Hitting storms
In the beginning, they sent us to the banks of Newfoundland to
escort convoys leaving from Halifax. After that, they sent us to
Sydney, in Nova Scotia, and from there, we escorted ships in the
Gulf, just past the banks of Newfoundland. Then after that, they
sent us to Greenland and afterwards, Iceland. But Iceland was
the coldest. That's where the biggest storms hit. But the banks
of Newfoundland got some good ones, too. There was one storm
that hit, that the ship took in the side a bit. It took almost a
day before the captain could get back on course to put the nose
into the storm. I saw a guy about six foot two being thrashed,
flung from one side of the ship to the other, just like a flash.
We guys, our mess was in the nose of the ship. And then when the
wave hit on the side, he went with it. He was lucky, all the
hammocks were in the corner. He wound up in the hammocks.
Otherwise, he could have hurt himself really bad. Well . . . the
waves were at least thirty to forty feet high. It was quite the
storm. And then when the nose goes up, it shakes, then it goes
back down, and the wave goes clear over the ship; that's quite a
wave. The nose shakes, it's just like . . . it's like . . . or
when it goes back down, the propeller spins in the air and you
feel the vibration everywhere. It's rather . . . it kept you
from sleeping much. Because even in the hammock, you would . . .
every time that the ship would dive into the wave, you would
dive in your hammock too. So, you had to go back up, too. So, it
kept us from sleeping, but we slept well because we knew that,
during storms, there weren’t submarines on our tail very often.
But when it was calm, we didn't sleep as well. Ship covered with
ice. When we hit the north of Greenland, and the coast of
Newfoundland too, in ‘44, before going overseas, we often had
spells of extreme cold. It was very cold, and our ships weren't
like today's, they weren't insulated. The walls were iron and we
often saw frost on the sides of the ship in the morning, and
that’s where we’d have to get dressed. We almost always went to
bed dressed, too, because it was too cold. There was one day
that we woke up and the ship seemed to be pretty slick; it was
really leaning over, then the [inaudible] gave us sticks to
break up the ice everywhere we saw it; this happened right after
we hit a storm from the side. Where there was ice, the posts of
the ship were almost three times their usual thickness. The
wires were at least twice or three times as thick, too. And the
weight was only on one side. So it's dangerous for the ship;
it's difficult to steer. I reckon that the captain must have had
a hard time of it. And it wasn't the only one. It was the same
thing for all of us, for all the ships. And that was a usual
thing to do, we didn't think much about it; it was
a normal chore.