Transcript
So we sailed out of Sydney Harbour on the 20th June 1941 at 10pm, sailed out of that harbour, and to what we were going to go through I didn't have a clue. But anyway we finally finished up in Port Tewfic [Egypt] and we stayed there for a day. Well I think we were there for about two days. That was pretty hectic because we had a very, very heavy air raid on the night from about 12 o'clock til about 4 o'clock and that was my introduction to World War II.
I was a loader on one of the four inch anti-aircraft guns and it was pretty scary because of the noise of the aircraft and the bombs and the flash from the muzzles of the guns as they fired. And of course that was my first experience but on the other side of the four inch gun was an old sailor who had been through it all before. I heard this weird, whining noise in the sky and I said "Hey, we've shot one down!" And he said "You silly bugger, that's a bomb!" You know, that was coming near the ship.
But anyway after that of course, the Georgic, the motor vessel which had unloaded the Australian troops, was hit badly and set on fire and our medical people had to go over and help bring the wounded out and so forth. Then the Captain decided to beach the ship so it didn't sink and ran into another ship called the [HMS] Glenearn and set that aground. So there was this ship blazing away during the night and early morning and then we had to tow the other ship off.
And then after that we had to go through the Suez Canal. That was a bit hairy too because the Germans had laid 13 mines in the canal at different intervals. We didn't know what kind of mines they were. So we had to, when we saw the red flag, we had to stop making any noise and shut down everything we could, and everybody who wasn't on deck down below had to come up and stand on deck and be very quiet while we just glided over each mine. So after 13 mines we had to anchor in the Great Bitter Lake. That's where we assembled for the other convoy to come back through the other way. So the Captain said "All hands to bathe over the side", so that was a great relief from that one. That was the start of our Mediterranean sojourn.
