed the destroyer Escort and scuttled away. A tug managed to get the damaged ship in tow but had to abandon her and she sank.
Despite Somerville's dejection, the diversionary sortie had worked. The two British convoys arrived unmolested at Alexandria, while Cunningham's fleet, unhindered by the attentions of the Regia Aeronautica, had put to flight the Italian battle fleet off Calabria on 9 July. A direct hit had been scored on the flagship of Admiral Riccardi, who coincidentally had been dined in the Hood by Cunningham two years earlier.
During the next nineteen days we were given a rest, but somerville was also able to initiate his somewhat rough training period. There were daytime visits by Italian reconnaissance aircraft and one night raid. But our morale was high, as in watches we were able to visit Sandy Bay and tan ourselves on the beach. Laughable Italian claims also established a team spirit in the force. One of their official communiques proclaimed: 'Positive information has been obtained that in the course of the action in the zone of the Balearic Islands, Italian aeroplanes inflicted heavy damage on, and set fire to, the Hood. The aircraft-carrier Ark Royal was squarely hit on its deck by two large bombs. This has been ascertained by photographs taken after the action.'2 Neither did the claims end there. The Corriere della Sera reported that the Hood had been so badly knocked about that she was being sent to dock in Britain. And on 13 and 14 July an Italian broadcast insisted that both the Hood and the Ark had been bombed out of action. We were said to have suffered hits on a turret and the main gun control position, which would need twenty days to repair. The broadcasts continued for the next week, and the final'hoot' for the crew was the allegation that men were 'still working on the Hood day and night'. They always did.
All this publicity and the fact that we were seeing action made many of the Hood's boys over cocky. We were inclined to swagger about and act like old salts, not only in our walk but also in our talk. Our language was as blue as our winter number one rig -until the chaplain, the Reverend Harold Beardmore, decided to have words with us. One day when we were in Gibraltar we were surprised to hear piped: ' All boys clear lower deck. Muster in the chapel..
The tiny church in the superstructure under the flag deck was a delightful place, an oasis of serenity in a throbbing, floating iron and steel township, and we wondered why fifty of us had been assembled there. Beardmore strode in and ripped into us with four-letter words about our arrogance, the smoking, the drinking, the cursing. He used every swear word I had heard on board the Hood. We shuffled uncomfortably. 'You don't like it do you?' he said. 'It seems wrong coming from a "sky bosun" in this little church, doesn't it?' To our amazement he then rattled off two diabolically dirty jokes. A few tittered self-consciously, but most of us were silent and embarrassed. Then he said: 'You would not go home and say to your mum "Pass the fucking jam" would you? So why do it here?' No other words were exchanged, and he walked out. It all seemed so obscene in the quietness of the chapel, but most of us learned from his lesson. Everyone regarded him as a first-class padre. The next time I came into close contact with him was towards the end of 1941, when I was being presented with a picture of the Hood at an RNVR and RND dinner. He was beyond words this time. He just grabbed my hand and shook it. He was not ashamed of the tears on his cheeks, for I was the lone survivor of the boys he had lectured.
During this spell of relaxation Gibraltar also had uneasy memories for me of the controversial multiple rocket- launcher which had been installed in our last refit. It was the brainchild of Churchill and had been developed by Professor Frederick Lindemann's secret weapons department for combating low-flying aircraft. Lindemann, the brilliant Oxford physicist and mathematician who had been a crony of the premier since the 1930s, believed that rockets would be more successful than anti-aircraft guns in shooting down raiders which were close to the sea. Each launcher, which looked like an umbrella stand, carried twenty three-inch rockets, known as unrifled projectiles. These shot out seven-inch containers, each holding two thousand feet of wire. Attached to every wire was a small parachute and a two-pound Mills bomb, which was ejected at about four thousand feet. The wires were supposed to entangle a plane and pull down the grenade, which would detonate. The Director of Naval Ordnance and his team had no faith in this device. The Training and Staff Duties Department concurred with them. "It's plumb crazy " they opined. But Churchill, although not plumb crazy, was certainly gadget crazy, and he was instrumental in having them installed in nearly thirty capital ships. I don't think that a single rocket claimed a single victim.
In the Hood there were five on B turret either side of the boat deck, under the flag deck and abaft the after funnel - and ten tons of ammunition were stowed in fragile steel lockers on the boat decks, although this unprotected storage contravened Admiralty instruction. No one fancied the idea of having ten tons of explosives so exposed, and our fears were realized when one morning in Gibraltar a launcher accidentally went off with a great whoosh and a sheet of flame. I was on the flag deck and could see twenty Mills bombs flying around the area of tile mole, but most exploded in the sea and there was no damage. Three sailors were badly burned, however. This scene has always been burnished on my memory because of its relevance to the demise of the Hood.
Our rest at the Rock was not to last much longer. I awoke on 30 July surprised to see the old carrier Argus moored ahead of the Ark Royal. This addition to Force H presaged another operation, which this time was Somerville's idea. Twelve Hurricanes destined for Malta had been shipped to Gibraltar, and the problem was how to deliver them to the island. The admiral knew that if this valuable cargo were part of a convoy it stood little chance of surviving the hazardous run to Malta. Instead, he suggested that the fighters should be assembled and tested in Gibraltar and put on the Ark Royal, which would sail to within flying-off distance of Malta. The Admiralty accepted his advice but preferred to use the Argus. They also incorporated into the operational plan an air strike from the Ark on Cagliari, with a section of Cunningham's fleet setting up another diversion in the eastern Mediterranean. The name of this game was 'Operation Hurry'.
At 0630 on 31 July the Hood left Gibraltar with the Valiant, Resolution, Enterprise, Argus, Ark Royal and nine destroyers. Despite the earliness of the hour, Captain Glennie announced to the crew that we were to sail in company for nearly twenty-four hours and then would part. The Argus would be escorted to Cape Bon to fly off the Hurricanes to Malta, while the Hood with the Enterprise, the Ark and four destroyers would be positioned for the raid on Cagliari.
For the next twenty-four hours we all steamed steadily eastwards in perfect conditions. Everyone was at second degree of anti-aircraft readiness, but there were no spies in the sky. Then at 1750 they arrived high -but not to spy. As the alarm to arms was shrilled, I spotted them at twenty thousand feet. 'Italian Savoia bombers', came the recogni- tion call. Our anti-aircraft defences opened up in their now familiar startling, yet settling to my stomach, chorus of cracks, whoofs, crumps, boomp-a-boomp-a-boomps. The raiders made no attempt to home in closer but let go their loads at full distance. The scream of bombs punctuated our barrage, and a stick fell harmlessly off the Hood's port quarter. Within a few minutes, and after we had fired close to a hundred rounds of HA ammunition, the raiders droned off. Everyone expected the known pattern to develop of a series of strikes before sunset. But we were wrong, and just before 1900 we were stood down.
Later that clear and starlit night the force split, and soon the comparative silence on the flag deck was broken by the warming up of the Swordfish on the Ark. For the rest of the night we watched the blurred fire of their engines at take-off and waited for their return from the attack on Cagliari. Next day we were told that every Hurricane had made it safely to Malta. Somerville signalled his satisfaction: 'Missions accomplished. Group One [the Hood's section] is awarded a bun. Group Two is awarded two buns.' He had proved that 'flying off' was the best method to reinforce Malta's flagging air defenders, and this tactic was used many times until the end of the North African campaign.
There were no pursuers as we swept westerly towards Gibraltar, and the chance was taken to make a fifteen-inch full charge practice shoot, which revealed that the rifling of two guns was defective. Just after noon on 3 August the reassuring vista of the Sierra Nevada, those Spanish mountains which pointed to a haven ahead in Gibraltar, was sighted. We moored alongside the South Mole the next day, not realizing that this was to be the last combined operation by the heavy ships of Force H.
I was expecting letters from my mother to be in the Fleet Mail Office, but there was not one bag of correspondence for the Hood. A line from home meant everything on the mess decks, and most of us were disgruntled. This was offset by the announcement of shore leave until 1700 and with it the old buzz that the Hood was to be withdrawn soon from the Mediterranean. It was to be sooner than later. Again we were somewhat peeved when just before 1800 that night we slipped our wires, steamed out of the harbour and headed east with the Valiant and the Ark. For four hours the Hood stayed on this course; then, after suddenly turning about and being detached from the rest of the force, we were convinced that the Admiralty had picked us for another 'stunt'. During darkness the ship remained on a course of 260 degrees towards the Atlantic. The next morning the mess decks were seething with rumour until Captain Glennie broadcast that the Hood had been ordered back to Britain. Cheers echoed around the ship, despite the fact that we were bound for inhospitable Scapa Flow.
The five-day voyage was uneventful. Just after midnight on 10 August Cape Wrath was sighted, and nearly six hours later we passed Hoxa Boom and entered Scapa, for a new phase of operations and a new boss. Within three hours Somerville had left the Hood for good and flown to London. His flag was not struck until six o'clock that evening, with the insignia of BC1 (Second in Command Home Fleet) being hoisted in its place. An hour later another gaggle of gold braid settled in the Hood -Vice-Admiral Whitworth and his staff were back with us.
Chapter 19- The Admirals Cry Wolf
The summer of 1940 blazed by me in a blur of bewildering figures in the headlines. The Battle of Britain was being decided in the skies of southern England, and it seemed strange and frustrating that the Hood with her enormous ack-ack fire power should be cloistered in the dubious cosiness of Scapa Flow. In fact we were being kept out of the firing-line of the Luftwaffe in case we were later needed to combat Hitler's surface invasion forces in Operation Sealion, which was expected during September.
Each day the headlines of the Daily Express and Daily Mirror kept up the morale of the boys' mess. deck with astounding claims of the destruction of German aircraft by the RAF. On 11 August, the day we arrived at Scapa, sixty 'bandits' were shot down over the Channel; two days later the score was seventy-eight, and on 15 August it had zoomed up to 180. The next day we were at sea, hammering south, convinced that the Hood was going into the battle zone, until it was announced that our destination was Rosyth, where the left fifteen-inch gun of A turret was to be replaced. So we were still out of the fight as the Battle of Britain roared on with seemingly hundreds of Nazi planes being downed. The eight .days the Hood stayed at Rosyth enabled many to return to the reality of' civilized' runs ashore, but then we retreated to the haven of Scapa again on 25 August, the night that London had its first taste of full-scale bombing.
On 13 September, with the invasion scare at its zenith, the Admiralty decided to use the Hood. We left Scapa in company with the Nelson and Rodney, the cruisers Bonaventure, Naiad and Cairo and a screen of seven destroyers, and 'to meet any possible threat' steamed south - but only two hundred miles, to Rosyth again. Within two days -although unknown to us -the German High Cpmmand had cancelled Operation Sealion almost at the lame time as newspapers were trumpeting that in one record day the enemy had lost 185 aircraft. Churchill's chiefs of staff were not so sure that the danger had passed, and the consequence was that the Hood was kept in a state of constant readiness.
It seemed rather odd to us, to say the least, that the Admiralty drafted to us three Free French sailors -after all it was our guns which had killed more than a thousand of their countrymen at Oran. We 'got on' with them all right, but the subject of Oran was strictly taboo. One of them was Leading Signalman Roger Loiseaux, who signed on under the nom-de-guerre of Dempsey. It transpired that he had not been sent to the Hood against his will. In later years he told me: 'I picked the Hood myself and did not regret it. I have unforgettable memories of the friends I made among the officers and men.
For the next eight months we were to be involved in a succession of false alarms and fatuous emergency sailings. The first came on 28 September, when a German cruiser was escorting a convoy more than a hundred miles off Stavanger, Norway. We were soon troughing through the North Sea. The next day the flap was over; the operation was called off, and to the disappointment of the crew we were detoured to inhospitable Scapa again.
On 15 October the Hood was called on again to cover the return of the cruisers Berwrck and Norfolk and carrier Furious, whose aircraft were to attack Tromso, Norway. Screened by the destroyers Somali, Eskimo and Mashona, we steamed towards the rendezvous, only to run into a fog which was so impenetrable that from the flag deck I could not see our escort. It worsened at dusk, and speed was reduced to fourteen knots. Our siren bellowed out constantly, and the destroyers' searchlights were switched on spasmodically. The fog blanket did not lift the next day, and most of us realized that with a sudden change of course to 180 degrees there would be a sudden change of plans. There was, for at 0925 on 18 October- the day the air attack was scheduled -we sighted Dunnet Head, the northernmost tip of land on the Pentland Firth, which marks the turn to starboard towards Scapa. We were to be closeted in the Flow almost until the end of October, but with the 'buzz' in the air that leave was to be given soon, our sojourn became bearable.
Most of us prayed that there would be no more flaps, but on 28 October the Hood was summoned out again with the Furious and destroyer screen for another sea-game of blind man's bluff. The objective was an 'eight-inch German cruiser' and supply ships in the area between Iceland and the Faroes. But the enemy became secondary. A Force 8 gale buffeted the Hood, and she was awash for long periods. Hands were not allowed in the batteries -the positions where the 5.5-inch guns had been -and all upper-deck hatches on the weather side remained closed. Yet we could see men walking round the decks of the escorts. Throughout the first night waves crested over the boat deck, flooding the wardroom and mess decks. The Hood had always been a wet ship, and the massive increase in her top-weight tonnage since 1939 had worsened conditions. On 30 October there was not a man on board who did not welcome the cancellation of the operation and the return to Scapa. But there was no let-up for us. The Hood was anti-aircraft guardship for the fleet, and our gunners complained that they were required to man the four-inch armament for two hours at dusk and for another two at dawn. For the next two days there were also exercises for the HA armament crews and torpedomen.
At the beginning of November I was one of the lucky ones given leave. To facilitate our rest, the Hood sailed south to Greenock. But only for three days was I allowed to relish my mother's home comforts in Derby. On the fourth day I received a telegram from the ship which beckoned baldly: 'Return forthwith.' I did as I was bid, but such were the vagaries of the telegram service and the London and North Eastern Railway that when the train pulled in to Greenock the Hood had gone. Two hundred of the ship's company also missed the boat, but a bonus came for all of us. We were sent to Glasgow, where we were billeted in a church hall and allowed free use of the transport systems and the cinemas.
A week later, when we rejoined the Hood, I learned that the recall had been another waste of time. On 27 October the German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer had slipped out of Brunsbtittel and edged north passed Bokna Fjord and Bergen into the Norwegian Sea. Undetected she crossed the Arctic Circle and turned west for the Denmark Strait, which she passed on 31 October. Not until 5 November did the Admiralty realize that a lethal surface raider was abroad. On this day the Scheer ripped into a convoy from Halifax, whose only shield was the fourteen-thousand-ton armed merchant cruiser ]ervis Bay. In a similar way to the sacrifice of the Rawalpindi twelve months earlier, Captain E.S.F. Fegen turned his ship to confront the Scheer, although knowing that his six-inch guns .were no match. The ]ervis Bay was sunk within twenty minutes, but Fegen's heroic action, which won a posthumous VC, enabled all but five of the thirty-seven vessel convoy to escape.
It was on receiving the ]ervis Bay's radioed message that Admiral Tovey, the Commander-in-Chief Home Fleet, despatched the Hood and Repulse, three ships of the Fifteenth Cruiser Squadron and six destroyers to cover the approaches to Brest and Lorient to ensure that the Scheer could not return. Again it was a fruitless operation, for the raider turned into the South Atlantic to bedevil a series of convoys. For five days the Hood and her companions chased shadows, finally returning to Scapa, where I rejoined her on 11 November in time for the Armistice Day ceremony.
As the mists of autumn set in, the crew became resigned to a winter at Scapa, alternating between exercises in the Flow and hurried despatches into the North Sea. On 23 November the Hood was required to screen a big minelaying force north of the Denmark Strait. At dawn the next morning we were called to action stations just as the leading vessels of the Ist Minelaying Squadron, shepherded by the cruiser