As soon as the pilot came onboard, we proceeded down the
River Dvina between muddy looking banks, small sandy bays
overlooked by forests of pine trees. The air was impregnated
by the smell and aroma of the scent from these forests. Huge
tree trunks floated past the Gem, hitting us on the hull at
times and sending a dull clanging sound throughout the ship.
We were to see many of these tree trunks during our stay in
Russia, some made into large rafts, being towed or sometimes
rowed along the river with families living on them. There
were other things we saw too, but these will come later;
first let us reach Maimska, for this was where we should stay
for an unknown length of time, owing to certain circumstances
which at the time we did not know of.
We finally put our ropes ashore on a wooden jetty.
Maimska, or what we could see of it from the top navigating
bridge of the Gem, seemed to consist of nothing but pit
props, piles and piles of them. In fact Maimska was an island
built on wooden piles, and the buildings on it were made of
pine logs. There were lots of shabbily dressed women and
girls, and seemingly hordes of young children around.
Watching these poor unfortunate people and the guards who
stood over them, was to become a regular thing in the weeks
to come. Moored at the same wooden jetty were two of the
other trawlers, the Lord Austin and the Lord Middleton, with
whom we had kept company since the scatter signal. Of the
other one, the Ayrshire, we had seen or heard nothing since
the convoy broke up. The fleet sweepers, the Halcyon, the
Britomart (above,
courtesy - NavyPhotos/Mark Teadham) and the
Salamander, and also the
Leda, were tied up
to the same jetty ahead of us; so was the A/A ship Pozarica,
with the writer and journalist Godfrey Winn onboard.
He had come along on the voyage to see what life on the ocean
wave was really like and subsequently wrote a book about
Convoy PQ17, though limited at the time as to what he could
write about it.
Once we had moored up securely and exhausted our
conversation with the lads from the other ships, the next
thing was to catch up on some sleep. I know that I felt
absolutely shattered, and I am certain that everyone on the
other ships must have felt the same. What bit of sleep I had
been able to get for at least five or six days and nights had
been odd snatches lying on the deck or on the top of the
engine room casing where it was warm, and near to the bridge
ladder and the ship's wheel-house where my action station
was. My eyes were in bad shape, but did eventually get back
to normal. Following our much needed rest, it was time to
take stock of what food and ammunition we had left; we had
certainly got rid of a great quantity of small arms
ammunition, but provided that we did not have to go through
the same sort of gauntlet on the homeward run, we should not
be too badly off. We had enough food for two or three weeks,
so with what we could get from ashore, (we thought), we would
be all right for that. While all this checking and cleaning
was going on, it gradually dawned on us that we had made it;
talking together on the deck, we found that we all shared the
same sense of relief, which I suppose is only to be expected
after such a harrowing journey as we had just completed. We
were the lucky ones who had a ship to finish the journey on.
There was also a feeling of remorse for those fine ships and
men, who had not reached safety as we had. The full impact of
what had really happened out there in the Barents Sea, came
to us gradually, as we talked to the crews of the larger
escort ships alongside the jetty at Maimska. We believed at
that time that out of the thirty-five merchant vessels that
had left Hvalfiord in Iceland on 27th June, only the four
that had arrived with us via Novaya Zembla had survived. But
this was later amended to eleven surviving ships. What a
tragedy it had been, though many more years were to pass by
before the full and true story was published for all to see.
This including those of us who had taken part, for, as I have
mentioned previously, we only knew to a certain extent what
was happening in our immediate vicinity, and everything else
was hearsay.
Routine returned, and an armed quartermaster was on the
deck at all times of the day and night, while on the jetty
Russian soldiers both male and female paced up and down,
watching both their own people who were working in the area,
and of course the movements that we made as we moved from
ship to ship for a natter. Sometimes we got Russian children
coming right up to the ship's side, begging for Patuskas,
(potatoes), Paani, (bread), Chocolad and cigarettes. Food was
very scarce as we soon found out. While the Russian guards
had their backs turned, many scraps of food and other edibles
that were left over from meals, were bartered for badges or
crudely made pen knives for souvenirs to take home. Many
things could be had for a slice of corned beef or chocolate
as we could see from the top bridge when some seaman or other
went ashore and made for the wood piles where the young women
and girls worked. It was a box office attraction in the weeks
that were to pass, watching the antics that were supposedly
going on unnoticed by anyone but those who were taking part
in these clandestine nuptials.
To get to the village of Maimska, one had to pass through
a rather long wooden hut. There was a door at each end, and
at each of these doors stood a Russian soldier, at times
female, all armed to the teeth with sub-machine guns, or
rifles with bayonets attached, and on some occasions they had
both. Each time you went into the village, and when you came
back to the ship, these soldiers stopped you at each end of
the hut. Sometimes they came up to the ready as you were
approaching. You would have thought that once would have been
enough to be challenged, but it wasn't. On going ashore for
the first time, each of us was warned that if we heard anyone
shout at all, even if it was not directed at us personally,
we were to stop and stand quite still until we knew what it
was about. At that particular time the Russians were not
taking to us very kindly at all, considering what we had gone
through on the way over. We were given to understand that
they did not believe that all the convoys of ships promised
were leaving Britain and ports in America, and that so many
were being lost on the way in the process.
The atmosphere was very strained, and could be frightening
at times. On more than one occasion, while I was waiting for
the ferry to take me to Archangel, about eleven miles away, I
was disturbed by the fact that I was surrounded by a score or
more ordinary Russian civilians who were asking me in rather
excited Russo-English, questions which at first I could not
understand. Ultimately I gathered that they wanted to know
when the Prime Minister Mr Winston Churchill was to start the
Second Front, and when the British and the Americans were
going to start fighting in the war. I made out that I did not
know what they were saying, 'Niet capiesh', Niet capiesh'. I
kept repeating that over and over again until I was able to
board the ferry, where I felt a bit safer.
After a couple of weeks, I had to make this trip to
Archangel almost every day, to forage for food for the crew.
We were down to drinking tea with no milk or sugar, hard
ship's biscuits, and Purser's Peas. On top of this we had
left a few tins each of tomatoes, beans and soya link
sausages. There was flour on board but no yeast to make bread
with, and pretty soon we were on a diet of hard peas, ship's
biscuits, and black tea without milk and sugar. This was to
last us until we were given passengers to bring home, when we
were allocated a few cases of mixed tinned stuffs, but this
did not last the trip home, as you will see later.
I never had any success with either the Russian or British
authorities in Archangel, with regard to food, even though I
went on many occasions during our stay there to try and get
some. Anything would have done. As it was, eventually we had
to get one of the boats into the water and pull up and down
the River Dvina, to see what we could beg off the merchant
ships which were anchored at various intervals along the
river, or tied up alongside some jetty or other. Luckily we
managed to get some liquid yeast off an American vessel; you
can't realise how smashing it was to taste once again freshly
baked bread, and to be able to dip it into the old and the
last of the red lead.
Word had been going round for days that there were not
enough ships to make up a convoy to take back to the UK, and
that we should have to wait until the next one made the
hazardous journey from there, and was unloaded ready for the
return. What we did not know until some time later was that
sailings to the Russian ports from the UK, had been suspended
for the time being, due to the losses on the outward voyage
of PQ 17. So then we began to feel as though we were going to
be left here in Maimska for the winter, for if we did not get
out before the sea froze over, we should be frozen in, and we
were not looking forward to that at all. But like all the
other ships' crews, we knew that we should just have to grin
and put up with it, as some of the fleet sweepers had done
during the previous winter months, when they had been based
in the White Sea area, carrying out sweeps to keep the
approaches clear.
One day we heard a buzz that three destroyers had made a
short but quick trip along the Norwegian Coast, from England,
and had brought over some new gun barrels for the A/A ships,
Pozerica and Palomaris, who had worn out the rifling on their
old ones on the way over. They had also brought with them
some more ammunition, a bit of food, and more welcome still,
the buzz had it, some medical supplies for the sick and
wounded. The Russians were desperately short of medicines,
and our wounded were having a bad time of it. So much for the
efforts that we had all put in to get war supplies over to
them; this was the thanks that these unfortunate men were
receiving. That the Martin, Marne and the Middleton, had in
fact made the quick dash over, was made evident to us by the
delivery onboard of no less than eleven full bags of mail. We
could not believe our eyes, as we had not had any mail from
home for two months. The longest time we had gone previously
had been about three or four weeks without news of our
families, so this was a field day for us. Never before had we
had such an accumulation of letters and parcels dropped on
the foredeck.
During the first month we were laid alongside at Maimska,
two Russian civilians dropped a sackful of vegetables on our
deck, and as we had not tasted fresh veg for some
considerable time, we were to say the least looking forward
to a good dinner the next day. But alas, almost before we had
time to move the sack to the galley for the cook, they were
back, this time with two armed soldiers. They regretted, they
said in broken English, that they had left it on the wrong
ship. It was for one of the fleet sweepers. There was nothing
that we could do in that case but watch them take it away as
our mouths watered with the thoughts of what we almost nearly
had. We realised later that we had been slow, and that we
should have had a few of them stowed away. There and then we
decided that if such a thing should happen again, we should
definitely make certain that we at least got a taste, but
there never was a next time.
A great morale booster for us while we lay alongside, came
after a get-together of the officers from the fleet sweepers,
and the three trawlers to help to try and get rid of the
boredom that was creeping gradually over us all, both
officers and men alike. They came up with the idea of holding
intership sports of various kinds; in some of the sports the
trawlers were classed as one ship, the men from all three who
wished to take part putting their names down for any type of
sport which took their fancy, and were then chosen for a team
to represent us all. This made for great rivalry, and despite
the weather, we enjoyed some good sport and fun, either by
taking part, or by just watching and cheering the teams on to
do their best aided by some ribald comments.
The Northern Gem's own newspaper, the Sunday Buzz, Vol 1.
No 1, for Sunday 2nd August 1942, gives this story and the
following list of results:-
Sports. . . Despite inclement weather, we have
enjoyed some good sport during the past week, in
which the trawlers have by no means disgraced
themselves. For the benefit of future historians the
results are summarised below. We hope that these
events are only the forerunners of a series of
contests, thoughtfully provided to relieve the
monotony of our sojourn.
- Whaler Pulling Shooting Whaler-cum~ Canoe
Race
- (1) Halycon (1) Halcyon (1) Halcyon
- (2) Trawlers (2) Britomart (2) Leda
- (3) Britomart (3) Leda (3) Trawlers
- (4) Leda (4) Northem Gem (4) Salamander
- (5) LordMiddleton (5) Britomart
- Sailing (1) Britomart (2) Leda (3)
Trawlers (4) Halcyon (5) Salamnder
- Tug of War At the time of going to press
this event had not been held.
Around about the last week in July, the trawler Ayrshire
arrived, bringing with her three merchant ships. We had
thought her lost but she had gone due north into the ice,
escorting the three ships of her small convoy. They had used
up all their white paint and many bed sheets, making
themselves look as much like the ice that they buried
themselves in as possible, in order not to be seen by the
enemy bombers, and had eventually made their way to Novaya
Zembla, where they were picked up and escorted in to the
White Sea to an anchorage and safety. Ayrshire was later
moored some distance away from the rest of the trawlers, and
one evening, two boats set out on a social call to her. One
of these was from the Lord Middleton, and the other from the
Gem. Both were manned by officers and men from these ships,
and apparently they all had a good night's entertainment on
the Ayrshire. They were rather late returning, and were
caught in a sudden squall which sprang up from nowhere, as
often happened. Efforts were made to lower the sails before
the full force of the wind struck them, but only one boat
succeeded in doing so, and then only after a struggle. The
other boat was overturned and its crew were thrown into the
icy fresh waters of the River Dvina. The rescue operations
were hampered by the fact that a strong tide was running, and
due to low cloud and heavy rain so late that night, complete
darkness reigned, but by dint of good seamanship, and by some
skilful manoeuvering by the crew of the other boat, all the
men were picked up out of the water, and no one seemed any
the worse for their involuntary ducking. When the storm
abated shortly afterwards, almost as quickly as it had
started the other boat was salvaged, and returned to the Lord
Middleton.
Other ships in our vicinity that took part in the sports
were, as I remember, the corvettes Lotus, La Malouine, and
Dianella, and also the rescue ship Rathlin. They all enjoyed
the fun, and of course the opportunity to keep themselves
busy and their minds off what could be in store for us in the
future. During our stay in North Russia, which began on 11th
July 1942, we saw many different things, some of which have
stayed in my memory more than others. One of the most vivid
of them was the air raids, of which there were many. The
German bombers dropped mostly incendiaries, many tons of
them, into the pine forests around Archangel in an effort to
set them ablaze. These fire bombs hung like huge chandeliers
in the frosty night air, and seemed to fall very slowly,
eventually disappearing from sight amongst the trees for a
few seconds, then flaring up into huge fires which could be
seen many miles away, the glare reflecting up into the sky
and illuminating the tall columns of smoke that reached up to
the dark ceiling of the sky.
I think though that most scary of all, though most
exhilarating during these raids, were the antics of the
Russian fighter planes, which would take off from some
aerodrome a short distance away, and streak past where our
ships lay, with all of their navigation lights on, then would
zoom straight up through the barrage of flak which was being
sent up to greet the German raiders. After the first one or
two raids we got used to them and refrained from shooting as
they thundered past, but I am sure that some of them must
have been shot down or at least damaged by the firing of
their own countrymen, though I never saw this happen. But it
was something to see, believe me, watching these planes
dashing past our ships, and through all the anti-aircraft
barrage that was being put up.
Then there was the day that I and several others of our
crew stood on the Gem's bridge and watched a man shot down in
cold blood; his crime was making off with some food stolen
from the community soup kitchen. Set back on the jetty was a
large wooden hut, and in the first few days of our stay in
Maimska we noticed that around noon a long queue of the
poorly dressed workers gathered outside this hut. The way
they were treated made us think that they must be some kind
of political prisoners, or slave workers. Each one of them
carried a container of some kind, either a tin, a jar or a
pan, inside of a bag made of netting; it gradually dawned on
us that the hut was a food kitchen, and that these
unfortunate people were queueing for what looked like a broth
or a soup.
On this particular day when we were watching, a man ran
out of the hut and along the wooden jetty as fast as his legs
would carry him; one of the guards on the jetty shouted for
him to stop, but the man either failed to hear the shouts, or
was too afraid to stop, and the guard who was carrying a
sub-machine gun as most of them did, immediately opened fire
with a short burst which hit the running figure squarely in
the back. This was swift and animal-like justice, and it
sickened me; those poor devils were starving, and killing in
that way for such a small crime as that of trying to
alleviate one's hunger made my blood run cold. It also made
us more aware of the repeated warnings we received from our
officers when we went ashore, to stop dead when we heard a
shout, and to stand still until we knew what it was all
about.
A happier memory of those now far-off days is that of
watching a group or platoon of both male and female soldiers,
marching along a muddy track in perfect formation, with their
arms moving in unison, with their guns slung over their
shoulders. They were singing in their deep and loud voices
one of their rousing marching songs. It was one that at the
time made us feel proud to watch them, and to know that here
was a people fighting for their country and its very
existence, and yet they could still sing like that. They had,
as far as we knew, done nothing to help us or even to make us
welcome during our stay, but I still could not bring myself
to run down the ordinary Russian people after seeing things
like that.
On our weird trip through the ice towards Novaya Zembla,
we had seen the amazing sight of ships steaming along upside
down in the sky. On one occasion as we got closer to the
islands, there, hovering above the horizon, was the replica
of a complete town; even the factory chimneys could be seen
smoking quite clearly, with towers and spires and domes of
churches reflected in the sky along with some tall buildings.
We guessed that it was Archangel being shown up as a mirage,
yet although the reflected image showed what looked to be a
fine-looking town, the real thing was nothing like it at all.
On the many times that I went into it, I felt as if I was in
some old wild west town, with wooden pavements for walking
on, and the roads in a terrible state especially when it
rained. The houses and the shops, as well as some local
government buildings, appeared to be very dilapidated. Above
all it is the smell that lingers in my memory, the scent from
the pine forests, mingled with the smell of rotten sewerage
amongst other things; it smelt more like a scented cesspit
than anything else. It's a wonder that the whole population
of the town did not die from some disease or other, I was
always glad to get back to the Gem as the air smelt somewhat
sweeter there, even though the scent of the pine forests was
still noticeable to some extent.
On reflection, I suppose that we looked for faults at the
time because of the reception we received when we arrived
there, and I can only think now that we might have been
biased by the things we saw, and the fact that we never got
any help in the way of food etc. during the whole of our stay
there. But after all we were in a country at war with our
common enemy, and they were it seemed giving one hundred per
cent action on their land fronts, so this could be why
everyone not engaged in that fighting was in such a bad way
for food and clothing, and why nothing was being done to keep
towns and villages clean and in good repair. Now we were
waiting to see if we had to go through the same ordeal on our
homeward journey, but if we made it at least we should be in
a more civilized country.