Day 117- Edward and an unsung hero!

"I was now seeing Cherbourg from a totally different viewpoint than during the war, the place of memories for me and events contributing to the landings later on.

John and the first engineer went ashore with a pilot boat to get some spare parts.  The damage was fixed in no time and we could proceed towards the Gulf of Biscay, having narrowly missed one of the worst hurricanes since 1927.

I dried my washing in the middle of  The Gulf  thinking of one of my uncles who had lost his life in this approximate area -  that was during the war of  1914 - 1918. 

The troop transport they had been travelling aboard had been torpedoed on its way to South West Africa. My uncle had knocked his head when one of the life boats had snapped - he lost consciousness before hitting the water. Somebody had helped keep him afloat for a while but to no avail.

I was a child when I heard this story in the old Cafe on the Sas and my grandmother cried.  Young Edward had been the only one in the family who couldn't swim and my grandmother said, "maybe he could have been saved if he had been able to swim"!

Young Edward was a very good singer and the darling of the girls at the time.  My grandmother gave me his banjo.  However, I never made good use of it - somehow, it was all Edwards and I could never take a note on it but I loved it when my Dad did.

From Cape Finisterreto Cape Hatteras on the Spanish coast of Galecia the Celtic part we sailed along noticing the fishing fleet had all their flags at half mast.  So many boats had been suddenly overwhelmed during the storm and had not been able to save themselves.

We entered Oporto to dock at Leixius where we noticed a general strike was going on, it was still the time of  The Dictator.   The next day, we were talking to the secret police who had come aboard our vessel.  Suddenly, the army appeared in vans and took the strikers away with them.

We asked one of  the secret police what would happen to the strikers, he answered, "they go on the next boat to Mozambique"! 
Old ways die hard, here they were still very much alive.

To be continued ...

Day 116 - Rough Seas!

"The try out for our vessel was to find out how well the ship stood up to all conditions and of course price!  The greater the faults the lower the sales price.  We carried some individuals on board who seemed pretty suspicious in their intentions.

Our first voyage was characterized by one of the biggest storms in memory in which we were nearly thrown back on the Isle of Wight.  One side of the ship had conked out resulting in considerable loss of power; while turning in the wind and strong tides there to tackle up in it - we nearly capsized!!!The boat being flimsily loaded with cement bags for ballast - The first engineer was a former Polish submarine captain they said.

Anyway, during the second wave, pondering, before we had time to right ourselves that was the crucial moment.  I could see the dangerous angle in the engine room and a loose spare piston managed to jump out of its attachment missing us by a mere couple of feet.

The Polish engineer kept his hand up to give us a chance to make it to the upper deck, if necessary, from the upper railings.  At that moment, the ship started going back and not further down the danger level.

They told us later that it had been a close one!  Some of the inland mates were nearer to tears than us, we now started singing old but still known sea-shanties, releasing our pent up feelings.

We enjoyed singing and felt proud of our sea spirits which we kept high; it was in the blood they used to say.  With the salt spray now in our hair and our faces, we sailed straight ahead  at a steady pace  towards Cherbourg for repairs in calmer waters near the harbour but still out at sea.

To be continued ....

Well written memoirs

Excellent memoirs!! I started reading them around 9 pm and could not stop reading, only around 1:00 am when I was finally too tired to continue.

Paulino

Day 115 - Helle-a! AN OLD VIKING CALL!!

"For myself, Madame Denile had offered to get me a job on the Sabena, as a radio-operator or sparks, after following the one year higher level institute in Brussels.  My Aunt Helen was also trying to help get me a job by tying to get her husband to offer me half shares in his plumbing business.

I had quite a few other offers.  However, they were not quite as  straightforward as the ones above.  One idea was suggested by my Aunt Ray and Cousin Irene who lived in Morrocco - their plan was to get me a job in a machine shop in either Casablanca or Rabat. 

In the end I chose my own way - I wanted to do my own bit - which turned out to be to join The Merchant Navy.

My first ship was to Ghent, S.S. Helle-a.  They needed people who had completed trade school and had experience with motor engineering on trawlers.  After the war, there was a shortage of skilled tradesmen in those categories.  My friend Roger and myself studied the trawler exams.  Roger had been taken over to England during the war and had come back to Belgium as a Petty Officer in The Navy.  

The ship we were to sail in was a beauty!  It was an old ship and on each side had a twin motor capacity of 12,000 H.P.   The ship had been named after an old viking call: "Helle-a", which was uttered before, The Vikings, disembarked from their ships and claimed land.  Similar to the past, she was manned by a crew of  Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, Dutch and Flemings.  

She had been sold to, The Chemical Union in Belgium and our destination was Morroco.  Our purpose was to pick up phosphate and then later sail to to India, to collect bones, -  as there were many available there, then.

To be continued ...

Day 114 - Leon Degralle/ Revisions and edits!!!

Daniel was eventually caught for his crime at the Army and Navy store through the co-operation of  two government institutions,  The British Military Police and The Belgian Special Police or Gendarmes.

With his loot he had decided to live it up and helped give himself away by his illustrious living -  splashing his money  around in cafes of ill repute with Madams and their girls -  who sometimes robbed him when he was drunk!  

As a group, we had also come up with a plan to kidnap Leon Degralle, known Rexist blackshirt leader.  We had found out that he was temporarily in hiding in Bilbao, Spain.  Together with other Nazi's from the Eastern Front - he had landed in Bilbao after a belly landed Dornier flight.

We had also heard that he was going to undergo face lift surgery to change his appearance.  We had learned that he was then going to proceed on transportation to South America, so we had to hurry up with our plan!

The idea had been to travel with a fishing boat or small yacht to Bilbao.  I had a friend from Buchenwald called Coublanc and I was going to purchase a boat from him in Sable D'Olonne

Part of our plan was to visit Daniel's uncle in Pithivier and then to casually proceed from there to Bilbao.  We had a nice visit with  Daniel's uncle and were glad to find that everybody had survived .  We learned that just before the end of the war, Daniel's family had been hiding in the forest just behind where they lived.

We then continued towards the coast, the old route!  Coublanc was back to work fishing and working on a trawler.  When we went to visit him he told us that we could stay at his home with his wife and children.  

We then visited a lot of old families that Daniel knew very well.  Many of them had not been as lucky as Daniel and I and there was a lot of tear shedding for their loved ones who hadn't returned - it may well have been, in many cases, that we were the last people from home to have seen their loved ones alive! 

Anyhow, our plan to bring Leon Degralle to justice had to be aborted.  We found now, that we didn't have enough funds to buy a boat and having no sponsors for such a project we had to go back home.    

Daniel acted like Clark Gable after being pursued and before he turned himself in - after jumping from the quay into a fishing boat one of the cross ropes got him in the crouch and thus he appeared in the old dance hall!!!!!!!!

The idea to bring Leon Degralle for trial would also have been an act of justice but at the same time it may have vindicated him!  Taking into consideration, that it was rumored that a lot of war records had been revised and edited just before the end of the war !!!!!!!!!??????

Only a woman interested in Daniel's loose capers would later be able to make him walk straight!!I think a social service program for veterans would have done a lot of good for lost souls like Daniel!

To be continued .......

Day 113 - "Who Dares Wins!

For those that were in better health the government found easy jobs like Commissionaires, cleaners of  "Wagon Lits" for the state transport catering service run by a privateer called "Peeters"who the had the tender forever!

Most of the time, I continued to persevere, always remembering the motto I had adopted, from the S.A.S.,  "Who Dares Wins".
Daniel and George just gave up on claiming their rights through government organizations : it had all been too much and it was all over for them.

I still wanted to lead an adventurous life and was thinking that with our money from the government we could venture out independently as entrepreneurs!  At a reasonable rate, we could obtain an army truck which we could then convert and use as a refrigerated fish truck for transporting fish to inland sites.  We could even get a three man trawler, the speediest in the harbor, which when permitted to do so would be ideal for trawling using two booms.

I mentioned the speediest in the small fishing fleet because during the war these small trawlers had been equipped with Skoda motors.  These motors were so powerful that insurance companies would not consider insuring them until, later on, when the laws had
been changed to allow fishing with two trawler nets on each side.

Daniel and George let it all go for the funfare with the girls - to whoop it up on their meager subsistence level.  After his demobilization, Barbaix, eventually became involved with the stock exchange and never got out of it, except for his general hobbies in electricity and who knows what!!!

I don't know how far all that carried him but it looks as if he led a life of leisure for the rest of his life.  He got married and settled; finding it too much trouble to get his car out of the garage to meet a friend from long ago................

Daniel started his career from jail contacts, this was after he had been imprisoned for emptying a couple of Army and Navy stores as an inside job, helped by and used by a British storekeeper

To be continued....

Day 112 - Conclusion!

"After a while, we had all returned, myself first, then soldier Barbaix and eventually Daniel from the East.  The only thing we could think about was enjoying ourselves but where was the money going to come from, that was the question.

I had just passed our Control Commission, which decided on who was a Political Prisoner and who was most certainly not!  Besides all this, of the ten thousand genuine survivors,  there were ninety thousand imposters: all this prolonged our agony with endless waiting. The whole process was embedded in red tape.  Then there was the battle of the government.  The one we had experienced during occupation and the one in exile.  All this had to be sorted out by the competing factions or eventually compromised on.

With the question of the King, they made short measurement.  Everybody agreed to it, that he should abdicate until his son was ready for the throne.  In the meantime, Prince Albert was his "Voogd".  In fact, it was a moral and symbolic decapitation of  the King himself.

There were a few Political Prisoners who held seats in the Senate and some also controlled newspapers, like Blum, for the People.  The rest was firmly united and organized in the Association for Political Prisoners.

Wherever we seemed to go; I remember seeing demonstrations in the capital which were organized to help speed up our cases so we could start our normal life again.  We now had to fill in lots of papers and were considered to be demobilised soldiers.

Not one of the survivors was really in a very healthy state of body and spirit afterwards and so we were considered to be invalids!!!!

All this was gradually achieved over a two year period.  Some didn't have very far to go, used up!!!!

To be continued .....