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

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.

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.

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.

Collected Poems – John Pudney

I have one of my academic colleagues, Jonathan Rix to thank for reminding me of John Pudney’s poems. He was enthusing about some of Pudney’s RAF poems – Smith and Missing  

Smith, living on air, 
Your astral body 
A mechanic wonder 
Your anger an affair 
Of fire and thunder.

So I’ve been reading his collected poems, published in 1957 which contain poems from his first ten collections published over twenty years from 1933 – 1953.

His most well-known poem ‘For Johnny’ was featured in the film ‘The Way to the stars’. According to the author’s notes at the back of the book it was written on the back of an envelope during a London alert in 1941 and there never was a particular Johnny: it was written for them all. However to my taste it does have the feel of something written in a hurry and is far from being his best poem – rather too much tell and not enough show. I much prefer ‘Combat Report’ with its alternating voices; one which is a pilot reporting on the enemy he’s just shot down and the other the poet commentating on the situation. When the poem was broadcast in 1941, read by Laurence Olivier the BBC wanted to alter the ending ‘that’s how the poor sod died’ to ‘poor soul’. Fortunately the authorities were persuaded to allow the naughty’ word to be used. I wonder if anyone recorded the broadcast – it would be quite something to hear it.

I, of course, came to Pudney via Malta. He was sent out in 1943 to write an official account of the Battle of Malta for the Air Ministry, but being a poet as well as in the RAF he came back with a long poem, The Siege of Malta.  
.... A petal 
Yellow, all veined with green in the sea’s hard 
Flooring of other element, of timeless running 
Malta, upon blood-invested water, cactus, nettle 
Leafed, old prickle, guard.