Fragments of War. Joyce Hibbert
over twenty years Stanley Salt worked in the industrial electronics and parts distributorship field. Following that he was a property agent and appraiser but was forced to retire in 1980 due to ill health. His home is Lindsay, Ontario.
4
Salty Old Salt
Florence Tasker was an English girl working for the NAAFI (Navy, Army and Air Force Institute) at Oxshot, Surrey during WWII. She was to meet her husband-to-be, Harold Tasker in the canteen. He was serving with the 23rd Battery, 5th Medium Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery.
Now Florence’s father was an ex-Royal Navy man and although a keen member of the Home Guard (the British local defence force) he’d never reconciled himself to wearing the khaki uniform.
The family lived near Blindley Heath and dad was in the habit of riding back and forth to work on his pedal bike. One evening he was somewhere between Nutfield and Goldstone on his way home in the blackout when he was hit by a Canadian Army truck. Three soldiers jumped out, assisted him into their truck, took him straight to a doctor and then to his home. They also saw to it that his bike was repaired and returned to him.
Although not seriously hurt, the older man was unable to work for a week or two because of painful bruising. The Canadians visited him at home several times and Florence remembers that her mother was touched by their genuine concern.
On one of their visits the young soldiers were suddenly convulsed with laughter and when it was over they apologized to their accident victim. The cause of their hilarity had been the recollection of his cussing at them when they’d helped him up. Apparently he’d given the army boys a never-to-be-forgotten sample of his old navy vocabulary – prolonged and without repetition!
Florence can still hear her mother’s surprised and gently reproachful “Oh Alf, you didn’t.”
Harold and Florence Tasker live in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.
Uncle Joseph Watson in his Home Guard uniform.
5
To the Far Shore
The son of a deep sea captain, Iver J. Gillen was born in Victoria, British Columbia and moved to Vancouver at an early age. He joined the RCNVR (Royal Canadian Naval Voluntary Reserve) and when war was declared, he became a full-time sailor at the age of thirty.
Concerning the period a week after D Day, the following excerpts are from papers containing his on-the-spot observations from 4 June 1944 until 7 September 1944. Based on his diary, this clear-cut account of events from a particular perspective, was donated to the Public Archives of Canada by the late Iver J. Gillen, ex-Leading Signalman V14253.
“This is an account of the activities of one of Canada’s corvettes in the English Channel during and after the invasion of the Continent. It is based on a diary kept by the writer; it contains no stories of big engagements, of heroic deeds; its mission, if it can claim one, is to show what life in the little ships was like. Those who served in similar ships – even some of my former shipmates – may disagree with me on certain points, but to the best of my knowledge I have kept to facts; I hope that which follows will prove of some interest to the reader whether he was there or not....
“To begin, the keeping of diaries or personal records of any sort is forbidden for obvious reasons in the Navy. A short time before the invasion began we were told that we might keep diaries if we wished, presumably to provide at a later date additional material for official records. If the latter were true, no advantage was taken of the chance to preserve our records for posterity, to my knowledge.
“My ship, HMCS Camrose, was one of the older corvettes, and had served in the Mediterranean during the North African campaign. Her type was laid down to carry a complement of about forty-five officers and men, and her armament consisted of a four inch naval gun forward and a light A/A gun aft. Revised, with the forecastle extended aft to the ‘mid-ships superstructure, she carried between ninety-five and a hundred crew all told, and the armament was increased to 4 inch gun, pom-pom, and six 20 mm Oerlikons (A/A guns), – not to mention a great number of depth charges and certain other antisubmarine weapons. The Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Commander L.R. Pavillard, RCNVR (‘The Mad Spaniard’) had been with the ship since she had been commissioned, as had some of the crew. Prior to the opening of this record, Camrose had been one of a ‘support group’ on escort duty in the Bay of Biscay, running out of Londonderry. Late in April 1944 she was sent down to the Channel, and arrived in Portsmouth, 1 May. For about a month thereafter she was engaged in escort duty in the Channel, based in Portsmouth and Sheerness. Some of the escorted craft were ordinary merchantmen, but some were like nothing seen on earth before – parts of the prefabricated ports, and other odds and ends to do with the big event.
“My ‘story’ opens on 4 June 1944. We are at anchor in Weymouth Bay, off Portland; arrived here 28 June, and have had no contact with the shore at all. This is generally thought to be because we are about to take part in some large-scale operation; none of the officers seem to know what is in the wind, and we can think of no reason for keeping the ship so long in one place, after having been so busy the past four weeks. The harbour is quite a bustling place, crowded with American and British ships of many types, including the ubiquitous merchantmen. Landing ships and landing craft come and go hourly, and in fact everyone seems to be on the move except one group which remains quiet at anchor. It consists of Camrose, two other corvettes – Lunenburg and Baddeck – the old French battleship Courbet, and two tugs, Samsonia and Growler. Courbet is no longer a proud fighting ship; built in 1909, of 22,000 tons, she was scuttled in a port in Africa during France’s dark days. She had been completely submerged, and the mark of the waterline was still visible on her towering foremast when we first saw her. No effort had been made to clean her up, and most of her big guns have been cut off at the turrets. Some new A/A guns have been mounted on her but this gives us no idea as to why she has been raised and brought here. We made several trips to her in our whaler, the first time on a legitimate search for fresh bread and vegetables – we have no yeast for baking, and get no supplies from shore. The first party to board her found her crew most hospitable, and possessed of a plentiful supply of rum and wine. They were an odd lot in a way; there were about a hundred Free French matelots, and a smaller number of British A/A gunners. Both made us welcome, being as glad as we were to have a change of any sort. A few of the huge mess decks had been cleaned up enough to provide temporary quarters, and the refreshments came up in all sorts of odd dishes and jugs from one of the huge dark caverns in this dead ship. None of the men aboard knows where she is going but they are all ‘travelling light’, with a minimum of kit and equipment. We did get a little bread the first trip, and it became necessary to make similar calls on succeeding days – until the First Lieutenant noticed something odd about the boat’s crew after one visit, and put an end to the business. Today, Sunday, was a special occasion in our ship – we had ‘Divisions’ for the first time since leaving our own country. ‘Divisions’ is a sort of ceremony designed to make a sailor truly grateful for the Sundays it is omitted. It means all hands turn to and clean up the ship or establishment, while every man heckles and harasses his junior. Then, when so ordered, you change into your number one uniform, and clean up the mess you have just made doing so. Then, while giving your uniform a final brush over, you try to think of a place to hide or a legitimate excuse for dodging ‘Divisions’. The effort is usually in vain, so when the quartermaster pipes ‘Hands Fall In’ away you go with the rest and fall in with your own division (seamen, stokers, etc.). A corvette has no clear deck space large enough for this purpose, but we assembled in some sort of order on the forecastle head. After being inspected, we were addressed by the ‘Old Man’, who told us we will soon see