A Midshipman’s Tale – Operation Pedestal Malta Convoy 1942 by M K MccGwire

It gives me great pleasure to welcome Lucinda Neall to the blog today. Lucinda is the daughter of Michael MccGwire who was a midshipman in 1942 and served on the H.M.S Rodney during Operation Pedestal. He later went on to have a distinguished  career as an academic after serving in the Royal Navy. Lucinda is a writer, coach, communications guru and mostly recently a publisher with her own press, Leaping Boy Press. Their latest book is A Midshipman’s Tale so I asked Lucinda if she could tell me about the process of transforming her father’s Journal into a book.

At what point and why did you consider making this available as a book?

In 2004 when he was eighty-four Dad was reminiscing about his life at sea and he found his journal and typed up the parts which were about Operation Pedestal, the four days which he spent with the convoy en route to Malta. He typed it up properly with annotations and footnotes  (he was an academic after his naval career) and sent it to me and my brothers and sisters. As far as he was concerned the job was done once he’d completed the typescript.

Some years later and during a regular visit to see her parents Lucinda and her husband Peter spotted the original Midshipman’s Journal on a table. They both read it from cover to cover. It provides a moment by moment account of the convoy, as seen through the eyes of a seventeen year-old midshipman, and is illustrated with hand-drawn maps.

Lucinda says ‘in the meantime I’d become a publisher, with my books about bringing up boys and I’d published the books which my Mum wrote for us as children, so I was in a position to do something for Dad. I wanted to do it properly and originally intended to do this while he was still alive but with his health failing that was not to be.

So what gave you the final impetus to publish the book?

Lucinda says ‘Dad died in March 2016 and I had so many emails and messages from people about how much they had respected and looked up to Dad. Many were from people who were much younger than him which made me understand how many people he’d mentored and supported. Publishing his book felt like giving them a gift.'

H.M.S. Eagle 11th August 1942

Caroline adds
I was grateful to Lucinda and her Dad for letting me read his journal shortly after my book, Convoy, was published and while he was still fit and well. We had a telephone conversation about the Operation Pedestal convoy during which he explained to me how paravanes worked. He was self deprecating about his journal which he said were 'two a penny' as every midshipman had to write one. I had no doubt that he put far more work into his and was a better writer than many of his fellow seamen.
One of my favourite parts of the journal was from the afternoon of August 11th when they'd just settled down to enjoy the lovely weather. He writes

" Glancing idly round the convoy, I noticed that the Eagle was making rather a lot of smoke and was about to add a caustic comment when it seemed to me that she was taking a list to port. And so she was. While we watched she gradually heeled over until her flight deck was awash and then she paused before finally subsiding beneath the sea 4 mins 17 secs after she was hit. ....
This event sobered up the ship [Rodney] most noticeably."

Was the process of getting the journal into print straight-foward?

Lucinda - Well I wasn’t actually sure if I was allowed to publish the contents of the journal as technically it belonged to the Ministry of Defence. It should have been handed in at the end of his training but, for reasons which are in the book. it wasn't. I asked the advice of  Sir Derek Thomas who knew Dad from when they worked at the British Embassy in Moscow, who put me in touch with the Archives Collections Officer at the National Royal Navy Museum.I sent some scanned pages from the journal and eventually received the message

This is just to confirm I have heard from the records review team. There is absolutely no issue with publishing any of this material.

I  also wanted to include Dad's drawings and had invaluable help from Deborah Hawkins and Rebecca Chapman who assisted me with the graphics and helped make it stunning. And Professor Eric Grove, naval historian, agreed to write a historical context for the journal.

Editor’s note – it is as close as you can get to holding the original journal and the cover has the hand-drawn map of the route of the convoy, together with little drawings of whales and winds.

Who is the audience for the book?

Anyone with an interest in the Second World War and its naval history. It also gives you a picture of what it was like to be a seventeen year old in 1942 and it is about real people and their experiences, emotions and thoughts.

Where can people buy it?

Via the links on the book’s page, to Hive, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Waterstones.

Captain Thomas Sydney Horn, OBE, Master of the Sydney Star 5 May 1899 – June 1971

Thomas Horn as a young man

 I have recently returned from a writing retreat at Anam Cara in Ireland, where I had the chance to share some of the poems from Convoy. 

I came back to find an email from Thomas Horn's grand daughter, Moya. She had read the Convoy blog posts about the men who inspired the poems. One of these was Captain Thomas Horn, master of the Sydney Star. It must have taken sheer determination on his part with the support of key members of his crew, including his chief engineer George Haig and Chief Officer James Mackie, to get the Sydney Star to Malta in the summer of 1941 after she’d been torpedoed and almost sunk.

I had a clear idea of what Thomas Horn's character was like; gleaned from various maritime histories but I had been unable to find a photograph of him, despite trawling through the various archives. This was rather surprising as he received the OBE in December 1941. 

His grand daughter and god daughter have kindly provided me with photographs and permission to share them. So here he is

Thomas Horn on right

Receiving  the OBE?

Sergeant William John Lazell, Royal Artillery– 26 October 1920 – 28th February 1980

Thus far with these biographical sketches I’ve introduced you to my taid, my mother, a couple of RAF pilots and the captain of a merchant ship so now it is the turn of the army. Whilst doing the research for Convoy I was fortunate enough to make contact with Paul Lazell who owns a splendid website of photographs of Malta during the war. All the photographs were taken by his father who was stationed on the island from July 1941 until 1944. Rather like my grandfather, Paul’s dad is one of the unsung heroes of the war who just got on with what needed to be done. Paul has kindly provided the following account and a photograph of Bill taken in 1942.

‘Bill’ Lazell volunteered for the Royal Air Force in 1940.  His ambition was to serve with bomber command as a rear gunner. A very strange desire as he suffered from claustrophobia.

He declared his keen interest in wireless and photography.  As a result he found himself recruited into the Royal Artillery.  He was immediately trained on the then, top secret ‘radar’.

In 1941 he was dispatched, along with thousands of other troops on a convoy from Scotland.

The convoy was split in two.  One section was sent to Singapore.  Those troops were immediately captured by the Japanese.

The second half were sent to Malta.

Bill served with the 27^th Battery, 7^th Battalion  Royal Artillery.  He was a radar operator with a battery of heavy anti aircraft guns.. Whenever he had the chance, Bill used to man the twin Lewis Guns.

Bill and his colleagues saw the worse of the siege and relentless bombing of the island.  They had to dismantle the radar station roughly every 48 hours when their position was plotted by enemy aircraft and move to new locations.

Bill took literally hundreds of photographs on Malta between 1941 and 1944.  He also kept a daily diary of events throughout his stay.  I am proud to now own all of his photographs and diaries.

In 1944, when he returned to England, he married his childhood sweetheart, Joy (my mother).  They had two daughters in addition to myself.

Sadly Bill died in 1980 following a long illness.

He would have been immensely proud to have known how popular his photographs would become.  They have been published in a number of books and magazines, the most of notable of which being ‘Air War Malta’ and ‘Images of War, Malta GC’, both by Jon Sutherland and Diane Canwell.

Convoy - the tour continues

With thanks to Lindsay Stanberry-Flynn and Rebecca Gethin who have been asking me thoughtful and thought-provoking questions about how the book came together and featuring Convoy on their blogs.

Lindsay's blog

Rebecca Gethin Featured-writers

Lieutenant Commander Roger Percival Hill, DSO, DSC – 22 June 1910 – 5 May 2001

I could simply suggest that in order to find out about Roger Hill you go away and read Destroyer Captain: memoirs of the war at sea 1942-45. This covers his time in command of the destroyers Ledbury, Greville and Jervis and he says in the introduction

“As far as I know, and memory can play tricks, everything in this book is true… I have tried to tell the story as it happened and as I saw and felt it at the time and without hindsight.”

Roger Hill had a tough war.  Having taken command of H.M.S.Ledbury in January 1942 the first operation was taking part in the Russian convoy PQ17. I’m not going to dwell on that particular convoy but it is evident from his book and the interviews he gave about the subsequent convoy that

“I can never forget how they [the merchant ships] cheered us as we moved out at full speed to the attack and it has haunted me ever since that we left them to be destroyed.” p58

In August 1942 the Ledbury was one of the vital ships, which took part in Operation Pedestal to relieve Malta. I use Roger Hill as the narrator for the Operation Pedestal poem in Convoy as he covers the operation in depth in Destroyer Captain. He is charmingly self deprecating “If only I were a writer instead of a naval officer writing up a journal twenty years later for his family, how I would like to be able to describe the scene [arrival of the Ohio in Grand Harbour] and my feelings.” He goes on to describe Malta as

“a wonderful place to be. The bomb damage was severe, particularly in Valletta. But it was a front-line town and morale was high. Everywhere I was saluted -  one man almost knocking himself backward he did it so hard. p`103” 

After a few days respite the Ledbury, together with the Penn and Bramham – all three ships having brought the Ohio to Malta - sailed for Gibraltar on Tuesday 18^th August. The following day there is an incident which made me sad to read and which clearly distressed Roger Hill. The three ships are sailing in V-formation against air attack and there is the inevitable Italian shadowing plane. When it comes within range the Ledbury opens fire with Squeak and Wilfred, the twin guns mounted at the stern of the ship and the plane makes off over the horizon. Then Hill is told there has been an accident (p105).

“Let me know what has happened when it’s cleared up.” I said  - thinking perhaps one of the guns had jammed or a man had been hit by an ejecting cartridge case.

It was much worse: when the four guns had fired pointing almost exactly aft, the shock of the shell leaving Wilfred – the lower mounting – had caused a shell which had just come out of the muzzle of the right gun of Squeak to explode. The fuse must have been faulty. The shell had burst above Wilfred’s gun shield, and the deck and depth-charges were full of splinters.

Read, the officer candidate who had swum out to me with the rope [an earlier incident in the Arctic], was dead, killed instantly – and eight of Wilfred’s crew  were wounded – none seriously. It was a most bitter blow, after getting through everything that had been thrown at us, to lose a man this way.

I felt inexpressibly sad; I stood behind Squeak’s gun shield with my arm around the shoulders of the captain of the gun and the tears ran down the grooves in his sunburned face. We just stood there in misery together.

In the evening I put on my best uniform and read the burial service on the clanking vibrating quarter-deck and the crew and survivors stood around me as we slipped the body sewn in a hammock and weighted with shot, over the side.”

Convoy

Officially today was the day of publication for Convoy and so the book is going out into the world on a tide of good will. It and I have our supporters and cheerleaders and I’m particularly grateful to Jan Fortune of Cinnamon Press who believed in the book from its earliest stages

I am mindful too that although the poems are my work the stories that they tell are those of the men who fought for Malta. I hope that everyone who picks up Convoy and reads it will think of them; most of whom are no longer around to tell the stories themselves.

I took part in my first ever relay race today. I was one of those kids who was no good at sport at school and never picked for anything but this lunchtime at work I was part of a four person running team for my Faculty, each of us doing 1.1 miles. Convoy also feels like part of a link in a chain and I hope that everyone who reads it will remember the men in its pages and will pass their stories on.

Photograph taken by my elder son, Luke

Thomas Francis Neil, DFC*, AFC, AE

Tom Neil had already fought in the Battle of Britain when he was posted to Malta in the summer of 1941. He is well known for his books on his wartime experiences; Gun Button to Fire, Onward to Malta, Questions of Guilt (short stories), Flight into Darkness (short stories). His most recent book is Silver Spitfire published in February 2013. 

On 21^st May 1941 Neil and his fellow pilots from 249 Squadron were to fly off from H.M.S Ark Royal when they were within about five hundred miles from Malta; taking off in two batches; a flight of twelve led by ‘Butch’ Barton and the second flight of eleven led by Neil. Each group was to be escorted by a Fulmar and to fly just above the water, maintaining RT silence throughout the flight.

This may all sound straight-forward although for the pilots it was fraught with risk. Their route took them past Cape Bon on the northern tip of Africa. The Vichy French were known to be hostile and it was uncertain whether or not they might attack the Hurricanes. Then the planes had to avoid Pantelleria, Lampedusa and Linoa before locating Malta.

The first difficulty for Neil was a problem with the port wing. The gun and ammunition panels came adrift during takeoff and a piece of metal several feet in area was sticking up; effectively acting as an airbrake on the left hand side of the aircraft. In addition the paper and maps on which he’d written the courses for Malta and had tucked into the windscreen crevasse had been blown out of the plane. Faced with the choice of attempting to land back on the carrier without a hook and with two overload fuel tanks just waiting to catch fire or continuing, he decided to press on, following the Fulmar eastwards. After about half an hour of flying and once they were clear of the Cape Bon suddenly and inexplicably the Fulmar began to accelerate, pulled up steeply and disappeared into cloud.

 “One moment it was there, the next it wasn’t!… Apart from knowing that Africa was somewhere to the south and Malta approximately to the east, I could have been in Tibet.” 

He was also responsible for ten other pilots and only twenty years of age. He broke RT silence to ask if anyone else would like to lead the way to Malta and nobody volunteered. So Neil decided the only thing to do was to head back for Gibraltar. They came upon the fleet which they had left earlier and salvation in the form of a Fulmar, their Fulmar as it happened which took off from Ark Royal and waggled its wings to demonstrate that they should follow. Later they discovered the pilot had had to return to the ship after an oil pipe had burst spraying him with hot liquid and he thought his engine might seize up. By now they’d been airborne for more than two hours and had a further three and a half hours of flying to reach Malta.

“Malta, when it came, appeared with magical suddenness… in the form of cliffs… white and brown out of the mist and sea and were almost within touching distance… the island itself – ochre-coloured sandstone, glaringly bright, tiny brown stone-fringed fields the size of pocket handkerchiefs, , everything hot and lumpy and harsh to the eye…"

Luqa was being bombed as they approached but as they were running out of fuel there was no choice but to land anyway. Once on the ground a chap with a pipe climbed onto the wing to guide Neil explaining that they were in the middle of an air raid. Neil commented dryly that he had noticed and then a spark from the man’s pipe landed in his eye causing him agony. It was a brusque welcome to the island. 

Tom Neil spent seven months on the island which he wrote about in Onward to Malta. This includes an incident on 8th November 1941 involving Pilot Officer Pat Lardner-Burke which he kindly agreed I could use as the basis for two of the poems in Convoy. He wrote

"I feel honoured that you have thought fit to single me out as being rather special - which, of course I'm not!

I and readers of this blog may well disagree with that last comment. 

 

Captain Thomas Sydney Horn, Merchant Seaman, OBE, 5 May 1899 – June 1971

A brief word of explanation about these biographical sketches. These will mostly be about the things I found out about these men for which there wasn’t room in Convoy. They do all feature in the poems but there is so much more to tell about their lives. Each one of them could do with a book to himself and many of them, for example Laddie Lucas and Tom Neil have written their own books.

Captain Thomas Horn is someone who I really wish had written a book about his experiences during the war. He was master of the Blue Star line’s Sydney Star. He was born in Amble, Northumberland in May 1899. He went to sea when he was fifteen and he obtained his second mates certificate in 1924 and his Master’s certificate in 1924, the year he got married. He took the Sydney Star on her maiden voyage to Australia in May 1936.

I discovered him and his ship in Ian Cameron’s Red Duster, White Ensign. Cameron evidently interviewed Horn for the book as there is a very full account of what happened to the Sydney Star during her eventful voyage to Malta as part of Operation Substance in July 1941. Thomas Horn and his ship have a poem to themselves in Convoy. He was awarded the OBE as a result of his actions, as was his chief engineer and other members of the crew also received awards as follows;

 London Gazette 16 December 1941 - For services when the ship was torpedoed and damaged during Operation Substance - a convoy from Gibraltar to Malta in July 1941.

Haig, George - Chief Engineer - OBE(Civ)

Horn, Thomas Sydney - Captain - OBE(Civ)

Mackie, James Hunter Andrew - Chief Officer - MBE(Civ)

Knights, John Arthur Bamford W/50 - Leading Seaman RANR - Commendation

Roberts, John Wakeling W/303 - Able Seaman RANR - Commendation

Robinson, Anthony Jesse - Gunner - Commendation

Ungazetted award by Lloyd's

Haig, George - Chief Engineer - Lloyd's War Medal for Bravery at Sea

Horn, Thomas Sydney - Captain - Lloyd's War Medal for Bravery at Sea

Mackie, James Hunter Andrew - Chief Officer - Lloyd's War Medal for Bravery at Sea

London Gazette 4 June 1943 - Birthday Honours List 1943

Bones, Frank - Carpenter - BEM(CiV)

The other glimpse I got of Horn was in the pages of Tom Neil’s Onward to Malta. Neil left Malta on board the Sydney Star on Boxing Day 1941. She’d been on the island since arriving in the summer undergoing repairs. Neil writes


“Mealtimes were welcome breaks [from the claustrophobia of his cabin] during which all four of us RAF officers dined at the captain’s table, the latter a worried little man who was only occasionally joined by the Chief Engineer and one or two others, their empty chairs serving to cast an additional shadow over our halting conversation.”

The following morning the ship is bombed by a Ju88 without any consequences although this does raise the spirits and interests of the pilots.


“The Captain and several of his officers having joined us for the meal, it was obvious that the headman was in a nervous and unsociable mood – as well he might be! Much less concerned we joked about the attack, pointing out that the bombing had been as effective as the gunfire, which seemed to us all bark and no bite The gunners were hopeless, we opined. How could they expect to hit anything if they were ignorant of even the rudiments of deflection shooting? Being fighter pilots we knew all about such things, naturally; it was a pity the gun crews weren’t similarly competent. We laid it on pretty thick, aware of our hosts’ frowning and slightly injured silence.

Finally the Captain stood up and blotted his lips. Did we think we could do any better? We all exchanged exaggerated glances of surprise. Of course we could; it was just a matter of know-how and practice wasn’t it? He nodded then turned away. In that case when the next attack came, we could show him just how it was done. All right?

So as the next attack starts to develop the forty-two year old Captain does turn the tables on these twenty-something year old pilots, Neil, Cassidy, Harrington and Peter Le Fevre by summoning them to the bridge and pointing out the machine guns he expects them to use. According to Neil what followed was

“ three of the noisiest and most hair-raising minutes of my life, the engagement introduced by the crack of countless guns, the shriek of four and five inch shells as they ripped through the rigging above my head, the thud-thud-thud of the Bofors, the tearing rattle of cannon and machine-gun, the soaring curve of flaring incendiaries and the white streaks of smoking tracer as it whipped across the waves. But through it all, seemingly unscathed and with magnificent, even foolhardy, bravery, came the Savoias. Line abreast, a terrifying phalanx”

They and the ship survive the attack and continue on their voyage.

“Now about twelve hours sailing from Port Said, much of the tension had disappeared; it looked as though we would make it after all and even the Captain’s face was seen to crack into the occasional bleak smile.”

The Sydney Star reached Egypt on Tuesday 30 December 1941.

Percy Belgrave "Laddie" Lucas, RAF Pilot, CBE, DSO and Bar, DFC, (2 September 1915 - 20 March 1998)

Laddie Lucas lived a full life, as a champion golfer, an MP, a businessman and a writer as his volumes of autobiography attest. However I am principally concerned in this post with the time he spent on Malta during 1942 as an RAF pilot and from June as squadron leader with 249 squadron.

Laddie arrived on Malta on 17 February 1942, on a Sunderland Flying boat from Gibraltar. He describes his previous experience with the RAF in the Portreath sector (West Country) as ‘singularly dull’. That was soon to change. He and his friend Raoul Daddo-Langlois had volunteered for what had originally been billed as a posting to Burma. Their first encounter was with Squadron Leader, Percival Stanley ‘Stan’ Turner, a Canadian who’d fought in the Battle of France, at Dunkirk and during the Battle of Britain. He flicked open Lucas’ greatcoat and took disdainful note of the young Flight Lieutenant’s lack of decorations. That also was to change during Laddie’s time on Malta.

He wrote about his experience in two books Malta: The Thorn in Rommel’s Side (Penguin 1993) and Five Up: A Chronicle of Five lives (Crecy 1999). He has a journalist’s eye for a story. He does tend however to stick to the facts and his books are those of a man who’d been brought up not to show his emotions. Just occasionally he lets his guard drop. It was through one of these clinks in his armour that I got a glimpse of a scared young man whose cockpit was filing with smoke and who was desperate to find somewhere to land – not easy on Malta with all its stone walls and tiny fields.

This incident became one of the poems in Convoy. Laddie made light of it in an article he wrote which appeared on the front page of the Daily Express on 23rd May 1942. He’d taken advantage of a brief period he’d spent on Gibraltar waiting to fly planes off an aircraft carrier back to Malta to send the article home as “a lobby briefing so that the editor might have it as background to counter some of the ridiculous propaganda which is being written about the fighting here’ (Lucas (1993) p156).  But in Malta: The Thorn in Rommel’s side he comments that the experience was ‘still cut deep in the memory’.  

Aside from the ferocity of the air battles where they were well and truly outnumbered by enemy fighters and bombers another issue for the pilots was that they were often not able to fly due to lack of planes. This was akin to asking an Olympic athlete to put in a world breaking sprint on the track but without having spent much time running.

“I flew only five times in April on interceptions for a total flying time of five hours and twenty minutes. Few, in my flight logged more. True such flying as we did was packed with action. Every minute of every scramble, from take-off to landing, was full of incident.” (Lucas (1993)  p96).

Laddie also makes an appearance in the longer poem about Operation Vigorous, the convoy that set out from Alexandria in June 1942. It was late in the day and he and his flight were expecting to be stood down…. when the telephone rings…

In July 1942 He was awarded the DFC for an attack on three Italian Bombers. The citation reads

Acting Squadron Leader Percy Belgrave, LUCAS  (100626), Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, Nor. 249 Squadron.

Squadron Leader Lucas displayed great courage in an engagement against 3 bombers escorted by 14 fighters. He unhesitatingly led his squadron through the enemy's  fighter escort and, diving down, they, destroyed all 3 bombers, 2 of them falling in flames. Squadron Leader Lucas has destroyed 3 hostile aircraft and damaged 7 others. 

It was in July too that Lucas came to the end of his tour of duty on Malta. He and Daddo-Langlois were the only two pilots still flying of those who had come to the island in February. The newly arrived AOC Keith Park had decided they should be sent back to England. Laddie writes

"...I knew I had had my chips and ought to be taken off but the news depressed me. I have never been any good at saying goodbye... Leaving 249 which, for months, had been my life, and where I found friendship, kindness and loyalty, was just like going away to school. I longed suddenly to be picked up from the bar, parcelled up and, without anyone else noticing, deposited by some magic in London without having to say any goodbyes. I didn't know how I was going to face them. I was close to tears when I put my head on the pillow of my bed in the Xara Palace that night. Exhaustion leaves you with no resistance once you let go."

James Honeybill, Merchant Seaman – 8th March 1903 – 12th March 1993

Earlier in the year I promised to provide some biographical details about the men who are in the poems in Convoy. The only place to start is with my grandfather, Jim, taid as I called him (Welsh for grandfather). He was a merchant seaman all his life and first went to sea in 1919 at the age of sixteen, following in the footsteps of his older brothers Bob and Will.

 I’ve already mentioned how the first poem came to me at one of Pascale Petit’s writing workshops and also how I thoroughly resisted the idea of writing about my grandfather and his wartime experience. I didn’t know anything about it. He’d hardly ever talked about it and all I knew was that it involved Malta. And yet once I had that first poem about what it might have been like to be on the deck of a ship under attack it seemed inevitable that more would follow. My uncle, also called James, had his Discharge book so I knew he was with the Blue Funnel Liner, the Ajax (not to be confused with HMS Ajax). I turned to the Maritime histories to find out about the convoys she had been involved in. Richard Woodman’s (another Blue Funnel line man) Malta Convoys provided a wealth of detail and the information that she had been stuck on Malta from September 1941 to Boxing Day that year. Rather a shame for as Woodman says (p274)

The Ajax… was equipped with such superb cargo-handling gear that she had discharged her lading within forty-eight hours of her arrival only to spend three months dodging about Grand Harbour, ending up moored at the head of Marsa Creek. Here, surrounded by the heights of Marsa, the ship’s company sheltered in an adjacent tunnel during air raids, leaving one watch on duty to man the ship. as they were forbidden to used their anti-aircraft armament because of the shortage of ammunition, it was a profoundly frustrating experience…”

So this was why when Taid did mention the war it was about Malta and the suffering of the Maltese people. I can remember being well and truly told off as a child for not eating all the food on my plate and being told the Maltese had to survive by eating rats. I’m still not sure if that story is true but as an adult I can understand his annoyance at my not appreciating how lucky I was.

I talked to my uncle, born after the war who remembers some more stories including one involving Taid and the captain of the Ajax arriving in Grand Harbour. Then a fellow poet, Peter Marshall, put me in touch with his father, John who sailed with the Ajax after the war. John sent a photograph of her arriving in Grand Harbour in February 1942 and in return I sent him a naval message from Operation Vigorous. Taid had helped himself to a paper copy of the message.

I started reading Tom Neil’s book Onward to Malta to find out what it was like to be on the island during 1941. He left on Boxing Day 1941 on board the Sydney Star. Hadn’t something happened to the Sydney Star earlier? Didn’t Taid mention her as being a fine ship? So by this stage I’m was surrendering. The universe seems to have decided I am going to write about Malta as there was not just my grandfather’s story but also all the other men. And as I have discovered many of these stories have been forgotten. Not by the Maltese who still commemorate the arrival of the Operation Pedestal Convoy and whose government honoured the surviving seamen by issuing a medal in 1992. My grandfather was immensely pleased to receive his medal not long before he died.

What would he have made of this book I wonder? I like to think he would have been proud and pleased. In lots of places I have had to imagine what it was like so I’m sure he would be able to find things I’ve not got quite right. I've never been to sea, never been under fire and never been to war. I expect like one of the RAF pilots he would tell me that what he did was nothing special. I disagree.

Today Jim would have been one hundred and ten years old and I leave you with a photograph of him and my Nain on their wedding day on 12^th August 1932.

110 Days and counting

The useful thing about having your book listed for publication and appearing in 'forthcoming titles' is that some websites like Waterstones provide a form of count-down to publication so it's 110 days to go.

Between now and then I am going provide on this blog more information about the people who inspired the poems. There isn't the space in a slender volume of poems to go into this level of biographical detail so you will find it here.

My Next Big Thing

I’ll start by thanking  LIndsay Stanberry-Flynn for tagging me in the Next Big Thing which provides the opportunity for writers to answer questions about their current writing project. Lindsay is a novelist and short story writer. I recommend that you buy and read her prize winning novel,  Unravelling and her next novel The Piano Player’s Son will be published next autumn. Having read a little of the Piano Player’s Son in draft I can’t wait for it to come out.

And now I get a chance to talk about my Next Big Thing:

What is the working title of your book?

It had a variety of working titles; 'Life under the Red Ensign' and 'Pink then Red' before my publisher decided it should just be called Convoy.  I liked the simplicity of this as the poems are about the convoys to Malta during the second world war.

Where did the idea for the book come from?

It came from my taid, my grandfather. I've already written about the inspiration for the first poem which came out of the blue while I was taking part in one of Pascale Petit's workshops at Tate Modern.  After writing the first poem I tried ignoring the whole thing but it would not go away.

What genre does your book fall under?

Poetry

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

I'd pity any director endeavouring to turn this sequence of poems into a film. There are fifty nine ships involved for a start and a large cast including not just merchant seamen but also Royal Naval commanders, admirals, RAF pilots and people on the island of Malta. However if Jane Campion were willing to take it on I'd recommend concentrating on the important convoys and the father/daughter relationship between my taid and my mother. Taid would have to be played by someone from North Wales. My ideal choice would be Huw Garmon who played the lead role in Hedd Wyn. He was the poet Ellis Humphrey Evans who was killed during the first world war. Huw Garmon comes from Llangefni so his accent would be perfect and he is also about the right age as my Taid will have been in his late thirties during the war. There is also a lovely role for a six to twelve year old girl playing my mother growing up in North Wales and waiting for her father to come back from the war.

I'd like Ian McKellen to be Captain Thomas Horn, Master of the Sydney Star which was torpedoed during the July 1941 convoy. This is pure indulgence on my part but I would love to hear him say the lines:

I’m as old as this century.

Tonight I feel each year like an anchor’s weight.

I had wondered about the possibility of having Daniel Craig to play Lt Commander Roger Hill of HMS Ledbury although I'm not sure this would work as a) Mr Craig is likely to be far too busy, b) he'd have to grow a beard for the part and c) having been the hero of the hour during Operation Pedestal Roger Hill does get very emotional towards the end of the poem and later on is fraught to the point of throwing up at the prospect of putting back to sea. Much of this is definitely not James Bond territory.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

They went to the sea in ships and fought and died.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

A poet with an agent – now there’s an idea. I’m open to offers. Convoy, however, will be published by Cinnamon Press in 2013.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I firstly started writing it seriously in the autumn of 2010. A lot of the poems were written whilst I was staying at Tyn-y-coed near Conwy. It is a marvellous place to go to get peace and quiet in which to write and it’s surrounded by mountains and not far from the sea. There are regular writers courses there organised by Cinnamon Press.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

There is one poet who covered similar ground and that was Alan Ross. He served on destroyers during the war, although mostly in the Arctic and North sea rather than the Mediterranean. I thoroughly recommend his collected Poems published by Harvill Press in 2005 which includes his long narrative poem 'J.W.51B: a convoy'.

The only contemporary poet that I know of who has written about men going away to sea is Jehanne Dubrow with her third collection Stateside. She is the wife who is left behind when her husband is deployed and the poems are wonderful. Every time I pick up her book again I discover a new favourite; the current one is the poem Whisky, Tango, Foxtrot which is all about being deployed

I’m relieved that I didn’t discover either of these books until I was thoroughly engrossed in the writing of mine to the point where I wouldn’t have wanted to stop. I do hesitate about comparing my book to either of theirs though.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

It was merchant seamen who inspired me to write the book. Having decided I’d better find out more about what Taid went through during the war I discovered all their forgotten histories. it has been irresistible and daunting at the same time and I just hope I’ve done justice to them.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Ships, loss, human frailty; those moments when men are braver than they believe they are capable of and other moments when they are terrified.

You can imagine it like one of those black and white war movies except that the poems are in colour.

Tag time

And now I’m going to pass the baton on to Ruth Downie and if you haven’t already met Ruso or to give him his full moniker - Roman Army Doctor and investigator Gaius Petreius Ruso then you are in for a treat.

Are we there yet?

October is the month in which I hand over my collection to my publisher, Jan Fortune of Cinnamon Press. It is going to be so hard to let go if these poems. I worry about them needing more work. I worry that they don’t do justice to the merchant seaman and others whose stories they re-tell. I worry they are too long, too short, not poetic enough.

The date is fixed for the launch next May, the cover has been chosen from a remarkable set of photographs taken by Bill Lazell who was with the Royal Artillery.

The poems have their supporters, not least Jan, my local writers group who have read them, critiqued them and become sufficiently involved to go and look up the ships on Wikipedia, my writerly friend, Vanessa who has been urging me on every step of the way.

So twenty days to go. No – I’m not there yet but close.

HQS Wellington and Operation Pedestal

HQS Wellington is currently hosting an exhibition about Operation Pedestal, which took place seventy years ago. During the summer holidays I took my sons to see it and the ship. To be honest this was really an outing for mum as I wanted to have a look round the ship and although I’ve done plenty of research on that particular convoy it is which is worth re-visiting.

Fortunately both sons were riveted by the film (originally produced by Channel 4) which was part of the exhibition. It was a useful way of giving them the information rather than having to do too much reading of the wealth of written information in all the displays. I only discovered later just how much the younger son has absorbed about what happened to the Ohio when he explained the story, at length, to one of his former teachers.

This is all part of my personal mission to ensure that people don’t completely forget the contribution of the merchant navy and men like my grandfather to the outcome of the Second World War.

HQS Wellington is a lovely ship to visit. She is moored on the Thames, just down-river from Embankment station – a piece of living history. You will get a warm welcome (as we did). entry to the Pedestal exhibition is free to children and a mere £3 for adults. It closes next Monday so you only have two more chances to visit – Sunday 16th September and Monday 17th September.