Remarkable Journeys of the Second World War by Victoria Panton Bacon

Author:Victoria Panton Bacon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press

We only experienced one slightly alarming incident on the way at an early stage when there was a good deal of destroyer activity around us; one destroyer discharged a couple of depth charges over its stern, but we never knew why.

As with so many of the veterans to whom I have been privileged to speak for this book, it is the conversations he remembers most and companionship, jokes and humour. He said:

I remember standing in the docks at Liverpool, in the shadow of what was clearly a fairly ancient steamer, which one could only study in the very dim lighting. When I went aboard another young officer joined me and we were allocated a cabin and met by our cabin steward who was then a middle-aged, upright, fit looking merchant seaman. He gave us a succinct run down on our general conduct while on board; and a brief history of the ship we were about to set sail in, and in which he had served on for many years. She had been one of the most luxurious vessels on the Liverpool / New York run and had been sold to the Greeks some years before the outbreak of the war. He said she had been hired back from Greece for the duration of the Second World War and converted to a troopship.

The steward was a delightful man, who assessed my travelling companion and me very carefully. He realised that we were high spirited and looking forward to the adventure which held obvious perils, and that he could treat us to a joke or two. When he had finished briefing us – he said, ‘Sleep well, don’t you worry about torpedoes and all that stuff’ and then grinned and said, ‘this old girl doesn’t need that kind of help to go down.’ This typical wartime humour appealed very strongly to both of us.

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