Passage

By Paul Redgrave

The author details his early childhood in Yorkshire leading to his interest in weight-lifting at the age of sixteen, and subsequent success as Northern Counties light heavy weight champion. He trained with Olympic weight lifters Norman Holroyd and Ronald Walker.

On the outbreak of war he enlisted as a gunner in the Royal Navy, in the DEMS ( Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships) and was torpedoed and sunk three times in the Battle of the Atlantic.

After the war he gained a place at Oxford University, where he met eminent writers including Dylan Thomas and Joseph Heller.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Sep 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483678153

Paul Redgrave

Paul Redgrave was born in Bradford in 1920, and fought in the Battle of the Atlantic during the war. After the war he went to Oxford University where he read English. In 1951 he moved to Plymouth, taking up a post as a teacher . He also wrote poems and short stories and was the author of a novel on the Battle of the Atlantic. He gained a black belt in judo and was the author of a manual of self defence for women , in conjunction with Carolyn Seaward, Miss UK and runner up for Miss World. He lived in Yelverton on the southern edge of Dartmoor, where he would enjoy walking and cycling, and the ambiance of the local village pubs.

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Copyright © 2013 by Paul Redgrave.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2013913808

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4836-7814-6

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4836-7813-9

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4836-7815-3

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Rev. date: 09/17/2013

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Contents

Foreword

Chapter 1       The Blue Lion

Chapter 2       The Alexandra Hotel

Chapter 3       Bassi’s Restaurant

Chapter 4       Scarlet Interlude

Chapter 5       The Hotel Metropole

Chapter 6       Over the Ozzy

Chapter 7       Gissy

Chapter 8       Work and Weights

Chapter 9       War

Chapter 10       Hms Ganges

Chapter 11       Hms Drake

Chapter 12       The Gentlemen Sailors

Chapter 13       First Ship, First Trip

Chapter 14       Troopship

Chapter 15       Stone Frigate

Chapter 16       Homeward Bound

Chapter 17       Mac-Ships

Chapter 18       The Instructor

Chapter 19       Plymouth Regained

Chapter 20       End of Passage

Acknowledgements

Endnotes

A going or moving onward, across or past; transition, transit. OED

By the same author:

FULL FATHOM SIX

THE BALLAD OF CHILDE THE HUNTER

SELF-DEFENCE FOR WOMEN

THE MASTER HERBALIST

FOREWORD

My late father’s autobiography details his role in the Battle of the Atlantic, as a DEMS ( Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships) gunner. The DEMS was a specialist branch of the Royal Navy designed to afford protection to the merchant fleet. It represents an invaluable eye-witness account of three torpedo attacks in the battle, and is an important source for historians and students of naval history of the Second World War. He carried out detailed and extensive research, including translations from internet sources in the original German. He would frequently discuss his latest findings with me , and I subsequently read his accounts with great interest. Over 30,000 men of the British Merchant Navy lost their lives during World War 2, in addition to personnel of the Royal Navy, other allied naval forces and airmen as they fought to protect the merchant convoys from attack by the U-boats, German surface fleet and Focke Wulf Condor aircraft. The DEMS gunners were particularly vulnerable as they shared the same risks as the merchant seamen. Winston Churchill had stated that the only thing that frightened him during the war was the U-boat peril. If the Germans had been victorious in the Battle of the Atlantic Britain’s lifeline from the United States would have been severed.

In March 1943 the situation for the Allies in the Atlantic was critical; 82 ships of nearly half a million tons had been sunk. It appeared that Winston Churchill’s worst fears were about to be realised. Supplies of commercial fuel in Britain were critically low and there was talk of Britain being unable to continue the war.

However, by April, increasing numbers of U-boats were sunk and in May the turning point in the Battle of the Atlantic was reached. On May 4 the slow convoy ONS-5 was confronted in the ‘black pit’ between Iceland and Greenland by at least 53 U-boats, the largest wolf-pack ever to be assembled in one area. Thirteen merchant ships were lost, but for Donitz it was to be a Pyrrhic victory; nine U-boats were sunk and several others badly damaged. Two weeks later convoy SC 130 saw the destruction of five U-boats with no Allied merchant ships lost. For the U-boat Arm (U-Boot Waffe) it was a catastrophic defeat.

The Battle of the Atlantic was won by the Allies in two months in 1943, owing to a number of factors: cooperation between British, Canadian and US forces, Allied supremacy in the field of electronics, new anti-submarine weapons ,closure of the mid-Atlantic gap by long range Liberator aircraft, the work of the Allied code-breakers at Bletchley Park and the exemplary leadership of Allied naval commanders such as Peter Gretton, and Frederick John Walker, a Plymouth born man.

It is now seventy years since Allied victory in the Battle of the Atlantic. In May 1943 Admiral Donitz conceded defeat and called off operations against Allied convoys in the North Atlantic .He made a brief foray into the Atlantic in the autumn of that year but was soundly beaten by Allied forces.

In the early part of my father’s autobiography he details his considerable successes in the sport of weight-lifting, training with Ronald Walker and Norman Holroyd, both of whom represented Great Britain in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Norman Holroyd planned to take him to the 1940 Helsinki Olympics, but the outbreak of war meant that this plan would have to be put on hold. When I was in my teens and early twenties he would train my brother and myself and I remember him demonstrating the three Olympic lifts.

The final part of his autobiography concerns his entry to St.Catherine’s College ,Oxford , where he read a degree in English. He met a number of eminent writers at Oxford including Dylan Thomas and Joseph Heller. He was a man of considerable ability. A scholar and a sportsman, his maxim was undoubtedly : mens sana in corpore sano.

Blaze Redgrave

OLWEN *

Foxglove cheeks

and flowing hair,

deep-eyed as the hawk

or falcon in his pride,

she walks on heathered, cool

dawn-weathered hills: white

flowers in her footprints spring,

fairer than the clover.

*white footprint

CHAPTER 1

THE BLUE LION

THE BLUE LION was a small public house near the city centre of Bradford, Yorkshire. My father became manager in 1924 after an emigration to Australia with Mother and me, aged ten months, had proved a disaster.

Father, who had soldiered through the three worst battles of The Great War, decided that England was not a land fit for his sort of heroics so, like many others, he sought a new life in the sun. He and Mother worked hard for three years on a sheep station near Broken Hill, New South Wales, until Mother wanted to go home. She missed her parents, her seven sisters, the bitter winds of Yorkshire, the rain, the snow, the grey skies, the Brontes. All the sisters had read the Brontes’ works over and over.

My parents had saved a tidy sum, there being not much to spend money on in Broken Hill, so we set out for Adelaide where Father fell for a con trick, his first, a classic: met three blokes in a pub who said they were looking for a fourth partner to share in the purchase of a hotel. It was alleged to be a couple of days’ motoring away in a boom town which had recently mushroomed because of opal discoveries. Here, they would all make their fortunes, presumably out of hotelry and weekend opal finds.

The grey skies, snows, killing winds and other attractions of Yorkshire could wait. Dad chipped in with all their savings except the return fares to England, went off with the men in a car to buy the hotel, had to camp for one night as it was said to be a considerable distance from town, all got drunk—or appeared to—all turned in beside the fire and under the stars. Dad woke at dawn, alone, the fire out, no food left, not even any tea. After a dingo’s breakfast he set off back to Adelaide and Mother’s wrath. As he was a fit man he didn’t suffer any ill effects. He had medals for walking with the Belgrave Harriers before the war and he needed them. It was eighty miles to Adelaide.

We arrived back in Yorkshire just in time for the grey skies, winter winds, snow, rain, my grandparents, the septet of aunts and now some uncles, the Brontes and the dole queues.

Dad was never out of work though. He did a succession of odd jobs, mainly catering for hotels and restaurants, Mother took in sewing and then they somehow convinced a firm of brewers that they could manage a public house, hence The Blue Lion. It is here that my first experiences of life in general begin to flash before me.

We had an Airedale I used to play with in the cobbled yard. Dad once let me take him for a walk, or rather the other way round, for Gyp was as big and strong as a bear to me, a five year-old.

He began to run and soon pulled me off my feet then dragged me along the pavement which amused some pedestrians but concerned others who took charge and brought us back to the pub, me with bloody knees, Gyp wagging his loofah tail and looking for approval, which he did not get.

My first disappointment came when Mother took me down Manchester Road to buy a raincoat.

I carried it proudly home, a shiny red garment with a matching sou’wester. I prayed for rain and when it came I put the things on and stood in the yard puddles kicking water at Gyp who barked while running in circles. When I was told to come in I did so and found to my dismay and disgust that my marvellous red raincoat was not waterproof. Rain had leaked in through the seams causing several damp patches inside. We took it back to the shop but the man said he couldn’t replace it as it had been the only red one. Mother could have her money returned or I could have a black shiny raincoat instead. We accepted the latter but I insisted on keeping the red Sou’wester.

I’d have thought Father would have seen enough of them and was therefore surprised when one day he made a rabbit stew for lunch. The smell nauseated me and I refused to eat any, so he sat me on his knee and spooned a small plateful into my squirming body. I cried and chundered the lot in spectacular fashion all over his new spats. He leapt up in alarm and swore loudly.

Serves you right, scoffed Mother. What are spats for anyway?

For the tango, said Dad, an occasional ballroom dancer—among other things.

He left the kitchen in embarrassed shame and though he never apologized I knew he was sorry by the way he treated me with extra kindness for the next few days, also the fact that he never forced me to eat or drink anything I didn’t want to again.

As a winter Sunday afternoon entertainment he promoted boxing matches in a big room over the bar. Men would carry their last orders up and sip their pints while young white hopefuls tried to batter one another to bits, encouraged by the advisory boxing enthusiasts who knew how to, but couldn’t. There was no ring, just a square of chairs with a space in the middle. I used to sit in the front row which was frightening, with blood, snot and sweat flying in all directions, but it was exciting and I couldn’t have seen anything from the row behind. Men on either side of me would put their arms across to protect me when the boxers swayed or stumbled in our direction. I don’t know if any betting took place but the spectators cheered and shouted as though their evening’s drinking depended on who won.

We had two live-in maids who shared the bar, kitchen and housework. They were both plump, jolly girls who always made a lot of fuss over me and once asked Mother if I could sleep with them for one night. Mother said all right, she supposed it wouldn’t do me any harm. How did she know? I spent a hot, sleepless night sandwiched between big friendly bottoms, like a shared teddy bear. Both girls wore thick, knee-length knickers and I wondered if they slept in them every night or just on this occasion. Fortunately I wasn’t asked to repeat the experience so I never knew.

I attended my first school, the junior department of Canton High, in the September of 1925.

CHAPTER 2

THE ALEXANDRA HOTEL

THE ALEXANDRA HOTEL or The Alec as bar customers called it, with complete disregard for the feminine form, was a sixty-bedroomed building of the Edwardian period, also in Bradford but right in the city centre, near The Alhambra Theatre. It was curiously built over and around a cinema, The Empire. There were three floors for accommodation but the top one was for some reason never used except for storing furniture, mostly broken, so hardly anyone ever went up there apart from myself. The rooms were dusty and heavily curtained. Most were without light bulbs so if I wanted to play in a particular room I’d take a bulb from the store and climb on a stool or tea chest, fit it into the appropriate socket then set up my model railway or whatever was the current hobby.

Father and Mother managed this business from 1926 to 1929 and as I was only six years old when we went there I cannot remember all the events which took place in their proper sequence, so I’ll relate the more interesting ones as they come to mind and date them roughly where possible.

Perhaps because I was an only child I was an avid pet keeper. I bought chickens in the market and smuggled them up to the top floor whereI kept them in one of the bedrooms. They were well fed on corn and water, bread and porridge oats, all of which I took from the kitchen when the chef and his assistants were too busy to notice, but I didn’t know that hens needed grit to make eggshells so it came as a surprise to me when they laid soft, membranous eggs. I was also unaware that one of the chicks I’d bought was different from the others, until a hotel guest asked Father if there was a farm nearby. Dad replied that the hotel was in the middle of a busy city.

How was it then, the man asked, that he’d been awakened by a cock crowing that very morning?

Father eyed me suspiciously. The chickens—and the cockerel, had to go. They went, but I daren’t ask where for fear it was the kitchen.

Next, there was a puppy. I didn’t keep him on the top floor but once took him up there, for a reason. There was a stairwell of some sixty feet between the floors and with a square of green baize I found in one of the top rooms—presumably from an old billiard table—I fashioned a parachute and test-dropped a brick down the stairwell. It floated down satisfactorily so I made a made a littler harness and put the puppy in it, confident that he would come to no harm as my parachute had passed the brick test. The puppy didn’t know this of course and was not so confident. He dithered when I dangled him in space before I let go but he, like the brick, floated gently down towards the foyer. Unfortunately he must still have been nervous because about halfway down he began to pee, just as three guests stepped out of the revolving doors, into the hail and under the stream of puppy piddle. All looked up in alarm and the woman cried out as she caught most of the tiny golden shower. One of the men put up an umbrella and deflected the rest. The puppy had to go, but I don’t think anybody ate him.

As I was passing a first floor bedroom one morning I heard a strange wailing sound coming from within. A chambermaid was approaching with a cup of tea on a tray. I asked her who or what was making the awful noise. That’s Captain Sahl, er, singing, she explained, then added, He’s just been in North Africa collecting animals. D’you want to see them? My curiosity was aroused so I nodded and she handed me the tray, knocked on the door, then opened it entered feeling rather nervous as she closed the door behind me and I stared at the figure sitting up in bed. He was wearing a pyjama top and had a tinted monocle screwed firmly into his left eye, or what surrounded it. Suddenly he stopped singing and playing a curious stringed instrument.

Put the tray down, boy, he commanded, indicating the bedside table. Come to see my pets, have you?

The room smelt like a zoo, because it was one. I looked round at the cages which lined the walls, some with bars, others with glass fronts. The latter contained lizards and snakes, the others monkeys of different kinds. There must have been twenty animals and reptiles. The Captain and his menagerie had apparently arrived the previous evening after I’d gone to bed. They stayed for only a few days then left as suddenly and as mysteriously, to me, as they had arrived. I was sure they were nothing to do with the circus which came to The Alhambra some time later and whose presence I was made aware of in an odd way. At the side and to the rear of the hotel was a car park surrounded by a corrugated iron fence too high to see over but with a gap of a foot between it and the ground. The car park was for the use of hotel guests and those few members of the public who, in those days, owned cars. There was a full-time attendant who sat in a small wooden hut most of the time. One day I was walking past the fencing when what looked like a smoking cannon ball rolled out from under, followed by another. Keeping well clear of these alien objects I knelt down and peered under the fence saw an elephant’s leg tethered by a chain to an iron stake driven into the ground. On looking up I glimpsed the rest of the animal, part of which was just about to discharge a third dungball. I quickly stood up and left the scene.

The Alhambra Theatre was just down the road from the hotel and The Prince’s Theatre only a short walk from there. Both were well-patronized in those pre-television days and because we displayed posters and playbills in our hallway advertising the shows, my parents were given complimentary tickets for all the performances. I used to go with them, though not both at once because Mother, as manageress, was just as busy as Father. Sometimes I went alone if the show was thought suitable. The theatre managers knew I was ‘Son of Alec’ as they both used to drink there, so they allowed me to sit by one of the programme sellers at the rear of the stalls. I enjoyed most of the plays but hated pantomimes and musicals. I went to these only when taken by well-meaning aunts and jolly uncles who used our free tickets. The gender switch in pantos bothered me at first. I asked Mother why Principal Boys were always girls but her answer: Better legs, I never found satisfactory so I didn’t bother to ask why Dames were always men. I took it all to be part of the topsy-turvy world of pantomimes which were childish and daft to me anyway, as was Peter Pan, especially when an actress stepped forward and announced that Tinkerbell would die unless all those who believed in fairies clapped their hands. I sat on mine, to the annoyance of whichever aunt was accompanying me. Musicals I found irritating because they had very little plot and just when the dialogue was arousing some interest the characters would burst into song and ruin everything, but the dancing was sometimes enjoyable. Later I added opera to my dislike of musicals and for similar reasons.

Big names such as Jessie Matthews and Sonny Hale were just beginning their careers and all the stars used to stay at the hotel, as did John Barbarolli when he was conducting the Halle somewhere in town, probably at St George’s Hall. Jessie Matthews must have been only about eighteen when I saw her sitting at the bottom of the stairs one evening when I was just going to bed. I didn’t know who she was but she was crying and repeating in a childish voice: I want a drink of water. It was after ten and the bar was closed so I fetched her a glassful from the kitchen.

When I gave it to her she stopped crying, smiled and gulped it down.

A comedian called Fred Barnes gave me his professional card on which, was drawn a part-profile of his face, just his forehead in fact. From the top of what would have been his nose there was a fine metal chain. You were supposed to shake the card and form the rest of his face.

It didn’t work very well but it was a good idea as his main act was to pull funny faces. I never went to see it.

Assuming that everybody would be interested in my pets I asked him if he’d like to see the two guinea-pigs I’d just bought in the market for a shilling each.

Oooo, rather! he gushed, so I brought them downstairs and he made a great fuss, rubbing them against his cheeks and kissing them.

I must have them, he moaned. How much will you take for the little darlings?

Not for sale, I replied. I’ve only just bought them.

What about a lovely present—for your mother? he suggested craftily.

I looked at Father who had hated my new pets on sight. He nodded.

Let’s see it, I said warily.

Fred, or Freddie as he liked to be called, handed the guinea-pigs back to me and went up to his room, then returned in a few minutes with what looked like a round cushion which he put on the floor. It was made of soft red leather, real Moroccan and new, he insisted. The top had designs tooled in gold. I thought Mother would be pleased with it so I said yes, he could have the animals if he promised to look after them.

Oh, I do, I do! he almost wept, so I gave them a final stroking and passed them to him.

He hugged them and hurried off to his room. Mother was indeed pleased with her present. She said it must have been very expensive and she called it a pouffe. I wondered why Dad laughed.

There seemed to be a number of Irish people in Bradford at that time. One of our chambermaids who had a penchant for spoonerisms especially when excited once rushed up to Mother and blurted; Mr Bigjug’s broke his Barbarolli (Large water jugs and wash basins were in every room). This anecdote became a family joke for many years, too many years.

The Empire Cinema had a friendly Irish commissionaire who used to direct me to one of the emergency exits whose door he had left unfastened so that I could slip in without paying. One Saturday afternoon he and I were chatting when down the then cobbled Morley Street came three Irish navvies travelling at high speed on one bicycle, all shouting drunk. I think the front tyre must have burst for they were suddenly flung off and lay without moving in various parts of the road, each a bloody mess. One lay face down with his jacket up, revealing braces over a striped union shirt, the sort they wore with just a stud in the neck, no collar or tie. "Lord, they’ve deshtroyed themselves!" moaned the commissionaire. I’d never heard the word either said or used like that so this stayed with me as well as the image of the accident.

An example of bad ‘media influence’ affected me when I was seven years old. I’d been to see a magician performing at The Alhambra and one of his acts was to put a young woman in a large box which he then stabbed repeatedly with a long shining sword. I had another puppy or rather young dog and one day I thought I could easily duplicate the magician’s trick. After all, the girl had come out of the box unscathed, so why should not the dog? I put Alec in a cardboard box not much bigger than himself and carefully poked a penknife blade through it several times. Nothing happened, no squeals or yelps. I was a magician. I opened the lid flaps and out jumped Alec, overjoyed. He started to lick my face and I put my hand on his head to pat him. Horror! There was blood on my hand from a small cut where the blade had nicked him. I wept and hugged the poor creature, then quickly washed the wound and bandaged a piece of lint on it which, before it fell off, looked ridiculously like a bonnet. Alec licked me gratefully which made me feel even worse and I was too ashamed to tell anyone of this incident which I didn’t really understand. Nobody had had to bandage the magician’s girl assistant.

On the first floor where my parents and I had rooms the hotel ‘Boots’ had a small sitting room where he cleaned the guests’ footwear during the night, after he had been round all the corridors picking up their boots and shoes then chalking the room numbers on the insteps. Even if anyone could nowadays be found to perform this menial but not unpleasant task the boots and shoes would probably be stolen before the night porter—as he was more formally known—could lay hands on them. A small tip was usually placed inside as the man wasn’t paid much in the way of wages.

Once I had to leave my warm bed at about midnight to go to the lavatory and on the way back saw smoke coming from under the door of Boots’ room. I went in and nearly choked on a lungful of the stuff. The draught from the now open door caused part of the smouldering linoleum to burst into flames. A piece of coal had fallen from the fire but fortunately as the floor covering was very old and worn thin I easily tore it away and rushed it to the bathroom I’d just left, turned on the bath taps and plunged the lino in, dowsing it at once. I then took it back to the room where Boots was still snoring and sleeping off the whisky he’d been drinking from a bottle which now lay half empty beside him. He begged me not to tell Father and I promised not to, nor did I, but somebody did.

He was sacked at once after he had admitted drinking on duty. Dad praised my action which Boots had apparently told him about and gave me half-a-crown. He said I was not to mention the incident to anyone because of alarming the guests and giving the hotel a bad name.

The person I suspected of getting poor old Boots into trouble was the housekeeper, Enid. I supposed he forgot to clean the bath out and re-arrange the lino so Enid, who went everywhere in the hotel, spoiled the mess. She was a thin, bitter woman for whom I imagine I was a substitute child—though of course I didn’t know