A Clash In The Fog

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Hello and welcome to a new series of Family Stories, the podcast written by you, our listeners.

This week's family stories feature miraculous escapes from colliding convoys off the coast of Newfoundland and a parachute mishap caused by a poorly timed distraction from a beautiful woman.

This week, we're starting with a story from Andrew.

Andrew writes, my grandfather was born in the Bronx to Jewish immigrants in the 1920s.

He dropped out of university after Pearl Harbor to volunteer for service and given his partial college education was given an officer's commission.

His goal was to become a naval aviator, but he was rejected as a potential pilot by the Navy, Air Force and Marines because he was colourblind.

Instead, he joined the Army in 1942 and was assigned to the Sea Coast Artillery Unit as a gunnery officer with the logic that he must have learned sufficient math in college to aim the guns.

He was later transferred to an anti-aircraft unit stationed in El Paso, Texas.

He considered this a plum assignment on account of the lack of aerial threat from Mexico.

His quiet journey through the war didn't last long.

He remembered that many men in his unit were from the American South and had never met a Jewish man before.

Anti-Semitic remarks were a common occurrence, and eventually my grandfather had heard enough.

Sometime in forty three, he punched his commanding officer for calling him a dirty Jew.

For all his later bravery, when I imagined my grandfather as a young soldier, I always returned to the image of him clocking a bigoted officer.

Unfortunately, the army had less of a sense of humour.

The incident was the end of his officer's commission and earned him a transfer, as he later called it, to Company A, 411th Infantry Regiment, 103rd Division, as a combat infantryman.

He entered France at Marseille in October 1944 and first saw combat near Epinal in France.

While fighting in the Vosges Mountains, my grandfather claimed he killed an SS Hauptmann in hand-to-hand combat.

Allegedly, they chanced upon each other on night patrol when they both jumped for cover into the same ditch, too close to use their service weapons.

He said the anti-Semitism from his comrades stopped after that.

My grandfather would occasionally display a dagger he claimed belonged to the SS man.

By December 1944, 1944, his unit was crossing the Magnot Line into Germany.

It was here that he was wounded, though his stories about what really happened would change on occasion.

Most often, he was advancing across open ground and was wounded by a near-miss from a German tank round.

While in hospital back in New York, he took up with one of his nurses and wrote press releases for the base commander.

He discovered he excelled at press releases, beginning a decades-long career in journalism.

That pretty nurse would become my grandmother.

My grandfather always was proud of his service.

Parsala stories slowly grew over the years, but he was always a storyteller at heart, and I think he was searching for a way to convey what happened to him.

It was a long way from home for a kid from the Bronx.

And that story was from Andrew.

Our next story is from Peter Iverme.

My father, Edward Iverme, known as Ted, was third mate on BP tankers during the war.

Taking thousands of tons of petrol across the Atlantic with submarines was a hazardous pursuit.

He wrote down his experiences.

I've included one of them below.

After the war, he joined the Metropolitan Police, retiring as chief superintendent.

He painted seascapes as a hobby.

One of his paintings showed a German submarine being sunk by a destroyer with a convoy in the background.

It probably showed his fear and dislike of German submarines acquired during many days of Atlantic travel.

His account reads,

On the 7th of July, 1941, I was the third officer on MV British Diligence, and we left New York loaded with petrol.

On the 10th of July, we arrived at Halifax, and the convoy for home left from there.

We were bound for England, and we occupied a position in the front row of the convoy, which was very unusual for an oil tanker, as we were normally placed in the stern.

We were positioned on the starboard side of the Commodore, who flew his flag in the Elder Dempster ship, named Biafra.

Approaching the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, fog as usual closed in and we could only see the water line.

There were 60 ships in the convoy, and it was planned to make a 72-degree turn to port at 10pm to go up to Belle Island Straits and north of Newfoundland.

In view of the very thick fog and darkness, we all expected this plan to be cancelled.

The captain was on the bridge with me in anticipation of this.

Instead of cancelling the move, though, the old fool, the Commodore, an ex-Royal Navy officer dragged back for the war, gave a whistle signal of two blasts at 10pm indicating the turn should go ahead.

As no submarines were operating in the area, he could have used the radio, which we all would have heard, but instead only half the convoy appeared to have heard the whistle.

Sound is very deceptive in fog.

As a result, the thirty-odd ships on the starboard side of the convoy, who had heard the Commodore's steam whistle signal, altered 72 degrees to port, whilst the remainder held their course.

The result was utter chaos with fifteen collisions in the next thirty minutes.

The noise of crashing metal thumps, shouts and whistles coming out of the fog was quite frightening.

We had to keep an even sharper lookout as visibility was about forty yards.

Suddenly there was a shout from one of our crew and we ran to the starboard wing of the bridge to see the bows of a large ship nudging our counter and we could hear the metal grinding.

We increased speed to draw clear.

The old captain said, I've had enough of this.

We will leave the convoy, and I heartily agreed.

There should have been nothing ahead of us as we were in the leading row, so after we had both listened carefully for sounds ahead and heard nothing, we headed straight on to leave the convoy.

Almost at once, a lookout shouted, Ship ahead!

And there was the Biafra on our starboard bow.

She should have been to port.

We were so close, I thought a collision was unavoidable as we could not stop the ship, even though I'd put the telegraph to full astern and ordered hard a port.

I shall always remember standing on the bridge beside the captain waiting for the inevitable collision.

Many people, some with gold braid round their caps, poured off the bridge and ran along the deck of the Biafra shouting, go away, we are the Commodore.

The captain said quietly to me, Commodore, no Commodore, take that, and we gripped the bridge rail as the ships hit.

There was a loud crash and we were thrown forward as some 30,000 tons smashed together with a sickening thud.

After the collision, we later learned that we had opened up our engine room.

We fell back, but within seconds we saw the oil tanker named Comanche rushing towards us on the port side.

She too was loaded with petrol.

We could take no evasive action as we were stopped and down by the head.

We could see lots of activity on the bridge of the Comanche as she swung hard to port.

Her bow missed us, but her stern swung round and hit our forecastle.

Masses of sparks shot up as the metal grated together, but as neither ship was holed, no explosion followed.

As the ships drove rapidly together a mass of water built up between them and just as we touched a fountain of water shot into the air and splashed all over our deck.

After the Comanche hit us she disappeared into the fog and almost immediately we heard a tremendous bang.

We heard over the radio that several ships were in trouble and had started sending distress signals breaking the usual radio silence.

The Comanche had collided with the Biafra, hitting it directly in the boiler room right next to a hole we had already caused earlier.

Later, the Comanche stayed with the Biafra as it slowly made its way north.

I believe the Biafra eventually ran aground on the coast of Nova Scotia to avoid sinking.

Meanwhile, our own ship had a large hole in the forepeak, the front section of the ship, and the first mate and the carpenter were up there checking the damage and measuring how much water had come in.

It was confirmed that water was rapidly entering the ship and we were going down by the head.

The captain said, stand by the boats.

I sent a messenger forward to tell the crew.

It was a great delight to awaken the Scottish second mate some two hours before his watch, as he was always late relieving me at midnight.

When I woke him, he moaned, What's the idea?

It's only 10.20 p.m.

I told him the ship was sinking, and he was to stand by the boats.

This shut him up as he leapt from his bunk.

I went to my cabin and put my life jacket on.

In the spur of the moment I looked around for something vital to snare.

It seems ridiculous, but I broke open a drawer

and pulled out several packets of nylon stockings I'd bought in New York and stuffed them in my life jacket top.

They later got soaked with the fog.

I went to the bridge and worked out the course and distance to the nearest land.

I can recall it was thirty-six miles north-west to Cape Breton Island.

I wrote this out three times and gave it out to the other three boats.

I swung my boat in readiness.

All the boats were swung out in wartime, but securing securing ropes had to be released and ladders prepared.

After about thirty minutes we discovered we had stopped taking on water, and so we stood down.

All the time the sparks could hear various ships in the convoy talking on the radio about the difficulties they were in.

We got underway and headed back to Halifax as our damage would not allow us to cross the Atlantic.

It was very peaceful to be out of the convoy the next morning on the 13th of July.

I was on watch and blowing the whistle at one-minute intervals as we went at half speed through the dense fog.

As I stood on the port wing of the bridge, I was suddenly taken aback by a huge cargo ship passing us within thirty feet.

She had not been using her whistle, and she glided out of the fog and back into it without a sound.

It was easy to see people on her bridge, and she was flying the Greek flag.

It was quite incredible, and had it not been for one or two crew on my ship also having seen it, I could have sworn I dreamt it.

Anyway, no collision occurred, but it really was a near miss.

In those days we had no radar and the only indication of obstruction ahead was of sound reflected or by hearing other ships' whistles.

If you heard a whistle ahead, you stopped the engines and waited until you could confirm where the other ship was.

We returned to Halifax and anchored in Belvedere Basin.

Repairers came out and put a patch over the hole in the forepeak and then filled it with cement.

We went ashore and made statements in a solicitor's office relating to the collisions.

We heard no more of this, but we all hoped that the Commodore had been forced back into retirement.

And that story was from Peter Ivermee.

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Our next story is from Daniel Woodrow.

This is a story from a friend's family rather than my own, but I think it's absolutely fascinating, and so I'm sharing it with their permission in case it is of interest.

It's from Carla Graham, a teaching assistant at the primary school I work at, and came to light when we were collecting our own family World War II stories from children and staff for the recent VE Day celebrations.

The story is about Carla's grandfather, Sid Graham, a merchant seaman whose father was from Barbados, although he had never been himself.

In February 1942, Sid's supply ship, the SS Scottish Star, was sunk by the Italian submarine, the RIN Luigi Torelli, as it crossed the Atlantic en route from Liverpool to Buenos Aires.

Four lifeboats were launched, and three were subsequently picked up by HMS Diomede.

But Sid and 15 other crew members were in the fourth and spent eight days on board as it drifted 600 miles towards, you guessed it, Barbados.

This quirk of fate meant that far from falling into the hands of the enemy and being subjected to the harsh environment that that would entail, Sid was able to spend the next six months being looked after by his auntie Dorothy, who he had never actually met before then, until a ship arrived to take him and the other 15 survivors back.

A lucky twist of fate, and that story was from Daniel Woodrow.

The next story is from Andrew Broxham.

Being an avid listener of We Have Ways, I thought I'd share some memories of my late father, Rex Poland.

Dad was born in 1925 and grew up in Croydon, where he attended Whitgift School.

Aged 18, he joined the Royal Air Force.

Like so many others, he had ambitions to be a pilot, but unfortunately, he wrote off the Tiger Moth trainer on his second solo flight, and, in his words, the RAF felt my efforts were going to prove too expensive for the public purse.

He therefore chose to become an air gunner, having been informed that the REF were shorter gunners, but without being made aware of the reason why.

After training and being commissioned, Dad joined 626 Squadron based at REF Wickenby in Lincolnshire, flying Lancasters as a rear gunner.

Having flown a number of operations, but before completing his tour, he was injured by flak towards the end of 1944, and while he was recovering in hospital, his crew flew with a replacement rear gunner.

Sadly, the whole crew, including his replacement, were killed when their Lancaster was shot down on the 22nd of February, 1945.

In the 1990s, my two brothers and I went with Dad to the Reichsfeld Forest War Cemetery in Germany, where his crew are buried.

His six comrades are all buried next to one another, but strangely, the seventh crew member, his replacement, Warrant Officer R.

S.

Pyatt, Royal Canadian Air Force, is buried in a different cemetery.

I remember Dad saying that this was apparently the result of the tail section being recovered at a separate location from the rest of the aircraft.

This was the first time Dad had visited the cemetery, and the emotion of the occasion affected us all.

I can't remember Dad's exact words, but as he stood at the six graves, he muttered something along the lines that it should have been him there as well.

I always felt that Dad had had a sense of guilt at surviving the war when his crew didn't, but I am certain that visiting his crew's final resting place helped him better come to terms with this.

Dad passed away in 2015, aged 90, but some years before he'd been asked to give a talk at a local aviation society.

I've attached an extract from his talk which describes an operation in 1944 and which I think might be of particular interest.

It should be mentioned that Captain Frank Potter, who features at the end of the narrative, was one of Dad's schoolteachers.

He wrote, Once the bridgehead in Normandy became established and the Allied armies had broken out into France and the Low Countries, the easier targets in support of the invasion forces became a thing of the past.

With the onset of winter, Bomber Command's efforts were once again concentrated on German industrial targets, known to all as Ruhr bashing, some operations being flown in daylight, as we now enjoyed the luxury of daytime long-range fighter escorts.

On one such daylight, 400-plus Lancasters, including our own squadron, were sent in one early November morning to bomb a large oil refining and storage plant at Vana Eichel, northwest of Essen.

Like all industrial towns in the Ruhr, a happy valley to bomber crews, the target was heavily defended.

At 15,000 feet the flat came up thick and fast, and very accurate.

On the run into the aiming point, another Lancaster flying a short distance ahead and below, bomb doors opened took a direct hit.

Everything disappeared in black smoke and flame as the 12,000-pound bomb load and the half-full fuel tanks exploded.

Too close and too sudden for our pilot to have any chance of avoiding the flying debris, our starboard outer engine stopped dead, the port inner sounding extremely unwell and trailing smoke.

The front of the aircraft was badly battered, judging by the comments coming over the intercom from the mid-upper gunner, and a sizable piece was missing from the starboard tailfin ten feet from where I sat in the rear turret.

For a moment I longed for the safety of conjugating Latin verbs in the comparative peace of home, but thanks to our unflappable twenty-one-year-old skipper and the competence of our flight engineer, who together got the aircraft flying the right way up again, we sorted ourselves out and managed to bomb more or less on target at the second attempt.

Turning for home, flying in somewhat crab-like fashion, it became clear that we had little chance of making it back over the North Sea to our base, and that the sensible choice would be to set course for a friendly airfield on which to put ourselves down as soon as possible.

Our navigator, at 38, something of a father figure, found us a recently captured airstrip in Holland which fitted the bill, and a couple of Spitfires, seeing our predicament, detached themselves from the high cover to shepherd us groundwards and prevent interference by a couple of Jerry Fw 190s, which were nosing around but keeping their distance.

Our skipper put us down safely with no further damage apart from a burst tyre and a somewhat bent undercarriage.

Royally lunched by a unit of the Reconnaissance Regiment on bacon sandwiches and the best hot tea we had ever tasted, we managed to catch a lift on a homeward-bound Dakota, returning to Downampney in Wiltshire.

The crew obligingly put us down at Manston in Kent, where we tried to organise one of our squadron aircraft to fly down and pick us up.

This proved a non-starter, as all Lincolnshire airfields had become fog-bound.

Our Manston hosts put us up for the night, and an extremely bibulous evening ensued.

The next morning, a Saturday, with the Lincolnshire fog still clamped hard down, there was nothing for it but to take the good old southern railway.

Arriving in London at lunchtime, we dumped all our kit in a pile under the clock at Victoria Station, whilst the skipper and our navigator went to the railway transport officer to arrange transport across London to King's Cross to catch a train to Lincoln.

We must have looked a rather scruffy sight, short of sleep, unshaven, and still wearing our flying kit, when a gaggle of beautiful senior schoolgirls appeared, led by a smart civilian gentleman of military bearing.

Captain Frank Potter, my old schoolteacher, no less.

He looked, a trifle disdainfully, I thought, at this motley collection of variously attired RAF bods.

He certainly didn't recognise me.

I had grown a rather fine-handle-bar moustache, of which I was immensely proud.

The habits of school days die hard.

I said, good afternoon, sir, and he looked at me blankly, so I added, It's Poland, sir.

He paused to take this in, then said, Good heavens, young man, what on earth are you doing here?

An impudent answer did briefly cross my mind, but the old school-day discipline reasserted itself, and I explained.

We chatted for only a few moments as our transport was now waiting.

We said our goodbyes, Bob, our mid-upper gunner, doing so very reluctantly as he madly fancied the blonde-haired girl in the party.

Frank Potter, a man of few words, gently took my arm and said quietly, you be careful, young Poland.

Good luck.

We gathered up our kit.

The bossotted Bob, in a dream-like state, picked up his parachute by the D-ring instead of the carrying handle, thus pulling the ripcord and decanting the canopy all over the platform.

Hoots of laughter from the other crew members, an appalled look on the face of Frank Potter, who seemed to be wondering how the war could possibly be won if the REF depended on a bunch of semi-disciplined, overgrown schoolboys, clearly unaware of which handle to grab on their parachutes.

As we went our various ways, I heard him mutter something, shaking his head in disbelief at what he had just witnessed.

Not catching his words, I asked Bob what he had said.

I'm not sure, said Bob, but I think he said, God help us all.

I hope that you find this of interest, and would like to take the opportunity to name and remember the crew.

Flying Officer D.

Roger, Pilot.

Flying Officer R.

W.

Donner, Navigator.

Flight Sergeant H.

B.

King, Flight Engineer.

Flying Officer T.

J.

O'Neill, Bomb Aimer.

Flight Sergeant C.

R.

Badger, Wireless Operator.

Flight Sergeant R.

Thompson, Mid-Upper Gunner.

Pilot Officer Ernest Rexford Rex, Poland, Rear Gunner.

And later, Warrant Officer R.

S.

Pyatt, Rear Gunner.

That story was from Andrew Broxham.

Thank you, Andrew.

Our final story this week is from David Rogerson.

David writes, My story involves the tragic bombing of two semi-detached houses during the Little or Baby Blitz in 1944, called Operation Steinbock by the Germans.

lasting from January to May 1944.

My father, Reginald Rogerson, was born in 1925 and was therefore only 14 when war broke out in 1939.

He lived with his parents and younger brother and sister in Kingsbury, northwest London.

In 1944, aged 17, he was employed as a trainee draftsman at the de Havilland Aircraft Company nearby.

He also enrolled with the local Home Guard unit in Kingsbury when he was just 17.

Don't tell him, Pike!

Whilst at work, he noticed a very attractive young blonde girl who also worked at de Havilland.

He found out her name was Altama Metcalfe and she was 16 years old.

Altama, a lovely and unusual name, was so called because she was the last member of her large family of eight.

Dad would cycle home with her after work to Birken Close and they became very good friends.

On the night of Saturday the 19th of February 1944, a German bomber dropped a single heavy explosive bomb which struck the two semi-detached houses at eleven and twelve Birken Close, killing seven members of the Metcalfe family and eight members of the Whitfield family.

Only Vera Metcalfe survived, as she was working a night shift.

Three of the Whitfields also survived Isabel, Joyce, and Joan.

The Metcalfs were all buried in the nearby St Andrew's Church, and the Whitfields were buried in Alperton Cemetery.

Dad never forgot Old Tama, and used to visit and tidy the Metcalfe and Whitfields graves for many years.

Dad died aged ninety six in twenty twenty one, and on clearing out his house I came across photographs of her grave, together with a poem written by one of Dad's workmates, expressing Dad's teenage love for Old Tama, the blonde on the bike.

I just wish he'd taken a photograph of her.

Well, that's all for this episode.

If you've got a family story you'd like to be considered for the show, please email it to wehaveways at goalhanger.com and please label the email family stories so we don't miss it.

Cheerio.