Naval History

1940-1945

Everyone had a different reason for enlisting. In my case, my brother, Jack Easton Pidcock, was killed in the R.C.A.F. in May of 1940. I made an attempt to join the Air Force, but my vision was not good enough to qualify. My second choise was to ask for an interview with the Naval Selection Board, which consisted of Eustace Brock, and other high ranking naval officials. Shortly after, I found myself bound for Halifax with a group of new recruits. I guess we were one of the first to make the trip to the training base H.M.C.S. Stadacona, where we were outfitted with ill-fitted uniforms and introduced to the fundamentals of naval discipline.

The next thing I recall is being trucked with our group to somewhere around Cheticamp, Nova Scotia, where we were embarked on a fairly small steamer H.M.S. Ettrick. In due course, we crossed the Atlantic without escort. The only armament was a ten pounder on the stern which was our only defense agains submarines. Eventually we arrived Greenock. We were allowed shoreleave the next day, which was quite a relief after being couped up for about eight days on the ship.

Within 24 hours, we were packed into a train enroute to H.M.S. Raleigh. In passing through London (Victoria Station) we experienced our first air raid. Following this, we were off to Plymouth on another train.

At H.M.S. Raleigh, we became Mess #32 and were turned over to the custody of C.P.O. Wells. All of us had much the same experience of training airraids, etc., at Raleigh. An excellent record of what happened at Raleigh was produced for the twenty-fifth anniversary at Sherwood Inn at Muskoka with pictures of all the various messes and a summary of what had happened to us during the time at H.M.S. Raleigh. While there, at one time, a German invasion attemp was made. We dug fox holes around the base and had a lot of hope in one machine gun that was available at the camp to protect us from the Nazi invasion. Fortunately, an individual, by the name of Mountbatten, led a destroyer task force and pulverized this attempted landing. The only thing we heard about it was that people that lived along the coast very close to Raleigh said that a lot of bodies washed up on the shore there, following the attempted invasion.

My sea time on the Edinburgh went very quickly. Perhaps because of my engineering background, I had a very cushy job and was appointed yeoman to Commander N (Navigation) and had the job of correcting charts and keeping all the clocks within a minute of the correct time. One exciting happening was that one of the clocks that had to be checked was down in the depts somewhere around the bombroom and I went down there once after opening a water tight hatch, climbing down a ladder into a small room and was correcting the clock and some enterprising individual thought it had been left opened closed it. I spent a night down there hoping that the air supply would not run out or that we wouldn't be fished somewhere in the North Atlantic.

Sometime, early in 1941, we participated in the first invasion of the European coast. I still recall the magnificent sight of some very great ships taking off in a line ahead out of Scapa Flow. The consisted of H.M.S. Hood, H.M.S. King George and array of invasion ships. We headed toward the Norwegian coast, where a landing was made near Stavenger, Norway, and the facilities were destroyed by the Marines. The whole operation went smoothly. One of the ideas apparently behind the raid, was to entice the Scharnhorst and Gneisehau out of Brest in the hope that they would present themselves as targets for the main force of the British fleet, however, they wisely stayed where they were.

An interesting story about the fate of the Edinburgh which happened after we left her was she was on a Murmansk convoy and had picked up a few hundred million dollars of gold bullion which was payment for war equipment.

She was fished somewhere off the north Norwegian Coast during that Murmansk return run. Several months ago a television program showed the recovery of that gold which was in the bomb room. The recovery team cut their way through two to three inches of armor plate and recovered about ninety per cent of the gold which was paid by the Russians for war equipment.

Derry, Mullinger and myself finally were drafted to Hove, leaving the ship and travelling by train to Brighton. This was like moving into heaven after our life on the lower deck. Memories of Hove are all good, realizing that we were going to become gentleman officers, and being allowed to order our new officer's apparel from Gieves of London.

While in Brighton, we had a visit from the Prince of Wales, about the same time that H.M.S. Hood was sunk by the Bismark. I recall sitting out on the terraces, having a sherry and watching German aircraft attempting to bomb convoys about ten miles out from where we were located on the coast.

About this time, we were given the opportunity for opting for the type of work we wanted to do and I volunteered for service in the motor torpedo boats, with the first preference for the foreign service. I understood that the Americans were shipping some of their new torpedo boats to Alexandria for service in the Mediterranean. Before this happened, it was necessary to take torpedo boat training, and I was transferred to Fort William in Scotland where we received the necessary instructions in torpedo boat exercises.

On completion of the training in Fort William, we were sent on leave to London which was always exciting and eventually I received instruction to proceed to Alexandria as First Lieutenant of MTB 260. I left from Liverpool in a luxury liner which made stops at Freetown, Capetown, Aden, and eventually I arrived in Egypt and took a train to Alexandria where we commissioned MTB 260. My Commanding Officer was Lieutenant Martin Soloman and the flotilla consisted of ten American built torpedo boats that were produced by General Dynamics in New Jersey. They were beautifully equipped and Lieutenant Dennis Germaine R.N.V.R. was S.O. of the flotilla. We took turns running down to Tobruk and spent several weeks there, each trip doing patrols of the North African Coast right down to Tropoli. The experience in Tobruk was one of the main events that I cherished from the whole of the war time experience.

The day Tobruk fell was June 21st, 1942 and Rommel had actually passed Tobruk and was heading toward Mersa Matuh. I remember the morning action opening at dawn. We were safely hidden behind an Italian cruiser which had sunk and just awash on the shore of the harbour of Tobruk. The morning of the 21st opened very quietly until at five o'clock a bombardment of the harbour started. We were located on the lee side of the sunken cruiser - The San Giorgio - and were hidden under the camouflage nets.

San Giorgio after bombing at Tobruk.

Martin Soloman thought it would be something for posterity to pose for photographs and I stood on the stern of the San Georgio and he took photographs of the shells exploding in the water and sending up geysers about fifty feet. He wanted to get a picture with a geyser right behind me. We took turns doing this and got some very good pictures. After we had completed this exercise, he and Dennis Germaine went to Naval Headquarters to see what was happening. He came back after about an hour with information that there was an imminent break-through at the perimeter. Apparently waves of Stukas had come through and bombed the minefields and made a safe passage for German tanks who were very close to the town of Tobruk. The shelling increased and there was a fantastic amount of anti-aircraft fire to offset Stuka attacks. We decided that something had to be done because there was a complete lack of instructions from naval headquarters.

We took off towards the entrance to the harbour, did a 180° turn and I opened all the smoke laying equipment and we went in a northerly direction because there were a number of ships which had been hit and were in danger of sinking. I remember Martin Soloman saying to me, "You know where all the submerged wrecks are, so you take over the bridge and con the ship." I found this funny because between Bill Derry and myself, our only related experience was cruising around the harbour in a rubber dinghy, completely out of control, trying to find our way back to our ship after drinking a case of Chinese Rice Wine. We eventually covered most of the harbour with smoke and approaching a ship that was sinking, we came alomgside and took off 100 personnel who scrambled aboard and we then turned around and headed towards the harbour exit. On route, we picked up a swimmer out of the water. He had swum from the shore and was requesting assistance to take off army personnel. However we had been hit in the steering compartment and were taking on water very badly, so we thought we had better get out of the harbour, which we did and passed through the boom at about 70 knots. Even with the steering compartment full of water, we made Mera Matruh in short order and spent the night there. It was interesting how fast Rommel moved from Tobruk to Mersa Matruh because the next day we heard that he was very close to that town, so we took off and proceeded to Alexandria.

There were four or five very large battleships and cruisers belonging to the Free French that were anchored in Alexandria harbour, and the instructions to the torpedo boats flotilla were to be ready at a moment's notice to leave, but prior to leaving, to fish all the Free French battle cruisers at anchor. I remember our S.O. said he would do it providing that they gave the crews ample notice to debark. However, the C&C Mediterranean decided that this would be an unwise thing to do and Dennis Germaine said he would not do it so the job was taken over by the 2nd Flotilla of ten boats. We took off in the morning for Haifa and were based there doing patrols around the island of Cyprus for several weeks while waiting instructions on what to do. Had Alexandria been lost, our orders were to proceed to Turkey, dispose of our boats, and make the best way we could across land toward the east and attempt to come out somewhere around the Persian Gulf. However, this never happened and we continued to do patrol services off Haifa for some time. Being based in Haifa with very little to do, we made some expeditions into the interior, visiting Bethlehem and the Dead Sea. At about this time, I got approval to go on leave and was transferred to an area where ships were leaving via the South Atlantic towards South America and eventually got passage and eventually ended up in Trinidad, thence to New York and back on leave to Montreal. A very welcome experience.

The next experience was an appointment in command of ML 085 which was part of the flotilla which was destined to go on anti-submarine patrol in the Caribbean. We departed from Halifax via Boston going south toward the Caribbean and had some painful experiences on the way, one of which was trying to enter the harbour of Charlestown in a dense fog. Two ML.'s lost there domes and I lost one engine and had to go to Charlestown and spend three weeks waiting for a new engine, which had to be equipped from California.

ML 085 got back into condition a couple of months later during which time I lived in the lap of luxury in Charlestown. I was then instructed to head back to Halifax via the inland water route which I did and eventually turned up at Stadocona. There I received an appointment as "Staff Officer ML'S" for training coastal forces at H.M.S. Fort Ramsay in the Gaspe Gulf.

The anti-submarine work in the Gulf of St. Lawrence took place over a period of two years - from '43 to '45 during which there were a number of German submarines in the St. Lawrence. We has three flotilla's of ML's operating from the base at H.M.S. Fort Ramsay.

I was staff officer to N.O.I.C. Gaspe, Captain Germain R.C.N.

There were many interesting experiences in anti-submarine work in the Bay of Chaleur and in the Gaspe area during that period. Eventually V.E. Day arrived while I was still based at Fort Ramsay. I proceeded on to Montreal via St. John and when we were crossing the harbour just short of St. John, the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. I was demobilized in August, 1945.

The following are some recollections of the early days of the war, with other Raleighites:

After we left Torpoint (H.M.S. Raleigh) we were stationed st H.M.S. Drake in Plymouth, it seemed a long time waiting for a sea appointment. Eventually this came and Bill Derry and myself were sent to Scapa Flow, where we spent a good part of the winter of 1941. After leaving the H.M.S. Edinburgh, Bill Derry, Hugh Mullinger and myself were sent to Portmouth where we spent some time in the barrack waiting to be sent to Hove. The air raids were pretty vicious at times and it was a relief to go on leave and spend some time outside the base. Every evening in the base was spend in the air raid shelters with the bombs coming pretty close to the shelters.

After graduation from King Alfred, we got leave and went to London, and there met up with Pat Henry and had some great times in the Park Lane Hotel, chasing English girls and really having a good time. I was fortunate in having a wealthy aunt in the Midlands who owned a large estate. Bill Burk, John Stewart and myself took off by train to Stoke in the Midlands in Staffordshire and spent a few days eating good meals, playing tennis and drinking a lot of beer.

Following the leave, I found myself posted to an M.T.B. Base at Dover and here again ran into Bill Burk. Unfortunately I caught a nasty flu bug and spent about ten days in the Dover Hospital. After another stage of recuperating leave in London, I received a transfer to H.M.S. Hornet, which was a coastal force base near Portsmouth.

We had received very little experience in boat handling at Hove and I recall that had limited opportunities to experiment bringing a ship along side. Due to the very limited experience we received, I didn't make a very good impression in my efforts while at H.M.S. Hornet. The Commanding Officier of a D Class ML gave me an opportunity to bring the boat along side a jetty which I proceeded to do but managed to remove the Capstan operating the anchor from the foredeck on the first attempt. He instructed me to go back and try it again which was very courageous on his part but the second time was more successful.

While at Hornet I received an assignment to go to a small harbour called Bridport and bring a motor launch from there around into Hamble River. After arriving at the small port I found out that the M1 had one engine which operated on propane and one on gasoline and I had two ratings from the RNVR waiting for me there. It was a difficult job getting this small boat down a narrow canal to the English Channel. Its main armament consisted of a Very pistol. At least we had a list of identification signals in case we were attacked by British Costal Forces. The job was rather tricky as it involved taking this small boat around Portland which I thought was an English steeplechase. After going though this fairly low tide it proved to be somewhat equivalent to running the Lachine Rapids. In the midst of all this confusion a signalman at Portland Bill started flashing Morse at us at a rate that I had never seen before and all we could do was send the daily code in the hope that someone didn't start firing at us. Eventually they figured out we were harmless and we were allowed to proceed up the Hamble River and the boat was decommissioned. This was my first experience at a command off the English Channel.

I remember while at HMS. Hornet, it must have been around the 7th of December, one evening we got the news that Pearl Habour had been attcked. There was quite a party that evening to celebrate the U.S. entry into war. Shortly after that in January, 1942 I finally got my appointment to MTB 260 which was to be commissioned at Alexandria and embarked on an Orient Liner which proceeded alone down to the Capetown area and around through the Madascagar Straits up to Aden, through the Red Sea and shortly after found myself in Alexandria.

It was surprising how often my paths crossed with Bill Derry. When I was training at Fort William for MTB's Bill Derry turned up there in a minesweeper and much later when I was in Alexandria and we were working the North African Coast, in co-operation with the Eighth Army, Bill Derry turned up again. He had been in the British Crusier HMS. Galatea. They had been torpedoed in the Mediterranean and he was one of very few officers surviving from that sinking. We met again in Alexandria and he was again transferred to a minesweeper which came to Tobruk quite often so we had the opportunity there to meet frequently.

Bill Derry and I had some great times consuming quantities of Scotch while in Tobruk. He would visit our MTB and we would have to mix seawater with our Scotch because the fresh water was in short supply. This really didn't do anything to help a hangover the next day. I can remember their discipline must have been very lax on the minesweeper because we would be drinking Scotch and seawater in the Ward Room and shooting rats off the pipes as they crossed from the forward part of the ship through the wardroom into the area in the stern of the ship where they had a good supply of food.

Another afterthought. When I was based in Famagusto doing patrol work, the Admiralty Fleet Order came through which permitted Canadians who had spent a couple of years overseas to return on leave to Canada. I proceeded South through the Red Sea in the company of Don McGill and Mac Ruttan. We had a rather interesting trip down and got as far as Durban after getting through the straits of Madagascar that were infested with Japanese submarines. We managed to make Durban and waited sometime for a ship to take us back to Canada. Eventually the opportunity arose and we got in a tramp steamer that had instructions to proceed alone across the South Atlantic, heading towards Trinidad and then up to New York. After we got aboard this we found out that there was no bar and the twenty-two days we spent at six knots across the Atlantic were rather harrowing because there were absolutely no spirits available. There were apparently a number of submarines in the area and at one point I remember the Chinese Engine Room Crew all demanded to come up on deck and the First Officer, equipped with a machine gun, forced them back down to the engine room. I guess they didn't want to be down there if a torpedo hit the old tramp steamer!

After twenty-two days, we arrived in Trinidad and proceeded in convoy up to New York, going through Staten Island immigration and then on our way home to Montreal.

In the winter of 1942 prior to proceeding to Gaspe to a Staff job, I was transferred to HMS. Cornwallis which was a training establishment and spent the winter there taking an ASDIC course. It was really good to be back in Canada and during the period that I was there, I played hockey for Cornwallis Navy and we won the Eastern Canadian Senior Championship.

In the spring of '43 I was moved to Gaspe and lived in relative luxury at the Battery Park Hotel there operating under NOIC Gaspe. At the time the only Raleightited there was Norm Williams who had command of the C class ML.

A very interesting book has recently been published called "The Unknown War" which covered the period from the time of commissioning Fort Ramsay until VE Day.

Of those who survived the five years and returned to Canada, many went on to very successful political and business careers and I doubt very much whether there is a similar group that has such regular gatherings which have brought back memories of the once-in-a-lifetime experiences.

Now I am going through a successful retirement, and enjoying life to the full. Between rounds of golf in Timmins, when there is the occasional bit of bad weather, I am in process of putting all the navy photographs and documentation into a scrapbook which I hope can be passed on to various offspring to be able to have some sort of chronological history of what happened to their old man during the five years of naval activities.

Pidcock, Paul M.

---

Paul enlisted at HMCS. Stradacona, Halifax, in June 1940. His service in the lower deck was in HMS Edinburgh operating in the North Sea out of Scapa. Other Raleighites on board were Bill Derry and Hugh Mullinger. After receiving his commission from King Alfred, he took further training in M.T.B.'s at Fort William, Scotland, along with Bill Derry. This lead to an appointment as First Lieutienant on M.T.B. 260 in the Mediterranian. Paul was involved in the landing on the Norwegian coast near Stravanger in 1941. He also participated in the evacuation of Tobruk - July 1942, and the invasion of the Lofoten Islands. He served in HMS Hood and King George V cruiser squadron as Navigator Yeoman to Commander(N) R.N. Decorations: Mentioned in Dispatches for action in Tobruk, July 22, 1942, Africa Star plus standard dribbons for five year's service.

---

This excerpt was taken from "The Canadian Raleighities, Ordinary seamen and officiers at war 1940 - 1945" with kind permission - Copyright © 1988 Edward Carson O'Neill