For some years, I have researched the wartime story of my father-in-law, Marine Jack Stevens. The more I looked into it, and remembering much of what he told me before he died in 1989, I can only conclude that his story was not the usual story of Royal Marines serving throughout much of the war. To begin with, I must say that, although he didn't plan it that way, he never fired a shot, at least not in anger at any enemy.

By his own admittance, he thoroughly enjoyed it, the whole experience. Talking in retrospect 30 years after the events, I sensed that he knew his memories of enjoyment were simply because he'd never had to do, or experience, what most of his mates did. To say he was grateful, I have no doubts about that. There were many times it could have all gone wrong for him, and by my reckoning, he had several lucky escapes. He revelled in the friends he made and the places he went, and he told me a great deal about it all. After he died, I wrote down as much as he told me, or as much as I could remember, which isn't quite the same but all family historians will know what I mean. Some time later, his widow gave us a 'memories tin', comprising mostly of rail and cinema/theatre tickets that Jack had kept as souvenirs of his travels. What is told here is the sum of what he told me, evidences from his souvenirs and photos, his recently acquired service record, plus further free research on the Internet. I hope that some of the information here, a lot of which would have been common to many Royal Marines serving at that time, may be of use to others researching the war records of their fathers, grandfathers and uncles in the same service.

There were also quite a few photos, most of which we had seen whilst he was alive, and so we knew some of the stories behind them. It was a good while later that, mainly from those loose tickets and receipt stubs many of which were fortunately date stamped, we were able to put together a rough itinerary of where he went, and where he might have been on certain dates. In short, we were able to make a rough track of his progress through the war.

Many years later and after Jack had died, using the Internet, I was able to flesh out a little more of the detail, with the help of RM veterans sites, Convoy Web, and my own limited knowledge of what was going on when and where in the war, particularly with regard to naval matters. As the years rolled on, more and more information on RM activities came to light as veterans told their own stories on blogs and forums where relatives posted up their own knowledge of what their dad or uncle had done during the war. One thing that slowly became clear was the apparent lack of information, particularly in regard to MNBDOs, exactly what they were, what they did, and where they went. That has improved somewhat in the last five years, and a full explanation of those initials appears later. I hope that this account of one man's service in an MNBDO will go some way to help other relatives puzzling over the same mystery.

[Quick NOTE: added Summer 2018]
But there is one thing you should know right away. If your man's record shows 'HBL', it stands for 'Home Based Ledger'. That is not what it looks like, far from it. I've recently seen a web blog where a relative was asking experts what HBL meant, and was told that answer, which is correct. So the enquirer asked if that meant that the man was always based at home, and was told that was true too. My word .. it's as far from the truth you can get. HBL was assigned to any man who was with a specialist unit; in other words, not assigned to a ship or fixed shore station. As you will see, MNBDOs were specialist units, of which there were two ... and both served exensively abroad, notably in Egypt, Crete and later Ceylon. If you have HBL on your record, along with MNBDO, your man most certainly left these shores, and for some time too. In both cases, he at least travelled in convoy around The Cape. There's more on this below; Please read on.

Most relatives searching for information on an MNBDO will quickly be guided to the Royal Marines Museum website, or one of the many blogs where they quote verbatim from that site all that was officially known then about both of those units. What was lacking was any real detail of exactly where they went and when, and that is still true today to a large extent. It's not the fault of the RM records office, or anyone else's. The lack of information comes about simply because it was all so blesséd complicated, something which I hope Jack's story will in some measure clarify for others. It is my belief there is much more detail out there of where MNBDOs were sent, but it's still all tied up with individual families, in their memories of what dad or grandad told them, and in 'memory tins' and photo collections such as Jack's. I am sure the historians at the RM museum suspect this too. Over the years, their visitors will have dropped many snippets of information, much of which may have seemed unimportant at the time, but it all builds up to a more complete whole, at least a better picture than that given by the RM official histories. But for the time being, we had to leave things as they were, and hope that one day, we'd get around to sending for Jack's service record. I don't know what took us so long.

SENDING FOR HIS RECORDS
More recently, in 2015, we finally got around to fulfilling that promise, and sent for Jack's service record from the RN&RM records office at Whale Island. Royal Navy veterans will remember it as the RN gunnery school, HMS Excellent, which was also a very strict and severe Physical Training Centre, as well as a naval prison for 'serious defaulters'. It's now also the home of the RM Band Service, as well as first port of call to send for a man's records.

Surprisingly, Jack's records came back fairly quickly, within a fortnight of sending off the forms and the £30 cheque. I say this in comparison to army records, which we heard from friends can take far longer, as much as six months on occasion. Having sat back and prepared to wait, when they plopped on the mat they took us rather by surprise. At last, as we opened them, we knew we were now finally going to fill in the gaps of where he went and what he did, and more importantly, which units he was part of and where they went. We would now be able to trace his movements around the Middle East and over to Ceylon.

Huh. Wrong! By and large, we didn't learn a great deal more from his records, geographically, than the few details we already knew. There were a number of forms, lots of detail to go through, and at first glance, details of drafts and various units. Taken by surprise, we looked again, then went through them again. And the one place we became flummoxed on was the initials 'MNBDO.' Because of my previous research, I did already happen to know what those initials stood for, and what they did. But there was no mention whatsoever of foreign climes, troopships, or ocean travel of any sort. That still left us with a mystery, as I suspect looking at forums and blogs everywhere, that baffles most researchers. That is the main reason for posting this very long page, so I hope it helps you too.

MNBDO ... what is it, and what does it do?
It stands for 'Mobile Naval Base Defence Organisation'. A rather enigmatic title, and whether that caused confusion in any potential enemy spy, we know not. But it certainly confused us! It was rather a mouthful, and I wonder if it ever occurred to the chiefs in the corridors of Whitehall and the Admiralty that years later, some former members would be hard pressed to actually remember its name, let alone what they did. It's much easier to remember the name of a ship. A man could remember several ships after 40 years, rather than those vague initials.

British officialdom has always relished and enjoyed inventing new acronyms of the mysterious kind. The forces were already full of similar obscure titles, and I suppose yet another didn't particularly jar with anyone for them to find it odd. As to its meaning, we soon learned that it certainly did what it said on the tin, to use modern parlance. They certainly were mobile, and devised to defend naval bases. The word 'Organisation' is an odd choice, but that is what they were. The term 'Group' may have been a better choice, for in effect within the corps, they were known as Group 1 or Group 2, MNBDO. I've no doubt that marines at the time, drafted to a MNBDO, looked at their draft chit, frowned deeply and said, "Who?". Turning to an old hand, a long-service marine or NCO, one might have got the answer, "Oh, that's just the fancy new name for a Fortress Unit, don't worry yourself about it." I wish I had asked Jack what he had thought about it at the time, but I'm sure he would have brushed it off with the line that they didn't ask questions and just obeyed orders. I've also no doubt that most invented some humorous and pithy other meaning - probably not always polite!

Let's clear up some of the various ways these initials are displayed in blogs, forums, generally around the Internet. It surprises even me, to find such a wide variety. It did NOT stand for, as some ex-Bootnecks would have it, "Men Not to Be Drafted Overseas." If in an MNBDO, a man almost certainly was posted overseas, despite what it might first look like on their service record.

• MNBDO I and MNBDO II - just like that using Roman numerals.
• MNBDO (1) and MNBDO (2) - sometimes like that, with or without brackets.
• MNBDO Group 1
  
• RM Group Mobile Naval Base Defence Organization (1)
• 1st Royal Marine Naval Base Defence Organisation
• 1st RM AA REGIMENT MNBDO 1 - where one of the two anti-aircraft battery units were part of the whole.
• 11th RM Btn, MNBDO 1 - where that particular battalion was a definite part of the first Group.

All of those descriptions are correct, and all describe the same unit. The last two demonstrate the addition of where a prefix for an AA unit or the 11th Btn was used. In most of this article, I will use "Group 1" for clarity of text. The official oval rubber stamp on one sheet of Jack's records shows:

2 Landing Company - and below that - RM GROUP MNBDO I

The concept of such a force had its roots in the idea of Royal Marine Fortress Units in the 1930s when lessons from the Great War dictated that the Royal Navy's many bases around the globe, and at home, should have better protection from enemy attack, particularly the increasing risk of really effective air attack. Royal Marines, the nation's 'sea soldiers', were deemed to be the ideal choice for the role being familiar with all nautical matters to do with ships, quaysides, dock facilities and all that went with them. Primarily intended to defend a naval base, they were also trained to destroy one if such defence became impossible. The initials RMFU were still in use on some men's records right at the start of the war, and also RMAB, Royal Marine Auxiliary Battalion. In time both of these would become absorbed into the new units designated as MNBDOs. The first base that was deemed to be most immediately under threat was the fleet anchorage at Scapa Flow in Orkney. In the event, just as the war was about to start, two MNBDO units were being formed, each intended to comprise some 4,000 men when at full strength, though RM histories tell us that neither unit actually achieved those numbers. Even absorbing the RMFU already in existance, and the Auxilliary Battalion, the admiralty never fully assigned the required numbers of men, the navy itself being woefully short of numbers for re-armament, as were all our armed forces. Essentially, that is how the MNBDOs came about, to be able to be quickly deployed to any one of our several naval bases around the globe when such a base was deemed to be under threat.

The sinking of HMS Royal Oak at Scapa, so very early in the war on the 13th December of 1939, was a massive jolt that underlined the weaknesses in defences up there, so a sudden and colossal effort went into fortifying the whole anchorage with immediate effect. To use the word 'shock' in describing the sinking is perhaps an understatement, but it underlined in a very sad way the urgent need for units just such as MNBDOs, the first of which was still being formed and only largely existed on paper at the time of Royal Oak's loss. There must have been a prevailing sense that, once again, the British military had been caught napping, and phrases including words like horses, stables, doors and bolted must have been much bandied about in the stunned corridors of Whitehall.

This particular danger had long been identified, even as far back as the Great War when German U-boats had made attempts to enter the Flow before. Some blockships had already been sunk to prevent access between the islands, leaving fewer 'gates' into and out of the anchorage but guarded by more boom patrol vessels. Ironically, the last of the ordered blockships to seal the last possible gaps between the eastern isles of South Ronaldsay and Burray were due to be put in place just a fortnight after the Royal Oak was sunk. Perhaps almost as ironic as it turned out is that the first MNBDO group specifically formed for such harbour defence never seem to have actually gone there under that name.

In relation to the terms 'harbour defence', or 'naval base defence', we are talking then of three main ways of enemy attack. Firstly, by the obvious seaborne invasion or landing by large forces of enemy troops - secondly, by torpedo or mine, delivered by submarine or fast minelaying craft, as tragically demonstrated by the loss of HMS Royal Oak - thirdly, by air attack, a form shown to be increasingly effective, but Scapa Flow was thought to be relatively immune owing to the great distance involved for such relatively primitive bombers of that time. Those bombers were considered the least of all threats due to the even more limited range of escorting or covering fighters. Such an attack, directly from Germany, wasn't just thought to be unlikely by the admirals in Whitehall, it wasn't even thought possible. Thus the initial main effort in defending the Flow from submarines was directed towards closing the narrow gaps between the islands. But the last two gaps yet to be blocked had still been open that fateful week, and this became the prime cause of the loss of the Royal Oak. They were rapidly sealed after that - the crafty Hun was not going to get in by that way again.

The immediate aftermath of the loss of the Royal Oak was an improvement in boom defences. In addition to the closing of all remaining gaps between the islands, air defence was also increased, even more so from early in the following new year. Notably, from an RM point of view, several anti-aircraft gun sites were quickly built on and around the islands, along with a good dozen or so searchlight batteries. For those interested, the building of Scapa's extra defences, all those gun and searchlight batteries, plus the later causeways that were named after Churchill, is a story in itself and one of tremendous effort in terrible weather but done cheerfully and completed in record time. The autumn weather of 1939 had been appalling, even by Orkney standards. A larger camp needed new roads, not earth tracks, and there had been no time to build them. There was a time when all personnel - even senior officers - at Lyness Camp on Hoy had to wear wellies on account of the mud being knee-deep. Admirals, four-ring captains and Royal Marine colonels must have cut quite a dash in wellies.

The anti-aircraft defences at Scapa by the Royal Marines and other Royal Artillery AA units, became effective very quickly, but in the event, were not really tested until the spring of the following year. Once the Germans had invaded and occupied Norway, in early summer of that same year, they gained much closer and viable bases from which to launch air attacks, so making Scapa well within range of their existing bombers at the time. In fact, by that time, the gun and searchlight batteries were so effective that after the first half dozen or so determined visits by the Luftwaffe, the enemy's own increasing losses on each raid gave them pause for thought so that by the mid-summer of 1940, serious raids had ceased. But those first relatively serious raids had managed to create a fair amount of general damage to anchored warships, the Lyness Naval Base itself and other buildings. Several naval ratings were killed on moored cruisers, though fortunately only one civilian was killed, that by shrapnel from bomb bursts near his croft when the Germans missed their intended target by less than a mile.

As well as those RA units, the gun and searchlight batteries were manned by the 'Royal Marine Auxiliary Battalion', which appears in Jack's records as RMAB. The tasks that fell within their remit were many and various, and not always pleasant; some included the setting up and then manning of those anti-aircraft guns and associated searchlight batteries, boom defence vessels, demolition and explosives experts, the building of piers and dock facilities, and all their associated jobs, even as stevedores unloading ships. Had it been necessary, they would also have formed squads of what I would call 'quayside infantry', to repel any enemy who appeared ashore within a base perimeter or on neighbouring cliffs and beaches. Most of the men who manned the gun and searchlight batteries could also have quickly taken up their rifles and machine guns and reverted to that role too - had the need arisen.

"BLOODY ORKNEY"
After completion of initial training at Gibraltar Camp, near Towyn in North Wales, just as the Battle of Britain was reaching its full crescendo at the other end of the country in that summer of 1940, Jack's first posting was not to a MNBDO but to Lyness naval camp on Hoy. He recalled his time on Orkney with wry humour, often later quoting to me the colloquial phrase of the time about being posted to 'bloody Orkney'. That phrase was itself taken from a fairly well-known eight verses of lines said to have been penned by a naval rating, and which at the time colourfully summed up most naval ratings' feelings, and in which the swear word appears no less than 46 times! Those feelings, being generally quite bleak, were that there was nothing to do, nothing to see, nothing of anything, and worst of all, there were no girls - or dames - on bloody Orkney!

For a man that didn't generally swear, he told the story with obvious relish, enjoying the disapproval of his wife and daughters and the rare opportunity to be outrageous in his old age. Jack was a real gent, and for him, even such mild terminology was the height of bad form. It all seems very innocent and even charming today when much worse is heard in everyday speech. For those that would like to see the full text of those wartime lines, a link is provided right at the bottom of this page. But it also has to be said that many who served there, in all arms of the forces, found an ethereal beauty in the whole place, both the lonely wind and rain swept islands, and the waters of the Flow itself.

So Jack became part of what, within the Corps of Royal Marines at that time, was still occasionally being referred to as a Fortress Unit. Some mens' records may still show RMFU in those early days. Jack's show RMAB, where the Fortress Unit had already been re-designated as an 'Auxiliary Battalion.' Technically, Jack was posted to a ship, HMS Proserpine, being the name given to the Lyness naval base within Scapa Flow. All naval bases were, and still are, known as 'stone frigates', designated as HMS and within which admiralty rules and regulations always applied. Not that there was much stone there at that time, the majority of the buildings and barracks being wooden huts, naval pattern. The first marines posted there as part of that RMAB, in the summer and exceedingly wet autumn of 1939, were actually under canvas and built the place themselves, though I think the tented camp had long been replaced by huts by the time Jack arrived there. When the poet who penned the lines referred to above speaks of mud, he wasn't kidding. There was a great deal of mud.

His first home leave would not be until after that first Christmas, that is Jack's first Christmas as a marine, and the second Christmas of the war. It could be he planned it that way, as his record shows he was granted 14 days leave in mid-to-late January, presumably 14 days being his full allowance for that time. It then shows an immediate extension of 4 days extra leave, running concurrently, which must have been in the gift of his commanding officer. We think this was so he could be home for his brother's 21st birthday, an occasion for which we have some photographs. He may have foregone the chance of Christmas leave to get home for his brother's celebrations instead.

However, he recalled that his return from that leave was quite eventful, in that he was five days late. Along with several of his mates, and other naval ratings also returning from post-Christmas leave, their train was delayed for 5 days by deep snowdrifts not far from Wick, after the line turns inland from the coast. He could never remember exactly where this was, but he did remember the tremendous hospitality of the local folk that put them up, kept them warm and fed and entertained for those five freezing days right at the end of January. We can only imagine the hoo-har that would have been created with quite a lot of men expected back at their ships and all sorts of wartime sailings and operations disrupted. He also recalled that the journey north had been frought as it was, with stoppages and diversions because of air raids in the main cities and railway centres. That must have been some weather, even by the standards of those days. Rail journeys were not often stopped so totally, even less for a full five days and on such an important wartime line taking troops and crews to and from the fleet. As for Jack himself, he already had had a four-day extension, and then was five days late on top of that! They must have had an understanding CO, a Captain Thomas Boffey RM, for there is no mention of him returning late or being charged with being AWOL on his record. That part, his 'Company Conduct Sheet', is quite detailed and even includes the number of his free railway warrant, so had his lateness back from leave been an issue, perhaps it would have been mentioned there.

Maybe he did get some sort of punishment after all, or perhaps simply the minor ire of his CO for the unavoidable delay. Jack had only been back for ten days when he gained what might be deemed as a minor transfer, which at the time may have seemed like some sort of punishment. As far as RM positions in the islands generally, he couldn't have been sent much further away from popular base facilities, such as canteens, NAAFI shops and the cinema. Nor do I ever recall him mentioning this move, and yet given its location, I would have expected it to be memorable for at least one of several reasons. Firstly, it shows he didn't spend anything like all of his time at Lyness. Then either the sheer beauty of the place, or the sheer boredom with even less to occupy the mind than at Lyness, perhaps made it a bad memory to be erased forever. We'll never know. He wasn't sent far, just to the eastern side of the islands, this move being the first of several surprises in his records. The actual sheet shows "to A Coy Linklater", which name itself took some researching online. It was some time before I realised that Linklater was also on Orkney, and the tiniest of coastal hamlets on the North Sea side of South Ronaldsay, right over the other side of the 16-mile wide stretch of the Flow at that point. At first, other than coastal defence against a possible German raid or beach landing, there was no clue as to why he was sent there. There was obviously a company of marines, so at least up to around 50 or so men were billeted in or around that hamlet of just a few farms nestled around a very lonely and rocky cove. We didn't know at first what to make of that.

Further delving online revealed a map of deeper Orkney wartime history, showing the many new anti-aircraft gun sites dotted across and around all the islands, and lo and behold, such a gun site was located very close nearby. Situated atop of a 350-foot hill, Ward Hill, a mile or so to the north of the cove, all that shows on today's aerial views are some farms and a radio mast. Wherever there were anti-aircraft guns, there were also searchlight batteries not so far away, and it is to one of those that we must presume Jack was sent. He never mentioned being part of a gun crew, or being trained for such, so we think he was sent to fill a space, perhaps covering sick leave, on a searchlight crew. Looking at the contours of the hill, it is easy to see it would have given excellent cover almost all round, over the eastern coast and southern sea approaches to the Flow all at once. How Jack got over to his new post, and which other parts of that small island he may have ventured to during his brief stay there, is anybody's guess. It is tempting to imagine him, kitbag on shoulder, on one of the many small naval craft, all the drifters and steam pinnaces that plied between the many anchored ships and the various military sites all around the islands. There was actually a 2 hour regular 'ferry service' linking all the islands with military sites back to Lyness, used by civilians as well as naval and military personnel. He could well have landed at the pier at St Margaret's Hope and then marched straight up the hill the three miles or so to his new billet. Was that in a barn, a commandeered farmhouse, or purpose built barrack huts? Wherever, I suspect it was mighty draughty.

Later, I would see another more detailed wartime map that showed the great Hoxa Battery, right up at the north-west of the island, almost on a little peninsular of it's own. A great deal of those fortifications, gun emplacements with overlooking observation towers, still remain to be seen. Hoxa's extensive fortifications were but a rebirth of the first naval gun batteries placed there during the First War. It is not beyond reasonable speculation that Jack would have roamed around and visited that huge place too, though I suspect that site may well have been manned by the Royal Artillery. It later turned out that whatever battery Jack was part of, his wasn't the only one by a long way. South Ronaldsay was as festooned with gun defences as any of the islands, some aimed at potential naval targets off-shore, but most as part of the growing anti-aircraft barrage.

Jack was based on or near that hill for five months, into the spring and early summer. Aesthetically, it must have been quite beautiful in more peaceable times, for those with eyes to see and appreciate such beauty, even with all that added disturbance of so much military activity. However, for most military men, conscripted ones at that who were not there by choice to enjoy the birdlife, bleak, cold and draughty may have been the most over-riding memory. But we know that Jack was brought up in the country, before moving to a city. Even as a lad, he knew his wildlife, their habits, how to find birds nests, and the difference between a weasel and a stoat. I'm convinced he would have found it rather beautiful, at least to start with until a certain inevitable boredom set in, as the seasons moved through spring and into summer. He also well knew where Orkney was long before he was sent there, always being familiar with history and maps. To schoolboys growing up in the 1920s, Scapa Flow and Orkney were as well known then as Old Trafford is to schoolboys today, not least as the scene of the famous German fleet's surrender in 1918 - and their later self-destruction. He knew where he was well enough, and I think largely enjoyed it. He was drafted back to Lyness on the first day of July.

That is where we get first mention on his record of HMS Proserpine by name, the official name for Lyness Camp, rather than just Lyness. By the time of his posting back there, across the Flow, it was quite a sizeable base and growing towards the estimated 12,000 naval personnel alone that would be stationed there by the war's height. He would remain there throughout the rest of the summer and autumn, until late November. The very next line on his record simply says, "To M.N.B.D.O.1". We now arrive at the very nub of most of the mysteries that bedevil today's younger relatives of those wartime recruits, whether volunteers or conscripted men. Well, now we know what it was, and what it did. But where did it go? There is no clue on any of his sheets that was immediately apparent. It was all down to the codes.

Within a year or so of the start of the war, several other miscellaneous RM units from bases around the UK were pulled together to form the nucleus of that first MNBDO in the early part of 1940, just about the time that Jack was signing on and training in Plymouth. Later in 1941, the second of the planned MNBDO groups was being formed, a group with which we will not be concerned with here, for it had a different history and as far as we can tell, Jack never had any connection with with it. A month or so before Christmas of 1941, Jack received a draft to leave the RMAB company he was with on Orkney to join MNBDO 1, and may well have gone to a holding camp near East Kilbride as that unit formed and gathered together for transit to foreign parts. Curiously and enigmatically, East Kilbride is mentioned on his record just that once, if only because he committed no offences there, because it appears on his 'Company Conduct Sheet'. In fact, there are no offences anywhere on any of the sheets, and his conduct is given as VG throughout. Searching online for any reference of any military being at East Kilbride reveals nothing at all, not a light, let alone mention of marines. But RM histories clearly state that, in the fullness of time towards the end of the war and in preparation for D-Day, the MNBDOs were disbanded at West Kilbride, on the Clyde coast. Curiouser and curiouser, as the Mad Hatter once said.

Possibly it was not only Jack that left the main base at Lyness for that remote posting simply entered on his record as LINKLATER. Maybe he went along with some of his mates too - perhaps all of them. And later in that year, when back at Lyness receiving his first indication of the move to a MNBDO, perhaps he and most of 'W Company' moved too so that they all pretty much stayed together throughout. I think the RMAB was actually disbanded wholesale and merely absorbed into the first of those MNBDOs along with other RM small units around the UK. Some of those had been doing anti-aircraft and artillery duties on the south coast at the height of the invasion threat. Those duties were quickly taken over by the army and regular RA units, releasing the numbers of marines required to form these new supposedly mobile units. If so, for a lot of men together it wasn't so much a new draft as just a rename as they metamorphed into their new unit. (For those not familiar with naval terminology, what the army or air force would call a 'posting', in the navy is often called a 'draft'; though either term is correct.) Even as these new units were being formed, some of their internal names and designations were being revised and altered to such an extent it's a wonder any man knew for sure where he was going or what he was supposed to be doing.

One instance of name changing indicating that Jack may have 'moved' with his mates is that his record refers to "W Coy at 2 L&M", this being the same Landing & Maintenance unit he was with for most of the rest of his time as a member of this new MNBDO 1. As already mentioned, the Royal Marines Museum at Eastney has posted online an extensive overall history of the MNBDOs, when and where they were formed, when later disbanded, and where in the world they found themselves, along with brief histories of all the other main RM land forces and battalions. There is a flow chart online of the general outline organisation of an MNBDO and its constituent parts which helps to indicate what a man may have done and his part within the whole. But, that is all, for as I also hinted, details are scarce and the naming of camps and their locations are very sparse or non-existent. There is a link to the RM Museum at Eastney below if you want to take a look.

We don't know if Jack had any idea where in the world his new posting was going to be, at least, perhaps not at first. I get the impression from reading many other memories of service personnel about their time at Scapa, that even if Jack himself wasn't exactly delirious at the prospect of leaving this northern outpost, some of his mates almost certainly would have been. The full range of wartime memories to be found in books or online seem to depend on how long one served up there, what their job was, whether ashore as Jack was, or afloat in the fleet or on the dozens of small ships servicing the fleet, or just how lonely they were. After 14 months, however beautiful he found the place, you can surely have too much of a good thing and so Jack may not have been too displeased to leave it. We, his relatives, know what came next, we know the history, but at the time, he didn't. After a few days, as the 'buzz' went around the messrooms, it may well have been that they realised their new posting was to warmer climes, and almost certainly the Middle East. He had spent one full winter on the islands, and perhaps was not looking quite so forward to spending another. It was harsh, more so than most of us in today's age of creature comforts in cities and towns could ever imagine. Only perhaps today's hill farmers on the fells, mountains and upper dales of our islands would have some idea of how harsh it really was. Add in the elements of the sea and tides, the almost continual wetness and longer winter darkness of northern latitudes, it was something else to cope with. In researching Jack's time on Orkney, I purchased a couple of excellent books that I can heartily recommend to anyone who had a relative stationed up there - whether on a ship of any sort or shore based - and both books have made a big impression on me. I've entered the details of both in the links at the end of this essay. As it happens, I had already worked it out several years ago that Jack was probably part of an MNBDO, just from what he had told me before he died in 1989. It was the only unit I could find in the overall RM history or online that ticked most of the known boxes. I was just a bit unsure of which one, because when I had first asked Jack about his unit, his reply was a bit vague - not surprising considering the mouthful of a name. I think now he may well have said the name, or tried to, and either I didn't pick up on such an obscure title, or he didn't recall it quite correctly. It's not a title that trips off the tongue easily. I recall now that he did get a little impatient that I was trying to get him to remember things. But now we had his records, we had confirmation it was Number One, or 'MNBDO I' as it was styled. Through one of the excellent RM history books, and online sites like the one mentioned above, I already had quite a bit of information as to where both MNBDO I and MNBDO II had served in the four or five years of their existence, and by a process of elimination, I realised that it was pretty certain he was not in number 2. Indeed, all the information already published in books and online pretty much confirmed the geographical locations I already knew about. Those of you that have already been guided down that line of research will roughly know at least what these units were for and what they did.

For those of you just beginning your research, looking for location details that are so hard to find, it must be first understood that these MNBDOs were not like a battalion of the army, in the sense that a battalion usually stuck together wherever they were sent, and moved together wherever a battle or events took them as a whole. The various demands of the Royal Navy for the skills that marines had, plus the fact that there was a woeful shortage of marines right at the start of the war, meant that units became fragmented, sent hither and thither. This matter was not helped by serious differences of opinion by senior officers at the admiralty regarding the risk of air attack on bases and so whether units such as MNBDOs were even necessary. Some admirals still believed that the 15-inch guns of the fleet sorted everything, that aircraft were too puny to worry a battleship, and even aircraft carriers were a waste of money and manpower. In their defence, we have to remember that senior admirals, commodores and commanders during the Second War had often joined the navy and cut their teeth on Dreadnoughts before the start of the First. The escapades of Bleriot across the Channel was but a curiosity then, but some far-sighted young officers could see which way the wind was blowing and realised the value of aircraft, and not just for 'spotting for the fleet.' Some could already foresee the danger a squadron of aircraft - with heavy enough bombs - could pose to battleship.

Those lessons were yet to be hard learnt - in terms of men's lives as much as lost ships - as Jack and his fellow marines and indeed the whole nation would soon learn even before leaving Orkney. So finding where any one of those fragmented forces were at any one time is a detective story in itself. It is also a fact, acknowledged now by historians, that neither of the two MNBDOs were ever fully utilised for the purpose they were intended, at full strength and all together, again because of a lack of concerted decision making at the very top. For the record, I do believe that Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten as he later became, did fully believe and endorse such a role for Royal Marines. But early in the war, he was merely a destroyer captain and not of sufficient rank or seniority to force his strong views on others - at least for some time yet. Though he wasn't without influence, and I'm sure his cousin, HM The King, was well aware of them. It is still thought by some today that His Majesty and Lord Louis, were between them the saviours of the Royal Marines as a corps, at a time when army chiefs viewed them as a waste of resources and eyed their manpower with envy. Mountbatten certainly foresaw their later wartime role as seaborne commandos, the main role they largely fill today, amongst others.

Although Jack's record was extensive and informative with some new information, the first real surprise for us was there was no written record of his overseas service - well, none that was obvious - not a mention of Egypt, Middle East Forces (MEF) or Ceylon. We then realised that all of that service from November 1941 to the summer of 1944 seemed to be encapsulated in the one short, enigmatic line:
MNBDO 1 Code 7.16 (L)
Perhaps that one line of code signified Egypt, the Canal Zone, or Middle East Forces, as at the time the posting was received, the need to go to Ceylon wasn't even on the cards. The code for Egypt in the First War was number 4, but what was it in WWII? Perhaps the records of some men who were later sent direct to Ceylon show an even different number. Could the 7 be for the Canal Zone, and 16 the actual camp - and heaven knows what the 'L' was for. It even occurs to me now that the 7 was a code for his ship, and 16 denoted a division or part of ship. It also turns out that troopships did have code numbers, but finding a list of them online is hard work. The information is out there somewhere. Someone may yet tell us.

So the actual names of the foreign parts to which they were bound were encoded, presumably for security. Where I had expected to see a ship's name, and the name of foreign towns and camps in hot places, there were none. Nothing! As it happened, I remembered much of what Jack had told me. He had an Africa Star amongst his medals, and we have photos of him with his mates on leave in Alexandria and at Jerusalem. Indeed, one of his theatre tickets places him on leave and in Jerusalem on the very Fday the Battle of El Alamein started. We can only guess how quick he could have got back to his unit had that battle gone wrong for us. But also, the powers-that-be must have known a 'big event' was coming up and we may express surprise that any leave was allowed at all. Or was that all part of a crafty ruse in the build-up to that hugely important battle. Marines and airmen 'on holiday' in Jerusalem didn't speak loudly of a massive new offensive any time soon. Jack appears on a mixed group photo of 40 or 50 soldiers, marines and airmen seated on long forms and standing on forms at the back, all in front of the Wailing Wall. It certainly was more than just ordinary leave in the normal sense of the word.

Thinking of expecting to see a ship's name in Jack's records reminds me that the more I looked online, the more I realised that there was one tiny snippet of information that no one else seemed to mention. I find it hard to credit no one else speaks of this, or remembered their dad or uncle mentioning it, as there must have been plenty that did so. For the vast majority of men I've ever known who were posted overseas, and who went by troopship, usually seemed to be able to recall the name of the ship they sailed out on. Many can recall the one they came home on too, even more so that one. I'm slightly surprised that no one else recalls the outward bound troopship in this instance, for there seems to be no trace nor mention of it online - not in connection with Marines, anyway.

THE TROOPSHIP
Jack had always told us the name of his troopship, and I'd known of it for many years. It was not a famous liner by today's standards, nor particularly large, though she was very well known in her day. This was no 'Queen' or 'Empress'. But it stuck in Jack's memory because it was a particularly comfortable ship, and he had a generally enjoyable passage, which was often not the case for the many thousands of men who went out to the east on 'troopers'. Whether this ship was allocated to the MNBDO because the marines 'fixed it' to travel in more style, or whether it was purely by chance, I don't know, but this was a liner that was quite a bit more luxurious than most. This was very early in the war, and whereas most liners had been fairly knocked about below decks to cram in and accommodate as many troops as possible meaning many separate cabins were removed, Jack's liner had not been quite so drastically altered. For instance, she retained her luxurious indoor swimming pool - the first of its kind - plus most of her interior decorative panelling. Many liners, after conversion, were then very much a troopship and looked the part, even the gigantic Queens were stripped of most of their most ostentatious fittings. But this one was still every bit a luxury liner inside, even if she was in grey camouflage livery without and crammed with troops within. Though I doubt that the luxurious swimming pool was used as such. Almost certainly it would have found a new use for stores of some sort.

Jack's ship was the RMS Viceroy of India, now in government service and so properly styled 'HMT'. There is a division of opinion today as to what that really means. Most believe, as I have until recently, that it is for 'His Majesty's Troopship.' But others say it is "Hired Military Transport.' From what I have seen online, the latter is credible and does seem to have some authority to it. As I hinted, on hearing the name, many may say, “who?” But she was the last word in luxury and comfort in 1929 when she was launched, and had spent the first 11 years of her life carrying the great and the good on passage to the Far East and back again. Lords and ladies, high ranking government and colonial officials and their families, officers from field marshals and generals down to brigadiers and colonels and all their families, as well as rich business people such as tea and rubber planters, they would all have taken passage on the Viceroy. Many a boy or girl was sent home to England to prep school or for holidays to visit rich relatives on the Viceroy. She was known as a ship that carried considerably more first class passengers than second. Not a 'Queen' or Empress', but perhaps the next best thing. No wonder it was comfortable, and I was for some time much surprised I can find no official record of her taking MNBDO I to Suez.

But there may have been a good explanation for that. One being that Jack was not part of the main force of MNBDO 1 that sailed out to Egypt in the first place. Because they were already there, having sailed out almost exactly a year before in February of 1941 on a different ship. Even so, the official record doesn't mention that one either. I only know the name of that first ship because it's mentioned in another marine's wartime memories on a BBC website. At that time, Jack was still on Orkney, and over at Linklater. Jack and his mates, however many they were, seem to have been replacements for previous losses incurred during the terrible battle for Crete in 1941 - of which more later. But now that I have mentioned Jack's troopship by name, I can well imagine that a few reading this will say, 'blimey yes, of course it was. Dad did tell me that, years ago, I just forgot.' So for those that knew that, I hope to have been the means to jog your memory. Online records tell that some 2,600 troops sailed out to the Middle East on her, of which perhaps several hundred were reinforcements for MNBDO 1, so perhaps there's a reasonable chance that someone may confirm that little detail. The troopship that took the main force of MNBDO 1 out the previous year had been the RMS 'Almanzora'. This information comes not from the official RM history, but from that war diary posted online on the BBC 'Peoples War' website. It is the diary, unnofficial of course, of Marine Harry Gould, who details the whole journey almost day by day, from embarkation in the Clyde to arrival in the Canal Zone and thence on to Crete. Checking with the ConvoyWeb site, he's quite correct, the dates he gives tie up with a ship in that name in the right convoy.

History is a funny thing. We learn it from books, official accounts, diaries and later verbal testimonies from those that took part if we can get them. We can also fall into the trap of thinking that we know all, or at least the vast majority, of what happened, because the participants of those events told us about them. The truth is that most men at the time only had the vaguest idea of what was happening, or even what had happened in reality after a great event they themselves had taken part in. The finer detail of events, the dates, successes and failures along with casualties and other losses only become clearer in the years following. There are some things we can say with some certainty that they would have known, and some things that only became clearer later, even to them. That is so true of Jack and many others. Jack died in 1989 never having a clue about 'Ultra' and 'Enigma' and Bletchley and the cracking of German codes. There is also a difference between what only the troops themselves knew for sure, and what was general knowledge in the nation as a whole, gleaned from BBC news reports and daily newspapers. This would also have been true of Jack and his mates as they travelled to Glasgow to join their new posting, and to understand how they felt on the momentous voyage they were now about to take, we need to step back a little and put ourselves 'in their boots', so to speak. It's just as much about imagining what they didn't know, or could not know, as much about what they did or thought they knew.

The service record shows that his official date of posting to MNBDO 1 was 24 November 1941, but we can almost take it as read that Jack would have known of the terrible events on Crete the previous May, even if he and his mess mates didn't know the finer details. The nation knew as much, that Crete had been a serious defeat and a massive reversal of our fortunes in the Mediterranean. It had been yet another tremendous shock in a long catalogue of similar shock defeats. It is not possible to lose so many troops and ships (three cruisers and half a dozen destroyers) in such a short time, and so many taken as prisoners-of-war, and still hope to keep the basic facts secret to families at home. Most relatives of those killed and missing would have known within a week or so of the final withdrawal, which became almost a sort of mini-Dunkirk. It can also be taken as read that marines on shore bases and throughout the Home Fleet at least would have had some awareness of their own corps' disastrous losses. News travels fast and bad news travels faster, even if you weren't supposed to talk about it. We may also suspect that some news may have already come back of the losses incurred in the ill-fated attack on Tobruk just two months before, in mid-September, even if that had not become common knowledge to the wider public by that time.

So when that posting came through in late November, they could make a reasonable guess that they were going to Egypt to replace losses incurred on Crete, and we can make a reasonable assumption they knew that. In that way, Jack's company had more prior knowledge about their destination than the main force had been party to when they sailed out the year before. Apart from very senior officers, few marines on that earlier convoy knew where they were going until they were well along the way of that journey. Harry Gould, on that first deployment of MNBDO 1 tells us they were not officially informed until just before arriving at Freetown. Overall, the war was not going well, on land, sea or in the air, and most men would have certainly realised that and what the implications were likely to be for themselves and their own particular units.

Christmas 1941 came and went as Jack, still on Orkney at HMS Proserpine prepared himself for his new posting and awaited orders to move. This time, there was no home leave, for they were to move so very soon into the New Year. Christmas Day itself must surely have been very muted to say the least, and not just on Orkney. Less than three weeks before had come the momentous news of the attack on Pearl Harbor on the 7th, and certainly by the 12 or 13 December, came news of an even bigger shock for Britain in general and the Royal Navy in particular. Not only was Britain now at war also with Japan, but on the 10 December, the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and battlecruiser HMS Repulse had been lost to overwhelming aerial attack off Malaya. We now certainly had our hands full, fighting two major enemies on opposite sides of the globe. We should not underestimate the shock of that news at home. It must have seemed almost inconceivable, the most dreadful blow immaginable at the time. The Prince of Wales had been one of the victors over the Bismarck only 6 months earlier. How could two such great ships, such powerful ships, have succumbed to a few paltry aircraft. The news got worse and worse. A few days after Christmas would have come the equally devastating news that Hong Kong had surrendered to overwhelming Japanese forces actually on Christmas Day itself. Could things get any worse!

The answer to that rhetorical question is, well yes, and they did. But they didn't know that then. By New Year's Day, and preparing to leave Scapa to head for the ferry and a troop train down to the Clyde, many marines may well have thought that the original plan to go to Egypt could well be modified before they get there and perhaps be redirected to the east instead. The obvious assumption would naturally have been that they might be sent to Singapore. The messdecks would have hummed with quiet rumours, some maintaining they would still go to Egypt, some maintaining with just as forceful reasoning that they would be sent to Singapore. All that whilst not one of the hundreds of them had any real idea of what was really going on. The wise would have kept their own counsel and awaited events.

It is under those circumstances, with all that news - very little good and mostly bad - Jack and his company would cross the choppy Pentland Firth back to the mainland to entrain for Glasgow, no doubt with a large degree of aprehension. They could already safely assume they would be going east - the question was, how far east? And to what?

THE CONVOY
Knowing the ship's name, I was later able to identify the convoy Jack sailed in. It also confirmed, roughly, the dates of a couple of letters he wrote home before he left, and then the start of the sequence of theatre and cinema tickets once in Egypt. So considering I had forgotten those details, if he ever told me, I was very lucky to be able to work it out long before his service record confirmed the dates. I then accidentally came across a superb website, well-known by now, called Convoy Web, in which the serial numbers of all convoys are explained, how they got their letter and number sequence, and I'm sure they won't mind me putting some details here. Those huge lists were compiled by the late Arnold Hague, Lt-Cdr, RNR (Rtd), and posted in 2007 after his death.

The Viceroy of India was in a convoy numbered WS15. The letters 'WS' supposedly denoted a "Winston Special", said to be so named because Winston himself proposed the use of 'fast' convoys for troopships to the Canal Zone and indeed he's said to have removed any official obstacles to the hasty formation of the whole system; number 15 because it was the 15th such convoy of the war so far. There had been many others, slower convoys, that didn't have the WS designation, so we can imagine the enormous numbers of ships and men that had passed that way before - and this relatively early in the war. Some of these convoys became famous for several reasons, of which more later.

WS15 was a large 'fast' convoy of 27 ships, several of which were ocean liners of the larger type, and 'fast' because it comprised ships that generally had a good turn of speed for a ship in those days - in most cases, 20 knots or more. The rest of the convoy were also capable of 20 knots, and were what were called 'cargo liners'. Those had large holds for goods, but not exclusively so, and had passenger accommodation for up to a hundred or so, sometimes in considerable luxury. A 'slow' convoy would be about 12 knots, max, many comprising very slow tankers and freighters of all sizes carrying stores and ammunition, most sitting ducks to preying U-boats. There were 27 vessels in WS15, of which 5 were warships comprising the 'heavy' escort. Then there were various destroyers and smaller warships joining and leaving at various times en route. Sometimes a warship would join the convoy as a means of 'working its passage' whilst actually en route to a new posting in the east. One escort of Jack's convoy, the destroyer HMS Norman, was doing this. Sailing in 7 columns, it must have been a magnificent sight and surely many relatives must later have heard how impressive it all was. As a matter of interest, Viceroy of India was designated code letters 52C, meaning she was the second ship in the fifth column, and 'C' because she sailed from the Clyde.

To give some idea of the sheer numbers of troops and ships involved in these special convoys, we can find that when the main force of MNBDO 1 sailed the previous February on the Almanzora, they had been in a convoy designated WS6, also comprising some 28 large and mostly troopships. Roughly 9 other similar convoys had sailed from Britain in that intervening year, taking army troops and RAF airmen to the Middle East, giving an indication of the tremendous amounts of men involved.

One point to make here is that WS15 was a lucky convoy, relatively speaking. Only one ship was torpedoed, and fortunately, she did not sink but was towed to Gibraltar for later repair. In some regular slower convoys, it was not unusual to lose up to a quarter of the total to torpedoes or bombings, though WS convoys were deemed to be generally fortunate, perhaps on account of their speed. It is said to be particularly difficult to torpedo a ship some miles distant and in poor light whilst it weaves about all over the ocean at nearly 25 miles per hour. This was the first WS convoy of 1942, but a convoy just prior to Christmas had also first been bound for the Middle East, but then diverted to Singapore when news came through en route of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Of course, history tells us now that events overtook plans so quickly that Singapore was being surrendered to our Japanese enemy even as some ships of that same ill-fated convoy were still docking. Several thousand men, who had been intended as reinforcements for the beleaguered Singapore garrison and Malaya, had barely disembarked down the gangplanks when they found themselves surrendered into the care of Japanese armed guards and four years of horrendous captivity without ever firing a shot. I use the word 'care' advisedly.

Whilst on passage, Jack and his mates were very aware of some of the other dangers they were in. British ships had been targeted from the very first days of the war. Indeed, the liner SS Athenia had been torpedoed and sunk with heavy loss of life off Northern Ireland on the very first day. That had been a most definite statement of intent by the Germans of what to expect thereafter, and an action which rapidly led to the escalation of re-forming the convoy system, which was basically a resurrection of what had gone before in the First War, with some modifications.

Some of the other ships in convoy WS15 were also famous names at that time, and anyone with a knowledge of British merchant shipping and liners of those years will recognise some of these. They are listed just like this on Convoy Web, where the formalities of prefixes are omitted. In any case, as troopships, they all were now 'HMT'.

Strathmore (convoy commodore), Melbourne Star, Otranto, Britannic, Orontes, Laconia, Strathnaver, Stirling Castle, and the French liner, Pasteur. For a good part of the start of the journey, one heavy escort was the battleship, HMS Resolution, as well as an armed merchant cruiser which itself was a small converted liner. Almost from the start of the war, through 1940 and 1941, German ocean raiders had also been active, particularly in the South Atlantic. The infamous Graf Spee, one of the most successful from the Germans' point of view, had sunk about a dozen or more British merchant ships around the South Atlantic in just a couple of months before being run to ground and put out of action by the Royal Navy at the Battle of the River Plate just before Christmas of 1939. Now, as Jack's convoy sailed, we were fourteen months on, but there were other raiders believed to be still at large, and just as deadly.

That episode, showing just what the Germans could do to our shipping lifelines, had caused more than a just few headaches and sleepless nights within the grandees at the Admiralty. Indeed, it's not too strong to say there was a real sense of panic within the whole naval establishment, as well as government generally. If things went on like that, with merchant shipping losses such as being suffered then, the war would be lost in no quick time! So it's certainly fair to say that WS15 was thus considered to be just as much at risk from surface raiders, even more so than from U-boats, the further south they went. But the desperate need for the large reinforcements of troops - so urgently needed with the war having gone so badly in Egypt and Libya - meant that the risk just had to be accepted. Troops were still being rushed to the Canal Zone from Australia and New Zealand too, simply to try and stem the tide of yet fresh German advances across the western desert. Indeed, Egypt and the Canal Zone themselves were still at critical risk of being overrun entirely even as the convoy sailed from the Clyde, though the immediate threat had waxed and waned somewhat as German forces made advances and were then held or repulsed. This situation had been repeated several times before the the enemy was finally held at an insignificantly tiny desert railway halt near the coast, just some 60 miles short of Alexandria. The station was called El Alamein.

The single battleship escort at the start of the voyage, HMS Resolution, though not of much use against submarines - but at great risk herself from them - was a token defence should the convoy come across a surface raider captain that couldn't believe his luck. Resolution was a veteran of the First War, she was old, a bit slow and ponderous, but her 15-inch guns were considered to be better than nothing at that time and could outmatch a pocket battleship if she encountered one. Whether she could catch one is another matter. I imagine that to make 20 knots and keep up with what was termed a 'fast convoy' would have involved a lot of hard work for her engine room ratings. She must also have made a considerable amount of smoke, visible to a submarine's periscope for quite some miles.

Actually, funnel smoke, or an excess of it, was always a problem in convoys, and large liners were no exeption. The most common flag signal emanating from convoy commodores, after "Please Keep Station", was the even more desperate plea, "Make Less Smoke." It was all a question of balance and carefully weighted risks. The thousands of men, most of whom had perhaps never left their home towns before - let alone have boarded a ship - would daily line the rails almost mesmerised by the ocean as they chatted and took some fresh air. Seeing the huge amounts of smoke pouring from so many funnels, they must have thought, "Blimey old chum, surely Jerry must be able to see us!" And of course, they were right, submarines often did see them. What mostly saved these particular WS convoys was speed, and zig-zagging. Fifteen minutes on one course, all 7 lines of great ships sailing in a straight line together, and then at the very drop of the Commodore's flag, all 27 ships would turn and heel over together onto another course just a few degrees the other way for another fifteen minutes. And so on, when in daylight, right across the whole ocean, leaving long wavy wakes of churned ocean behind them. Blimey, what a sight! No wonder some of the poor souls never really got over their sea-sickness.

Perhaps being reinforcements to the main unit would also explain to some extent the degree of relative comfort that Jack reported. His journey, from his own account such as I recall, suggests that it was nothing like as cramped or as arduous as that of the Almanzora a year earlier. By and large, the experience of most troops ranged from their enjoyment of their sights of new places to the horrendous conditions of coping with seasickness coupled with the great heat of the tropics below decks. Most of the other larger liners carried well over 3,000 men apiece - the French liner Pasteur the most in this convoy with 3,500 troops. It is said that when her promenade deck was enclosed after dark, hammocks were slung so close together it was nearly impossible to walk from one part of the deck to another. Conditions did vary, ship to ship, but by and large, it was not a cruise to be enjoyed.

Convoys of this size, and indeed even the individual ships, could not sail from Britain and go all the way to Suez without refuelling, certainly not the way they were going. And not just oil or coal, these ships needed to replenish stores, and not least fresh water. The most direct route, and the one the Viceroy of India would have taken in peacetime when en route to the east, would have been straight through the Mediterranean and thence via the Suez Canal. From the moment of Italy's entry into the war, that route was almost immediately denied to us. In many ways, other than submarines, Italy at that time had a stronger surface fleet, with more capital ships, than Germany, and the risks of going that way were even worse. There was only one thing for it - go all the way round - and that meant all the way round Africa. A voyage that should have taken not much more than a little over a fortnight now became a major undertaking of some six or seven weeks and involved a phenomenal amount of organisation. I think it was to enable some of that extra organisation, perhaps against some original resistance caused by stretched resources, that as a matter of strident urgency Churchill cleared the decks of any uneccessary hindrences in order for all those incredibly dangerous voyages to happen. When he signed the order to provide all neccessary help to enable these convoys, whether for ships, stores, manpower, it was made to happen - and quick!

Keeping some semblence of security, restricting information as to where any particular convoy was bound, must have been problematical. Many of the convoy codes seem to be almost self-explanatory to anyone with naval and merchant service knowledge, and so not particularly well coded or disguised. It would seem now, looking at all the information we have today, that the authorities all but gave up on maintaining secrecy. For a start, by 1942, it must have surely been more widely known where Winston Special convoys were going. Jack and his pals knew they were going to join the main unit of MNBDO I so equally surely must have known they were going to Egypt, and just as sure by which route. But that may not have been true of the very earliest convoys, and for the benefit of relatives searching for information on that earlier sailing, we can make some safe assumptions here. When the main force of MNBDO I first sailed the previous year, most men other than very senior officers would have had no official knowledge as to where they were headed. We know now, that in order to deceive watching spies on the Clyde, the Irish coast or any enemy submarines that did get a sighting even if they couldn't catch them, all the WS convoys headed west, well out into the North Atlantic, before even turning south.

Some men in other regiments on other ships, up to that point, may have thought perhaps they were going to the US for further training. Marines, being experienced naval personnel who could well use the sun and stars to steer by, would not be so easily deceived as to their direction of travel. We have to assume they all knew the name and purpose of their new unit. There was only one other foreign theatre of war, namely the Middle East and North Africa, that they could make a reasonable stab at as to their destination. Codes or no codes, I think that all the men of that MNBDO had a pretty good idea where they were going even before they embarked in the Clyde. I'm also sure that they would have had strict orders not to discuss their knowledge or thoughts with any other troops aboard. By and large, they would have stuck to that - folks were really serious about such instructions then. Any man known to have 'loose lips' would soon find himself on report and in front of his commanding officer. Harry Gould, in his diary, tells us that they only officially learnt that their true destination would be Egypt when approaching Freetown. Much of Harry's journey would also be reflected in the later one taken by Jack. The intense cold at the start, the indescribable seasickness amongst the majority of the troops, then the later heat and great discomfort of the tropics, shortages of drinking water, to say nothing of the soul-destroying boredom, all these and more would have been common to most convoys.

WS15, as with previous convoys, after sailing west almost to a level with southern Greenland, would have then turned south. It was mid-January, dark until nine in the morning when they had left the Clyde, but now the light was quickly getting brighter, the sun higher and higher each day, and moreover it was getting noticeably warmer. The sea, formerly green and angry of a typical North Atlantic winter, would have magically in a few days turned to a gorgeous shade of blue and be much calmer. The mass outbreak of seasickness of the early part of the voyage faded as men regained their former appetites and their sea-legs. Indeed, still with some glee thirty years later, Jack reported how he had not succumbed to the mal-de-mer of his mates and was able to scoff as many helpings of pudding as he liked, and did so with great gusto.

But once the sickness faded, as the weather became warmer and sea became calmer, morale would have been rising. By that point, the endless guessing games of the many other mess-decks of troops who didn't know where they were going at the start would have surely started to hit some right answers. One thing I hadn't realised was that there was no re-setting of clocks or adjustment of watches. Until Freetown, all personnel on the convoy were some 2 to 3 hours behind the real time of day suggested by the sun. As they gradually moved in a south-easterly direction towards the African coast, they came back into their original GMT time zone automatically. Even at Freetown, they were still at a longtitude well to the west of Ireland.

FREETOWN
Refuelling and replenishing stores, including fresh fruit and water, was undertaken when the convoy halted briefly at Freetown for 3 days. There were at that time no large quayside docking facilities for such a large number of vessels of cruise liner size. This convoy compiled 22 large liners, plus escorts, and so anchored in the estuary of the Sierra Leone River just offshore of the town. Once more, this must have been an astonishing sight that would be repeated again and again during the war. For security, no shore leave was allowed, but by then, most men on all the ships would have put two and two together and made a good guess as to where they were bound. Even if that had not been an issue, that small African port could never have coped with such huge numbers of men descending like a deluge on their few bars and hostelries.

Even so, spirits will have lifted perhaps a little bit higher when the whole convoy anchored in Tagrin Bay, just off Freetown itself, and confirming for many others their eventual destination if they hadn't guessed already. For some, their ship would have been so far out that they may well not have even seen the shore. Perhaps some might have expected shore leave, but they would be sorely disappointed. No-one was allowed off the ships, other than senior officers concerned with refuelling and revictualling, a rule strictly enforced. This was a regular 2 or 3 day convoy stopover to refuel and replenish, mainly with fuel oil and fresh water from tankers already anchored there to service passing convoys. Apparently the weather was good, so considering the late January weather they had just left in the Clyde and North Atlantic, things were looking up. It is worth remembering that, in the space of about a fortnight, they went from the freezing cold and darkness of a British winter straight into equatorial high summer. Time to acclimatise was not theirs. What most of the regular troops may not have known was that they had in fact already lost a ship, at night a few days back. The Union Castle cargo liner, MV Llangibby Castle, had been torpedoed, though luckily did not sink and so was able to be towed to Gibraltar for repairs, but sadly, four of her crew were killed in the explosion. She had been the third ship in the seventh column. Rumours would have abounded on all ships in the convoy, but with no normal communication between any of them for ordinary rankers, that's all they would have had - rumours. Or a 'buzz' as such gossip was called in the navy. We can assume that the fact that no others were lost up to this point was only because the U-boat culprit didn't get lucky. We can also assume it wasn't for want of trying. He may well have fired at other ships and simply missed. If the torpedo tracks weren't spotted, who would know?

For some of the convoy, the next stop would be Cape Town, but not for all of Convoy WS15. The organisation here, how things were arranged for supplies on these stop-overs, all starts to become rather breath-taking. As the war went on and more and more convoys passed this same way, the administration actually became somewhat astonishing, even given the achievements of British administration worldwide up to that point. And there is no doubt that all of that organisation, all the officers, officials and clerks on ship and ashore that made sure all was in place for each ship, the right amounts of fuel, water, food, etc, that would be taken on in double quick time - all played no small part in helping to win that war. It's a point worth just dwelling on for a moment; without it, there would have been no El Alamein, no victory in North Africa, let alone anything else. The more I learned, the more I doff my cap to them all.

WS convoys were split into two, one part calling at Cape Town for five days, the other part going onto Durban for the same time, with both parts meeting again five days later off Durban itself. Occasionally, shortages of drinking water aboard would neccessitate some ships bound for Durban calling quickly at Cape Town first. A fortnight's sailing across the equator and thence down the hottest part of the South Atlantic made huge demands on fresh drinking water on ships mostly carrying double or treble the numbers of souls they were designed to carry. But it would be a Durban stopover for the Viceroy of India, where Jack and his mates, to all accounts, had the time of their lives - not only them, but the thousands of men that had gone before, and the many thousands that would follow. Now the story gets really astonishing and some of the details here will jar memories for many reading this who have been told some of this years ago - but long since forgotten.

A GOOD DUCKING
A long time before any of these vessels reached The Cape, there would have been time for some right, royal fun and games. On all the ships in the convoy, having aboard so many individuals who had never before crossed the equator, the experienced 'old-salts' would now take steps to initiate these rookies into the hilarity and rules of King Neptune. A long-standing tradition in the Royal Navy was to have a 'Crossing the Line Ceremony' whenever they crossed the Equator with rookies aboard - which would be just about every time. No self-respecting warship's crew would deny themselves the chance of a party (and splicing the mainbrace!) by being honest. Warships don't have a ready-made swimming pool, in the way liners do, so a rough affair of timber and canvas was usually rigged up on the larger expanse of the quarter-deck. The whole crew that was not actually on watch would assemble for the purpose of strapping the queue of unfortunate rookies one-by-one onto a tipping chair. They were then cermoniously swathed in shaving foam and just as ritually shaved with an enormous wooden blade, such as an oar from one of the ship's boats. To tumultuous applause and ribald laughter of hundreds of their mates, each rookie was then suddenly tipped backwards most unceremoniously into the shallow pool, to join his mates already there, annointed, who had now made their own acquaintance - in theory if not in fact - with King Neptune who ruled the very depths of the deep, deep sea. This was repeated for every man aboard who was crossing the Equator for the first time, including for all rookie soldiers on every troopship. For a troopship carrying some 2,000 men or more, who had for the most part never left England before, it was great fun and an enormous relief which lightened the boredoms of a very long sea voyage.

By the time of the Second World War, most larger warships, and certainly all liners, had admin offices aboard with fairly primitive printing facilities. These were able to reproduce blank certificates to be later filled in with a man's name, rank and number after his ducking, that could be issued to every man to show and prove he had been duly initiated, so that he didn't have to undergo the ignominy of it all once again. Some certificates were fairly plain and simple, some very ornate with beautiful artwork depicting Neptune, mermaids, and the less appealing tentacled creatures of the deep. It all depended on the artistic skills of the crew any one ship happened to have aboard at the time. Plain or artistic, most men got a certificate of some sort.

All in all, for thousands of troops and rookie sailors on their first overseas long trip around the Cape, whether to the Canal Zone or India and the Far East, it was great fun and most of them remembered their ducking with affection for the rest of their lives, though sometimes it could be a bit brutal. The occasion was more than frequently used to settle a few old scores between fellows and the ducking sometimes got out of hand, the swinging around of the oar paddle or whatever was used for a 'razor' could be somewhat enthusiastic. A guy who was unpopular in the mess, say an NCO who was a bit harsh with the lads, or another who was bit of a whinger or mother's boy, could get a very rough handling indeed - broken limbs were not unusual. We have to remember that only a few months before, most of these lads had been living at home with their mums, who cooked their tea for them every night and did their laundry. There are countless photos of these events. You are indeed lucky if you have one showing your man. We just have Jack's certificate that proved his initiation, and somehow you know, I envy him. I think he enjoyed his ducking, but then, he had no fear of water and could swim.

ROUND THE CAPE
During stopovers at both Cape Town and Durban, arrangements were made for every man aboard every ship to be accommodated ashore for the full five days. Some boarded out in hotels and local institutions like the YMCA, but most were taken into people's homes. Two, sometimes three or four depending on rooms available, were given South African hospitality of an astonishing degree. Men were billeted, fed, entertained and generally looked after by families all over each city and further afield. In most cases, wherever they were, those same families ensured that each man was back at his ship, and generally sober, by the required time on the required day of sailing. All the ships had to sail together as arranged, had to keep together as a convoy, so no delays or lateness could be endured, at least not without very serious consequences. Any men that were late, and who missed the sailing, would have to catch up on the next convoy, and when they did eventually catch up with their own units, a good spell in the cells would be the almost certain outcome.

But here comes the really astonishing bit, the really mind-boggling facts. Those hundreds of families in Cape Town and Durban did that not just once, or twice, or even six times, but for about THIRTY CONVOYS over a period of some five years! The amount of expense individual families went to must have been legendary. Our men were treated like kings, and the heroes they undoubtedly were, but most would dispute that epithet. Many lifelong friends were made, and many a marine, soldier or airman liked the place so much that they vowed one day, if they survived, they would go back. Many did, and their descendants live there still. On reflection, I think Jack perhaps thought that himself at the time. He was full of admiration for the place, and maybe also vowed he'd return one day. But events turned out differently, and when he did marry, he would never get his wife away from his home city, let alone England. It's as well he didn't emigrate to South Africa, or I would never have met his daughter.

Here's one more fact, which applies particularly to Durban, and makes the stopover there ever more astonishing. It concerns a very talented lady. Most of those men would never have known the name Perle Gibson, then or later. Most had died before these details were widely published on the Internet, and I'm not sure Jack knew either. I don't recall him ever mentioning the name, but alas, my memory is fickle. Perle, or Perla, often referred to as “The Woman in White” on account of her striking mode of dress, was an opera singer. You can put her name into Google, with the city name Durban, and up will pop many pages about her, for her talent is extremely well documented. I understand she was a largish lady, as opera singers often were, and in a flowing white gown, with a bright red hat, under scorching African sunshine, was striking in appearance and could be seen for some distance as she serenaded the arrival and departure of troop ships at Durban's docksides.

From the very first convoy, those first ships docking at Durban's quaysides were met with brass and military bands, huge crowds, and Perle standing on a dais singing through a megaphone into a public address system her special welcome of “Land of Hope and Glory” and “God Save The King.” I'm not sure if she did this for every convoy of the full thirty or so, but certainly she did, along with the bands, for the first couple of dozen. It was a welcome to Africa that for those men that witnessed it, they would never forget, hence the wide documentation about the welcome they received and Perle in particular, whatever they thought her name was. The bands were usually in white drills, pith helmets, often South African or Durban City Police bands, but also others. Accounts also relate that, after five days of what is too simple just to call “shore leave”, the convoys were given a similar tumultuous send-off. Another fact that I never realised, and only gained via information on the Internet, was that Perle even went down to the docks to sing for a convoy arrival on the very day she learnt that her son, Roy, had been killed whilst serving with the Black Watch in Italy. Perla died shortly before her 83rd birthday in 1971. HM The Queen unveiled a statue to this amazing lady on Durban docks when on a visit to South Africa in 1995.

All of that is incredible in itself, but my later research tells me that the total number of troops in this one whole convoy was just a little over 41,000. We can assume that, each convoy splitting roughly in half, some 20,000 men were billeted and entertained in each city roughly every 5 weeks or so as each troop convoy arrived. That is some hospitality - by anybody's standard.

The people of Durban took our troops to heart and they took the cause for which they were going to fight more than seriously. As loyal subjects of the king, doing their bit in the only way they could as civilians, more than a few of our men were given the time of their lives. And for all too many, it would be the last really enjoyable leave they would ever have, and at that time, most men were forbidden to write home about it, or even say where it was. I've seen one cryptic account online of a postcard where a man merely said he was on a ship and had just left a 'modern town'. Had he said more, he would have feared his card would be so censored it would never have gone anywhere, let alone home. Educated folks at home at that time with a good grasp of geography may have been able to work out from that it was Durban that was the modern town referred to - it was acclaimed as the most modern city in Africa at that time. Five days of friendly, home-cooked hospitality did wonders for morale, and troops on later convoys went on their way north to the Canal Zone refreshed and revitalised to eventually be formed into the desert army and air force that finally kicked the Germans out of North Africa and paved the way to all that came after.

Only the families of the survivors of those later battles and actions would, in the fullness of time, get to hear about Perle, 'The Lady in White' and the incredible welcome that awaited them at Durban's quaysides. Whether in the marines, the army or air force, and for a lot of matelots too, if your relative sailed to the war in the Middle East or Burma or the Pacific, if they did not personally witness this, they would certainly have heard about it, and been affected by it. For weeks afterwards, the men were buzzing, exchanging their own memories of the arrival and hospitality with later reinforcements that came behind them. Picking up on the atmosphere conveyed in the many accounts now online, the men were truly taken aback, moved beyond words, and thankful. For those later killed, most of their mates would have thought, 'well, at least they had that.'

That is not to say that the welcome at Cape Town was any less overwhelming. That city too, met, welcomed and entertained all the troops in the same fashion, and with that same brand of South African hospitality. Men in their thousands came away with no less warm memories. Yes, there were bands too, and perhaps singers, and five days of unforgettable leave, but there was no Perle Gibson, the lady who is said to have met every convoy with her song.

These WS convoys around The Cape continued right up until well into 1944 and the Mediterranean was sufficiently cleared of the enemy to make the direct route via Malta and Alexandria safe again. Undoubtedly, the folks of South Africa, though disappointed to see the end of having the chance to show such hospitality, must have also been relieved. I don't know how they did it, but I do know that the men who received it were forever grateful. Jack certainly was. He told me the story several times - as veterans are inclined to do.

Jack's convoy sailed, on time and more than fully replenished, to meet up with the Cape Town elements now arriving on time off Durban, to form up into their lines and tread their weary zig-zag course as they headed north for Aden and the entrance to the Red Sea. The convoy would split here, where some would turn east to Bombay. Those troops would now only be bound for India, for Singpore, Malaysia and Indonesia were already lost. In time, once North Africa was cleared of the enemy, fewer of the later convoys went to Suez and more and more would turn east to India, Ceylon, Burma and beyond as the war in the Pacific turned gradually more in our favour. That welcome at Durban, by the way, applies not only to the Winston Special convoys that came after WS15, but also the preceding ones. Yes, all of them. But particularly for those of you that lost relatives sent out to Singapore on those immediately in front of WS15, whether in the fighting in Malaya and the defence of Singapore, or later as POWs of the Japanese, you can be assured that they too would have experienced such tremendous hospitality. The only ones that didn't would have been on convoys very early in the war before the Mediterranean effectively became a closed route and so didn't have to go all the way round by South Africa in the first place.

I hope this account clears up for many of you any doubts about who did or did not go that way, what they experienced, and perhaps has helped to jog a memory or two of events that you already knew about, but didn't know you knew about - if you get my drift.

ON TO SUEZ
After the Bombay elements left the main convoy on 26 February when approaching Aden, the Viceroy of India, along with Laconia, Melbourne Star, Orontes, Otranto and Pasteur, were escorted by a couple of cruisers to a point nearer to Aden, where on the 1 March, the RM histories tell us that they “dispersed off Aden 1.3.42 to proceed independently to Suez.” From that, we can only assume that the convoy as such would no longer zig-zag and keep a column formation, but sail straight up the Red Sea in line ahead, as fast as their propellers could shove them, where the risk of submarine attack was minimal or non-existent. Having obtained Jack's service record, and looking at those convoy dates again, I also belatedly recalled that he also told me he had his 25th birthday whilst at sea, making that sometime near Aden too. He had been a leap-year child, and celebrated his birthday on 1st March in the years when there wasn't the extra day in February. Already aged 25, Jack was rather a 'father figure' in his unit of mainly younger men. I don't know if he had a party - at least, not what we would call a party. But I bet it was warm, considerably more so than any February birthday he'd ever had at home, and we can trust that he and a few of his mates enjoyed themselves. In any group of over 2,000 men, a good few of them would have had birthdays on any voyage that took the best part of a couple of months.

There is no definitive date as yet to be found for the arrival at Suez, or more accurately, Port Tewfik, the entrance port to the Suez Canal, though it must have been around the 3rd or 4th March. Some official accounts report troops disembarking at Port Tewfik, and proceeding to their camp zones further up the canal by train or road. Some suggest the liners may have continued up the canal, and the MNBDO is reported to have had occupied a couple of camps in the general area of the Great Bitter Lakes. One famous one was at El Tahag, though the RM histories frequently misspell it as El Tahal; another was at Geniefa Camp on the shores of the Great Bitter Lake itself. Both camps were said to be of enormous size, as were many other military camps in the Canal Zone. Some basic information from other sources about El Tahal is that not just marines were based there, but any number of other army regiments passed through these huge tented cities. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but at one time from descriptions online, I estimated it at some 600 square miles, with one side alone said to be stretching into the sands of the desert for 10 miles. Rows and rows of bell tents, huts, water towers, administrative offices, vehicle parks, fuel and amunition stores and dumps, all must have been a sight to behold. There were said to be several NAAFI canteens, and three cinemas, in an area of guarded encampment more than equivalent in area to the midlands city that Jack came from, and indeed most provincial cities at that time.

DEBACLE ON CRETE
First, I must point out that the events enumerated now took place before Jack arrived in Egypt. Before he arrived, he would have been aware of some of the details of one of those events, namely the 'Battle for Crete' as we may call it now. After arrival in the Canal Zone, and coming under the control of the C-in-C Middle East Forces the year before Jack arrived, the stories and experiences of individual men in RM Group I, MNBDO, from herein start to diverge significantly. This is one of the confusing reasons why service records showing one or other of the MNBDO groups show men as having served in both groups, if the RM official histories are taken as the only guide. The truth seems to be that there was also some overlap of duties for both groups were in Egypt at various times, particularly after Crete, and I wonder if sometimes at the same time.

After Jack arrived in Egypt, he became a clerk in one of the administrative offices on the camp. He had become known as one who could write letters, as well as for his numeracy and good mental arithmetic, and when the need arose for a man to be seconded to the camp office, his own officer had picked out Jack as a likely chap. The job seems to have stuck. Jack later used to joke and boast how he used to write out his own leave chits for the CO to sign, and later in the war, he was even told - unofficially of course, by a lazy admin officer - to sign his own chits himself. His work in the office meant that he also issued chits and passes to other ranks, and so, a bit like the cook or storesman on most camps, he was a popular guy to know. It also meant that he was closer to the centre of events, learnt of new developments in the war as well as some disasters, well before many others. But for most other marines, their work was very different.

Jack reported that he enjoyed his time in the Canal Zone immensely, but that may have been largely on account of the MNBDOs role at the time. History tells us now that many RM units were grossly mis-used in undertaking fatigues for the army, especially as they awaited replacements following the British withdrawal of forces from Crete. What those fatigues were is not specified, but it later transpired that no less than Admiral Mountbatten was incensed that marines were said to be employed at POW cages guarding Italian prisoners of war. We know now that there was indeed a huge row about this back in London, and from then on greater efforts were made to employ marines in more effective roles in keeping with their specialised training and skills.

Back in 1941, all of that pressure led ultimately to two well-documented actions in RM annals in which a large number of men were lost or taken prisoner. Firstly there was the debacle on Crete where, after the fall of Greece to overwhelming German attacks down the Balkans, our army battalions had retired to the island to regroup in some forlorn hope of getting back ashore in Greece. In the event, the Germans also swiftly attacked and overan Crete itself, and in so doing achieved a significant victory. Many valuable warships, and hundreds of men were killed or were taken prisoner. A large part of MNBDO I were rapidly despatched to Crete almost before they had settled in to their Canal Zone camp. They were meant to form part of the defence of the island, particularly with regard to the defence of the main naval base at Souda Bay, a task for which they were admirably suited and trained for. In some ways, Souda (or sometimes Suda) was not unlike Scapa Flow, in that the huge anchorage was a deep inlet of the sea surrounded by rocky outcrops and headlands - but not quite so cold all the time.

But by accident or design, the Germans beat them to it, and so their own modest numbers were overwhelmed almost before they could get into position. Such was the speed of the German invasion, one that was initially done by an overwhelming and unheard number of enemy parachutists, that any real defence of the whole island was doomed, let alone of the naval anchorage. Anti-aircraft guns were delivered, but not with the required number of searchlights. The men that should have manned those searchlights reverted to the role of infantry. In the event, the German invasion took place by daylight and even with that extra infantry, a retreat and ultimate evacuation of the island was almost a pre-ordained result from the start. In effect, the deployment of MNBDO I came a couple of months too late.

Overall, in the evacuation of British, Australian and New Zealand forces, 15,000 troops were saved, but 10,000 were left behind to be taken prisoner, including a large number of MNBDO 1 who had fought such a valiant rearguard action. Additionally, the whole evacuation cost the Royal Navy dearly: over 2,000 lives lost, three cruisers and six destroyers sunk, as well as considerable damage to many more ships of the Mediterranean Fleet. This was also the overall battle that saw the loss of Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten's HMS Kelly. Most ships were sunk by air attack alone, those previously mentioned hard-learnt lessons about the vulnerability of large warships to massed air attack coming to fruition here. We just didn't have enough of anything, and the wonder is that any troops got away at all.

One story, little-known until fairly recently, concerned one Royal Marine whose escapades became better known in more recent years, and who was a legend in his own time during his service with the corps. Colour Sergeant Charlie Bowden, MM, who only died recently in 2011 aged 94, was quite a character, and one that hundreds of marines would have known at the time. He was one of many who were injured during the initial German invasion of Crete. He was hospitalised, escaped in his pyjamas, and met up with several dozen other escapees and loose troops in the confusion. This group then commandeered a damaged landing craft. Unable to repair or restart the engine, they then set out under a hastily rigged sail of blankets and made it back to the North African coast to fight again another day. No wonder he was a legend. Jack would almost certainly have heard of him, even before Crete, but even more so after Charlie's amazing return and the means by which he did it.

In the 1960s, and still in service, C/Sgt Bowden achieved minor fame by being a voice on a children's famous TV programme. The Royal Marines Band were contracted to play and record the theme tune to Thunderbirds, and as the opening music fades away, it's Charlie's voice that is heard to boom out in his best parade-ground voice, Thunderbirds are GO. If you enjoyed Thunderbirds all those years ago, you certainly heard Charlie.

Jack considered himself very fortunate in that he arrived in Egypt long after those disastrous events, when MNBDO I first moved to take part in the defence of Crete. The official histories simply state that - General Weston took elements of MNBDO I to Crete, and from that, we may understand that the main HQ and heavy transport elements stayed behind in Egypt. The survivors from Crete, and those that escaped capture and made it back to North Africa, ultimately rejoined their HQ, to be reformed as one unit again by the Canal and now in dire need of replacements.

Jack's recollection of those times, tinged with obvious sadness at the stories he no doubt heard from survivors, interwoven with great boredom, was of playing sport - a great deal of sport in fact. Given the relentless sunshine and little else to do, cricket in the desert, football, and swimming when he could get it, were all regular off-duty pastimes. He often mentioned the experience of swimming in the super-buoyancy of the salt-laden Great Bitter Lake. It wasn't named 'Bitter' for nothing. There were inter-battalion and inter-regimental tournaments and matches. His unit boasted several soccer, rugby and cricket internationals that formerly played for England and the other home nations, and he revelled in the free time he had away from his office duties. Of all sports, he certainly loved his cricket. In later years, he would live just around the corner from Grace Rd, Leicestershire's County ground, but that is another story. Some of those former star players in their various sports did not come home - they lie buried in desolate places like Crete, or Tobruk, or later were captives from those failed campaigns in POW camps around northern Europe.

One of the benefits of his office work was that Jack very rarely had to stand guard duties. By and large he worked days and slept most nights on his own camp bed. He did vaguely mention at one time that his camp was next door to some Italian POWs, though I don't recall him saying that he thought that was specifically what his unit were there for, or even his small part of it. That was something I only learnt much later after he had died. But it does tie in with some of the Corps history relating how marines were said to be mis-used in their time in Egypt, and perhaps explains one more engimatic line in his records.

t/a    235th Field Park Company       8.8.42

Could that 'temporary attachment' have been to just such a POW cage, within the huge encampment of which MNBDO 1 was just one small part? Maybe not, and we may never know for sure. The name 'Field Park Company' sounds suspiciously like a part of the Royal Engineers, and do not sound to me that they were involved in guarding prisoners? If these really were Royal Engineers, that particular group were part of the 50th Division and were out of the line for quite a time having received a particularly bad mauling at some recent battles in the desert and perhaps they were regrouping at that time. Or do we have a situation where the POWs were normally guarded by army guards, but being short of numbers and having increasing numbers of Italian prisoners coming through, marines were seconded on a temporary basis because it was perceived they had nothing else to do. Or did the chiefs in Whitehall get the wrong end of the stick? Jack, already now doing office clerk duties, could possibly have been on a temporary attachment where an RA major asked his nearby colleague and mess-mate, an RM major, if he had anyone that was good with figures as his own storesman had lashed up the company accounts yet again. So I speculate that Jack merely moved over to another compound in the camp to work in another office for a while. As to guarding prisoners, perhaps the mis-use terminology that crept into RM records later was not as extensive nor as bad as reports made it seem. Again, those questions are really rhetorical, for we almost certainly will never know for sure now. There's a lot of perhaps and perhaps not in wartime.

ANOTHER DEBACLE - TOBRUK
One result of that supposed mis-use, and the ensuing row about it in Whitehall, was that the C-in-C Middle East Forces came under increasing pressure to once again find them a more useful job to do. Similarly, the CO of MNBDO 1, General Weston, also came under pressure to reform quickly and put his men to something 'useful.' He needed to quickly find a way to put his force at the disposal of the C-in-C Mediterranean, Admiral Andrew Cunningham, simply to keep them as naval troops. Otherwise, Weston risked losing control of his force altogether, as well as the long honour of the marines. They, Weston and Cunningham, needed to find something meaningful to attack, to stave off hawkish army generals and brigadiers who eyed the marines merely as potential infantry to help plug desperate gaps in their own forces, at that time fending off yet more and more German advances towards Egypt.

And so was devised a plan - perhaps in too much of a hurry - which became yet another well-documented action that may have restored the corps honour, but cost a lot of lives in doing so. This was the failed attack on the harbour facilities of Tobruk, codenamed 'Operation Agreement' for those that want to research it online. In truth, it was poorly planned in too much of a rush, though the failure was later largely attributed to the fact that security in Cairo and the Canal Zone was so poor that the Germans got wind of what was about to take place long before they even set off. One man was actually court-martialled and imprisoned for major infringements of the Official Secrets Act. He had been heard openly talking about preparing for Tobruk in a bar. Even native workers on and around our bases, seemed to know what was planned. Egyptian barbers are known to have openly asked men, sprucing themselves up with a haircut, if they were getting ready to go to Tobruk. So it's no surprise that the attack was yet another hard lesson in the rules of war, many of which we still hadn't learnt. Many men were killed, many more taken prisoner.

Tobruk had taken place the previous September before Jack's arrival in the March, shortly before he even got his first draft notice that he would be going to an MNBDO. If Jack hadn't actually heard any rumours about Tobruk and the MNBDO's part in it whilst on the voyage round the Cape, he would certainly have heard about it soon after arrival. The unit that mainly suffered at Tobruk, as well as the RN itself, was the 11th Battalion RM which were the 'infantry' constituent of the MNBDO as a whole. Many of the other marines that sailed on WS15 with Jack could well have been replacements to the 11th Battalion, still licking its wounds and re-grouping when Jack arrived. Learning more detail about all this recently, especially about that particularly desperate phase of the war in the eastern Mediterranean, I really do wonder at how we ever won that war at all, tackling one disaster and set-back after another. Losing Crete alone should have done it for the Germans. It is history that tells us now that it was only El Alamein that stopped the rot, and now we find that was largely down to two factors; Monty having the benefit of Enigma encrypts revealing most of Rommel's order of battle, and us holding on to Malta. But not Jack, nor his pals, nor anyone else out in the Middle East, could possibly have known that at the time.

In a perverse sort of way, it occurs to me now that the failed attack at Tobruk, costly as it was, may have actually been the saving of the Royal Marines as an independant corps and still under admiralty control. We can see now that those MNBDOs were much too large for any rapid deployment anywhere. But they were on the right lines if rather cumbersome, so can we view them as the forunners of the present tightly knit Commando units comprising roughly 800 men each, fairly self contained, and able to embark on a large warship or commando carrier at short notice to be air-lifted from the sea directly into a localised theatre of war. That denial of the marines for infantry service in the coming desert battles by devising the attack on Tobruk instead may have saved the day. We must remember, there was a precedent, for the Royal Marine Division played exactly that role only two decades previously, holding the line in the trenches of the First World War. Many of those senior army generals remembered that, and saw no good reason not to use them the same way again. Tobruk may have been another sort of turning point in general history, and the corps' 350-year history in particular, just as El Alamein is now accepted as a turning point in the war.

A more personal kind of history tells us the other side of Jack's story in Egypt, that revealed by his theatre and rail tickets we found in his memories tin, showing he was on leave at the time of that great battle. Photos I previously thought may have been taken in Alexandria may well have been taken in Tel Aviv. Only by comparing similar photos taken by others can we get any definitive identification of the places shown. To that end, I've placed a small selection of Jack and his mates right at the end of this long page. Another small revelation to come from mother-in-law recently is that she said that Jack also swam in the Dead Sea, as well as the Red Sea. Well now, that also puts a slightly different complexion on the leave that took him to Jerusalem, for the Dead Sea is only a few miles further to the east and well within a day's drive of even the primitive motor buses out there at the time. Later, when I thought of what she said, I have to confess I also remember him telling me that - another one of those elusive and furtive memories that only come back with a sharp kick from somewhere.

One other thing I learnt more about recently in relation to activities in the Canal Zone, through delving into deeper Royal Navy history online, were the numerous air raids on most of the camps and military sites in general area. In a similar way to how the taking of Norway facilitated German attacks on Scapa, newly acquired airfields in the Western Desert close to the Egyptian border likewise enabled serious air attacks on the Suez Canal, its ports and facilities, and particularly the laying of mines. It became a great problem before Jack arrived and was ongoing whilst he was there. The canal was effectively closed to traffic on more than one occasion whilst mines were cleared by sweeping, by divers, and all sorts of 'Heath Robinson' contraptions of poles and nets and booms were tried to overcome the Luftwaffe's best efforts. There were mines of every sort, contact, magnetic and accoustic.

One curious arrangement, but said to work very effectively, was one of erecting several miles of vertical poles every twenty yards or so on either side of the canal, which at night were pulled upright to raise above the water specially designed fishing nets, manufactured in India. We couldn't stop enemy aircraft laying the mines, but the big problem then was finding them, especially those that didn't float but sank to the bottom to await a ship's magnetic field, or its noisy propellers. These special nets didn't stop or catch the mine, and were not expected to, but when the heavy mine dragged the net deep under the water, the collapsed poles quickly revealed their location, enabling divers to deal with them more swiftly. I do wonder whether some MNBDO units, the 'Boat Companies' that were sort of sister units to the Landing & Maintenance Company Jack was part of, were involved in helping to locate mines for RN divers to deal with. At any rate, whether from mine-laying or conventional air raids, it wasn't always peaceful at night whilst Jack was there.

A TELGRAM FROM HOME!
Before we leave Egypt, there is one document part of which may be of interest. Others may have some similar items in their treasures. A wartime telegram, sent from his parents in Leicester with greetings for Christmas, dated 15 December, 1942. This certainly places Jack somewhere in Egypt after having arrived in the Canal Zone the previous March, and before MNBDO 1 shipped out to Ceylon in the following summer. Along with all the new information on Jack's service with the 'Middle East Forces', we can now make a little more sense of the details we'd already had for some time. It was the teleprinted address that partially puzzled us for a long time.

ROYAL MARINE J STEVENS ... AUX 562 ... RM ..12 .. F O'RG E ... OVERT
C/O GPO LDN

We found it incredible that was all it took to find him, presumably within a day or so at that. We think this may be the actual telegram, printed out in a Forces Post Office in Egypt, and delivered to Jack. He kept it in his kit, or his wallet, and for sentimental reasons, it stayed there until his demob, whereupon it found its way into his memories box. We know that AUX 562, a mystery to us at first, is two things. AUX refers to the RMAB, and 562 was the last part of his new number, and when first joining, together with the letters PLY, this was his original number. RM 12 could possibly be the 12th Searchlight Battalion, and is the F ORG E a sort of teleprinter misprint where there should not have been the gaps between the letters, and also that the 'G' is a misprint for 'C'. Thus it would say FORCE. As to the word OVERT, we haven't a clue, other than it was some sort of code that would find MNBDO 1 in the Middle East, finding the right camp, and ultimately, the right man. If it is a 'G', there is a temptation to read the middle letters as ORG, which is part way there. Otherwise, some of it is still a mystery. It also begs the question - which way did the wires go? How were telegrams transmitted to the Middle East at the height of the war? Was part of the way by wireless signal, short wave, to powerful receivers in Cairo?

In the spring of 1943, now largely recovered - in numbers at least - from the set-backs of Crete and Tobruk, orders came for MNBDO 1 to relocate to Ceylon. As the war in North Africa moved to its close, massive numbers of troops were then needed for the follow up into Sicily and southern Italy. Just as many troops would also very quickly be needed for the war that was reaching a turning point in the east, particularly Burma. Just as the war in North Africa was receeding from him, the risk of air raids less and less, the whole unit gets orders to up sticks and move themselves a few thousand miles further east, just where things seem to be reaching something of a climax.

CEYLON
The move to Ceylon, to establish a new HQ in Colombo was part of the build up for both the re-taking of Burma and the eventual re-conquest of Malaya. MNBDO 1's move was specifically to improve defences on the island of Ceylon itself, and with particular regard to anti-aircraft defence of Trincomalee harbour, which was the main base for the fleet in the Indian Ocean. Ceylon is an island off the south-east tip of India, roughly pear shaped and covering an area about the size of Wales. The great natural harbour, a sort of Scapa of the East, is on the eastern side of the island facing Malaya across the Bay of Bengal. Colombo, the capital and another great port, is on the west. Trincomalee itself, as well as Columbo, were coming under increasing Japanese air attack as their ground forces advanced ever more westward and Ceylon came just within range of their bombers flying from newly captured airfields in Malaya and Indonesia.

This is a particularly dark area in our information about Jack. The theatre and rail tickets dry up, and suddenly hey presto, he's in Ceylon. His service record is of no use here whatsoever. It's all tied up in his unit's name, and wherever they were sent. We have no idea as to how he got there - obviously by ship from Suez, but family information tells us that at some point he went to Bombay, and possibly even to a huge transit camp at Poona, now called Pune - but we have no ship's name, or whether he went direct to Colombo from Suez, meaning the Bombay story isn't right. All we can be sure of is that the MEF contingent of the MNBDO moved from Suez as a unit, all together. I love the matter-of-fact way the RM histories record it.

HQ MNBDO 1 closed in the Middle East on 16 June, 1943 and reopened in Colombo on 27th June.

A bit like moving shop, really. The move seems to have taken just 11 days, which seems to rule out going via Bombay. But as far as Jack's record sheet is concerned, that only tells us he was with Group 1 MNBDO from 24 Nov 1941 until 1 Aug 1944, when he transferred to Royal Marines Training Group (D), back in the UK, presumably at either Exton camp or Dalditch just a couple of miles away over the hill. The 'D' in brackets stands for Devon, and could mean either of those camps. A 'W' stood for any one of the five training camps in Wales. The Devon camps were so close together that for admin purposes, they could almost be taken as one.

If those record sheets were taken at face value, without further research it would appear that he moved down from Orkney to Devon and stayed there for the rest of the war until demob. I suspect that the service records for all other men in MNBDOs read the same and relatives may take from that the erroneous view that their man never went overseas. That is a shame if that is all they know. The other thing to make clear for those puzzling over yet more initials on records is the designation HBL on a marine's records. It stood for 'Home Based Ledger' which effectively was for pay and accounting purposes. Because MNBDOs were essentially mobile and therefore of no permanent fixed base, they were designated to be on the HBL for pay purposes, nothing more. Just like HMS President was the pay ship for DEMS gunners, and HMS Odyssey was a hotel in Weston-super-Mare, also for naval pay purposes, HBL is purely an accounting term. The key thing to remember is that any man that had MNBDO on his service sheet, or tells you he recalls serving with same, almost certainly did go overseas, despite HBL appearing to suggest otherwise. The trick is finding out where overseas. The RM guys lost and buried on Crete and in Tobruk will also have HBL on their records, perhaps also causing some confusion and not a little upset. There's the explanation, so I hope this clears it up.

We know from RM records that the MNBDOs were eventually returned to the UK from Ceylon and disbanded in order to transfer men to new commando and landing craft units in readiness for D-Day and all that went after. Jack was by now a member of "2 L&M Coy". More obscure initials - in this case, No2 Landing and Maintenance Company, one of the many small parts of an MNBDO that made up the whole. One larger unit for instance was the 11th RM Battalion which took part in the raid on Tobruk. The name battalion implies that would have been something like 500 men or more. These L&M companies seem to have been specifically working with landing craft and small boats. There were also separate 'Boat Companies' and 'Workshop Companies', all at the same level on the regimental flow chart. For that reason, I suspect that for Jack and his mates, when the order came to disband their unit and draft chits arrived to send them home, this may have been for training for landing craft duties for D-Day and Operation Neptune. Records tell us that 60 per cent of the landing craft at Normandy were manned by Royal Marines. Most of the rest were matelots - naval ratings.

The news of the disbandment of MNBDO 1 came sometime either towards the very end of 1943 or early the following year; so in mid-February of 1944, MNBDO 1 was shipped back to Blighty from Ceylon to be dispersed to other units. A good many men went to those newly forming commando units, each of around 800 men, not only for D-Day but also later amphibious operations in Europe. Because it never happened for Jack, we can't be sure exactly what job he was bound for, but my guess is landing craft duties. And I also suspect that's where his mates went to as well. But whilst he was out in Ceylon, we still have no idea where he was actually based. I get the impression that MNBDO 1 was split up and served in several places on the island of Ceylon. Most perhaps were at Trincomalee, in the east, but there were many airfields, and one closer to Columbo on the west coast was also a naval air station. This would have needed anti-aircraft defence, both the guns and the searchlights and all the other paraphernalia that goes with it. Jack told me himself he was on the west coast, indeed, he tried to show me exactly where on a poor map, but without pinning it down. The naval air station was at Katukurunda, formerly RAF then Fleet Air Arm. As such, it was HMS Ukussa, the 'ship's badge' being a falcon. The events described next to some extent confirmed that. Trouble for memory is that he was only there for a very short time.

ILLNESS STRIKES
But that was not the full story by any means. One of the reasons we know he was in Ceylon, apart from Jack often mentioning it himself, is that just before Christmas of 1943, he became very seriously ill with a complaint that became a lasting legacy. It appears he contracted what was vaguely called 'tropical sprue', which seems have been a particular disease already known to be common in certain latitudes of the tropics. Long term visitors were particularly susceptible, with southern India and Ceylon included in the list of most notably affected places. The description of this version of sprue is a stomach sickness complaint that leaves the patient unable to digest or gain nutrition from a wide variety of normal foods for many, many months leading to serious weight loss. Much more is known about it now, but in Jack's case, from his own testamony we already knew he was hospitalised in Ceylon, and for some time.

Describing this episode later, Jack never had any clue as to how he got it, whether he'd eaten something infected; all he knew was that it laid him low for many, many months and very nearly killed him. He knew what was wrong with him and what it was called, but now it appears that was not the first diagnosis. His medics first thought it was something else entirely, and not without good reason. For us, the only clue about his hospitalisation at all is in his service record, in the enigmatic number 35 and the initials I.G. Hosp., and then on the very next line appears '28 ICD'. All this was presumably in Ceylon, in or near Colombo, and at first, we had no idea exactly where he was and we don't recall Jack knowing for sure either. We don't even know exactly where he was based in Ceylon before he took ill. It's another classic instance of being based wherever No2 Landing & Maintenance Coy, MNBDO 1 were based, so presumably wherever documents in the National Archives eventually reveal he was based. He did once mention a name that sounded to me like Kalutura, just down the coast south of Colombo. I recall looking it up in a large world atlas, but not being much the wiser. Later research told me there was a naval air station on the coast down there, HMS Ukussa, which could well have had defences such as that provided by an MNBDO. Perhaps someone can enlighten me. I'm inclined to think that this was another aspect to the all-pervading mystery of the location of MNBDO 1 - that they were spread out over several locations, providing anti-aircraft cover for such as that air station, and other vulnerable naval sites including Colombo harbour and HQ itself. They were possibly all over much of the island.

Reports online now suggest that his illness may even have been infectious, suggesting that it was something that may have been passed from man to man and now considered a common complaint in the tropics, particularly amongst long-term visitors. It seems that short-term visitors to these regions - for just a couple of weeks or so - don't succumb to it. All of which is very curious now because a very well documented case of mass sickness broke out amongst a detatchment of Royal Marines that had been sent to the Maldives to assist with the building and defence of the new harbour and port facilities on the Maldive Islands. When Trincomalee on Ceylon, the fleet's major Far Eastern base at that time, started to come under air attack and the likelihood of a Japanese invasion became very real, plans were already in hand to evacuate fleet headquarters and port facilities to the Maldives. The British had secretly been building a port with full facilities out there even before the Japanese war had started.

In the event Ceylon wasn't invaded and the evacuation never took place. But of the several dozen marines posted to the Maldives, most of them appear to have caught something remarkably similar to what Jack had. At first, the cause was put down to eating 'infected fruit'. Sadly, of roughly 50 men that went down with it, several never recovered and died of the sickness and are buried there still. That outbreak of illness was officially reported at the time to be 'tropical typhus', and thought to have been passed on from infected rats on the islands. But it's hard not to surmise some sort of connection. At any event, Jack had a lucky escape. He later believed that it was only his prior fitness, body bulk and general stamina that enabled him to come through. He may never have known anything about the sickness affair on the Maldives at the time, as that was a well-kept secret for many years after the war.

Those other enigmatic letters on his records - IG and ICD - really exercised me, so I set about seeing if there were any clues online. I knew from researching WWI records that there were a great number of military hospitals serving our forces around the world and all had a number, one that they kept even if moved or evacuated. There were something like 122 British General Hospitals around the globe during WWII, and all are now listed online somewhere. Figuring out exactly where some of them were at any one time may be another matter.

We were lucky, knowing that Jack was in Ceylon when he took ill; he told us that. And he knew he was in hospital in or around Colombo, but not exactly where. The number 35 IGH suggested a hospital, and I discovered that at one time a hospital in Colombo was known, even if briefly in the inter-war years, as the 'Indian General Hospital'. Wider searches online only brought that reference up once. I realised that whoever had entered the detail on Jack's record had done so from hospital records sent to his unit, and it perhaps should have said "35 BGH" for British General Hospital. That was located in the Royal College in Colombo, on the south side of the city in an area known as Mount Lavinia. The original school there was relocated for the duration of the war specifically to make room for the hospital but reverted to being a school afterwards. The reason why I realised that the records at RM records or HQ were sent by the hospital was from the next entry on the next line. "From 28 ICD (BT)". Now, what on earth could that mean?

BEWARE THE MEDICAL CODES !
Searching online for some time, I found repeated references to what looked like medical sites which were at first of no apparent relevance. Then out of the blue, it hit me what the letters stood for, something any modern medic or doctor would have spotted straight away. "International Classification of Diseases." Of course it would be, Jack was in hospital because he had a tropical disease. Looking further in depth into what amounts to a medical dictionary of code names for diseases, I was way out of my depth so I looked up Tropical Sprue. That was number K90. Looking at 28, it first seemed clear that is the code for ulcers of all different sorts. Today, the codes elaborate to an extra number, so 28.1 is one type of ulcer, 28.2 is another, and so on. But, and here is the rub . . . that ICD has been revised at intervals over the decades, and for quite a while, I had been looking at the wrong list. The last revision before the war was in 1938, being Revision No5, and in there code 28 is for Malaria. That would indicate that the medics at the time in Ceylon may initially have thought this was what was troubling Jack, even though he would later learn the truth about it being tropical sprue. The lesson for us as researchers is, be very careful with these codes when deciphering a man's records. Using the wrong revision version can get a man, or his memory, into serious trouble. In the 1955 revision, code 28 is by then for something very nasty beginning with 'S' and starts with an itch! Back in those days, when codes were revised in 1909, 1920, 1938 and 1948, I'm sure that some errors and mix-ups might well have occurred when transferring medical data onto a man's military record. The current revision codes for the ICD are up to number 10 and are so extremely detailed as to be mind boggling, as well as frightening!

All we can assume now is that Jack may have gone into hospital with what was later diagnosed as sprue, but was discharged to his unit by medics who believed he had simply acquired malaria. You can imagine the fun I had researching the bracketed letters BT; but that turned out to be for none other than 'borderline tuberculosis', and that may well have been the case too. We have no way of knowing now. The point of all this is that those numbers, with variations, may well help someone else researching their relative, and not necessarily in the marines. For instance, I saw names of army and RAF personnel in the online references to the 35 BGH. So if you see ICD on your man's records, keep this in mind. I must emphasise again, do be careful when researching the number; to get it right, use the right revision version for the codes. A good many men may have a service record on which is a number referring to something they might never have told the family, or wanted them to know. You don't want to get it wrong by mistake. Sometimes, even getting it right may raise a few eyebrows.

HOMEWARD BOUND
For us, knowing from government and RM records that the MNBDOs were disbanded in early 1943, the next question was, what was the ship that brought him home? This was a question I did ask Jack, but he couldn't recall and then sort of dismissed my enquiry giving the air that it was of no importance. He was right, it is of no importance, other than we know the ship he went out on so it would be nice to square the circle for his homeward journey. If nothing else, it may help to identify exact dates of the voyage. But once again, his service record gives no clue. After the enigmatic 28 ICD reference, the next entry immediately recognisable is 'to hospital Glasgow.' All of his journey home is again encoded in the records detailing what that MNBDO did; these records are apparently in the National Archives at Kew for anyone who wants to go there and ask for a search. But perhaps I could find out more online. What if I can find a homeward bound convoy leaving on or around the date of Jack's discharge from hospital? We know from his own testimony that he had a great deal of help from his mates, and it was a close-run thing that he ever got aboard the ship at all, whatever it was called.

Convoy Web shows an incredible list of convoys, searchable by date, departure port, or ship's name. Searching for which ships left Colombo around the 16 Feb 1943 brought up a likely candidate. Two ships sailed together - an armed merchant cruiser, HMS Alaunia, and the RMS Scythia. The first turns out to be a Cunard-White Star liner, requisitioned by the RN and armed with a large number of 20mm anti-aircraft guns; no real protection against a large warship, but could give attacking aircraft pause for thought. The Scythia looked a more likely candidate, of similar size to the Alaunia at 19,000 tons, and also a Cunard-White Star liner, shown to be going west with 4,300 troops which suggests a full MNBDO, plus some others. The problem now was that the code for this convoy, JA1, indicated that it was only from Colombo to Aden. What then?

Searching for ALL sailings, in convoy or not, then revealed the Scythia (now HMT) proceeding independently from Aden to Suez, taking one full day to traverse the Suez Canal. Lo and behold, we then pick up Scythia again when she joins a large, fast convoy at Port Said, MKF29, this time bound for home. The codes generally made some sort of sense, and so can't have been too secret or onerous for the enemy to work out. Code KMF denoted convoys from the UK to the Mediterranean, the letter 'F' signifying 'fast'. The letters reversed, MKF were a similarly fast convoy, from the Med to the UK. Convoy MKF29 left Port Said on 2 March, comprising 14 vessels, mostly of troopships of various sizes. Now much better protected going home, with far more destroyer escorts joining and leaving at various points along the route, the convoy appeared to only be bound for Liverpool, whereas Jack had been most definite that his landing was at Greenock. To give an idea of the organisation, and size, the convoy comprised 28 vessels all told at one point, and like the escorts, various other vessels joined and left at other ports along the route. Only 23 went on to complete the final leg from Gibraltar to Liverpool. So, not quite to Clydeside, which is what we first hoped to see. Jack had told us himself that he was admitted to hospital in Glasgow almost as soon as his ship docked.

That arduous 6-week wartime journey was a week or so longer than the journey generally took from Ceylon back to the UK on a liner travelling alone, but travelling in convoy in 1943 included stops at Aden, Port Said and Algiers. Interestingly, the heavy escort from Gibraltar was the battleship HMS Warspite, and I do now recall Jack mentioning he'd seen that famous warship in a convoy at one time. Having discharged some passengers, or freight, at Liverpool, it then transpires that Scythia once again made her way alone, but now to Clydeside, docking at Greenock on 16 March, confirming pretty much what Jack had told us. Being ill, he may not have disembarked as immediately as his pals did, and his record shows he was admitted to the care of Stobhill Hospital in Glasgow on the 18 March. It all seemed to tie up with what we already knew. All we need now is proof, and that will only come from someone seeing this and writing to say yes ... their grandad came home with MNBDO 1 and they know it was on the Scythia. Alternatively, we may see it in MNBDO records in the National Archives if they are ever made available online. I hope these pages are of help to someone else researching both the outward voyage on the Viceroy of India as well as MNBDO 1 sailing for home on the Scythia. I have to say that Convoy Web (www.convoyweb.org.uk/ ) is an astonishingly useful site, and we must thank all those responsible for it.

While Jack was in hospital, some of his mates came to see him. Had it been known then that his illness may have been infectious, I doubt that would have been allowed. But then, now we know it was only thought that he had malaria, a reasonable enough diagnosis at the time considering that is what most troops went down with. His weight loss was remarkable, and it was only through his mates that he learnt of the imminent departure of his unit in order to be shipped home. Fearful of being left in Ceylon, with the help of his friends, he craftily connived to appear to be very much better than he was, and it was agreed he could be discharged from hospital to rejoin his unit for the coming voyage. He was so determined to return home with his mates that he feigned wellness to make sure of it, and the audacity of his deception of the doctors and nurses left his mates aghast. It was only down to his mates that he made it to the ship at all. From what Jack said later, it was a close-run thing, and he had a great deal of help from them, presumably with his kitbag amongst other things. The dates suggest he discharged from hospital the day the Scythia sailed, and he may well have been one of the last up the gang-plank.

Once aboard the homeward bound troopship, his true condition which he had managed to successfully conceal for a short time, soon became apparent, and he was hospitalised again, aboard ship in the sick-bay. And there he stayed, often semi-concious but mostly sleeping, for almost the whole of the voyage home. This was a journey about which he recalled nothing of in later years, until at least they had cleared the Suez Canal again and headed west up the now far safer Mediterranean. He was now several stones lighter than when he had set out to go to the east in the first place.

He missed the trip through the Suez Canal, past and within sight of Geniefa, his old camp on the shores of the Little Bitter Lake, and the sights, sounds and smells of Port Said. When I asked him about all this later, I was rather surprised at his total lack of recall of the name of the ship. We know now it can't have been the unfortunate Viceroy, because she had been torpedoed and sunk in November of 1942 near Oran. This was after discharging troops bound for Operation Torch, the invasion on the Atlantic coast of North Africa. She had been homeward bound for Gibraltar to collect more troops when she became prey to a U-boat - luckily, none of the crew were lost.

One minor detail confirmed for us on the Convoy Web site was that of Jack's story of an incredible wartime coincidence, though meetings such as this were often the case in wartime. We know Jack must have been reasonably well enough for a brief run ashore with his pals because he bumped into his brother walking down a street in Algiers. The minor detail is that his convoy gathered up yet more homeward bound ships for their convoy at Algiers, then a major allied port following the success of the North African campaign and subsequent invasion of Italy. It was a story that both of them told many times, of how his younger sailor brother Norman, not seen or heard of since his birthday during that snowy, January leave back in early 1942, appeared with a bunch of fellow matelots 'out of the crowds. And this whilst walking down a non-descript street in such an obscure, foreign port! Neither had known of the other's whereabouts, and likewise, Norman had no knowledge of Jack's illness. Such are the vagaries of a major war, and Jack would tell that story many times in later years.

Whether the Algiers interlude had done him any good or not, Jack's sickness, far from improving, got worse, so much so that within a day or so of docking in Greenock, he was admitted to Stobb Hill, then a major military hospital for the duration of the war. The fact that he got worse and not better does seem to indicate the correct diagnosis of tropical sprue, and perhaps it was not until being back in Glasgow that it could be confirmed. He was ill enough for some of his family to feel it important to quickly visit him. His elder sister and brother-in-law, as well as the girlfriend he had corresponded with throughout the war, made the horrendous journey by rail from the midlands up to Glasgow. The delays and diversions, stoppages in remote sidings, all are another story in itself. But this was wartime, and folks got on with it. It was whilst Jack was slowly making a recovery in Glasgow that both MNBDOs were being disbanded not so far away to release marines for other duties. He stayed at Stobb Hill for about 6 weeks, and was then discharged to another military hospital in Lincoln to make it easier for his relatives to visit him. His records show he was still in Lincoln on D-Day in June, though later that month then discharged to the naval hospital at Newton Abbot in Devon. He was now getting closer to his base depot at Plymouth, but it would be another 18 months before his demob. During this time he recovered enough to return to light duties in camp offices at Exton and Dalditch; on one occasion, the records show he was also back at Gibraltar Camp near Towyn for a very short time. His weight, we were told, on admittance in Glasgow, was just 6 stone. I can only imagine that he needed a new issue of battle-dress as he would have looked very thin and slight indeed.

One final question about the MNBDOs is the one of their disbandment. We know from the RM histories - which state that elements of the Group, possibly 11th Battalion RM - were 'disbanded at West Kilbride'. I had forgotten where that was, but it is actually as good as on the Clyde coast. Then very recently while talking about all this again, his widow suddenly but vaguely said that she thought he was at East Kibride at some time, but couldn't say when or what for. I did some quick online research about the town's wartime history but drew a blank with not a hint of marines, so I left it there. Later, when revising these notes, I noticed again the reference in the RM history to disbandment at West Kilbride, and remembered mum's vague memory. On looking at the map, it suddenly dawned on me that this is maybe where the MNBDO actually mustered in readiness for shipping out to Egypt in the first place, as well as the place of their later disbandment. Jack would not have been present for the latter, as that disbandment took place whilst he was in a Glasgow hospital very slowly recovering and no doubt pondering what the future had in store for him. So long as he continued to gain in strength, his future was reasonably assured - for now. His mates who he had travelled the world with, lived cheek by jowl with, experienced countless dangers with, as it happened were not so far away whichever Kilbride they were in. Their future was far less certain, and we have the benefit of history to inform us that in the summer of 1944, the war was drawing to a close. But they did not know that, not Jack, nor his mates. And for many of them, there was some serious and lengthy warfare ahead, from which not all of them would return.

The 1938 map online shows a lot of land around West Kilbride that could well have accommodated an RM camp across that Christmas of 1941, and none more suitable than the riverside golf course just to the north, almost a mirror of what they would be going to alongside the Suez Canal, minus the heat and sand of course. Did they leave by train from West Kilbride for Greenock to embark on the Viceroy of India, or did that ship perhaps pick them up off Ardrossan, just a couple of miles further down the coast and itself with a small harbour pier? The Clyde itself would have been buzzing with ships of all sizes, and every docking or port facility of even limited use would have been pressed into service. I don't suggest the Viceroy would have been able to get into the harbour, or even alongside the pier at Ardrossan, but I could imagine marines being ferried out to an anchored vessel using existing steam ferries from the pier. It would have made sense, not having to clog up the extremely busy Greenock docksides with yet more men. Again, in the fullness of time, someone may put me right. But for now, I can find no historic connection between the RM and West Kilbride, other than that one reference in RM histories.

The other lesson to be drawn is that later memories of spouses or relatives often do throw up elements of truth. I'm sure mum was right - something from 70 years ago rang a faint bell. This happens all the time, and we'd do well to take notice, or at least take note, when those bells of memory chime. It may be some time before even one faint bell makes any sense at all, but at least you'd have your notes.

Out of all the entries on Jack's service record, one other entry still remains something of a mystery. After the line and entry for MNDBO (1), we see the line:

This is dated 6.1.42. He embarked on the Viceroy of India on the 4 Feb 1942, a month later, so we must assume that the code was for wherever MNBDO 1 was bound. Did it stand for Egypt in general, the Suez Zone in particular, or even Al Tahag Camp very specifically? Or was 7.16 merely the code for the muster point where the newly forming MNBDO 1 was assembling for up to a month prior to embarkation? And if they were assembling, then where was that - East or West Kilbride? Someone - please put me out of my mysery.

DEMOB AND REMEMBRANCE
Jack's war service came to an official end on 28 December 1945. We forget now, because we know all the dates, but he and his fellow marines, indeed most of the armed forces and the nation as a whole, didn't think the war would ever come to an end that soon. Even when the war against Germany ended in May of that year, most informed sources really did believe there was at least another good two years of hard and cruel fighting ahead in the Far East. As Jack got gradually stronger, regained his lost weight and returned to light duties, his record reveals he was back at Gibraltar Camp in North Wales in August of that year, presumably in the local HQ office on office clerk duties.

We can only guess and surmise what his feelings were as to the course of events, but we do know from thousands of other sources that many of our victorious forces in Europe really did expect they would soon be shipped out to the Far East - for some of them, not for the first time. He may well have expected to go back himself. If he could have remembered what he was doing, or feeling on that summer Sunday of August 5th whilst enjoying the wooded river valley near Towyn, I doubt it was looking forward to demob. By the end of that particularly momentous week, it must have gradually dawned that an early demob was a distinct possibility, and not just to Jack. By the middle of the next week, the surrender had been signed and it really was all over - to coin a well used phrase. Years later, he would go back for holidays near Towyn with his wife and daughters and ride the preserved steam railway up the very same valley where he had trained for war some 25 years before - and where he had also heard the news that the war in the east had ended - and so dramatically - some 5 years later. It's no guesswork that Jack enjoyed his time at Gibraltar Camp, he told us so. He loved the place. He was that sort of man, he liked everywhere he went, enjoyed the travel and the education that went with it.

We see that Jack was owed quite a bit of leave - two months in fact - and was home with his family in early November. Like tens of thousands of men and women of all services getting home for Christmas for the first time in years, he would have celebrated Christmas with his family for the first time since that of 1939. Records show he was issued with his outstanding pay, and a war gratuity for his illness, at the beginning of November.

We can imagine it would have been a bitter-sweet time, full of joy at being home and re-familiarising himself with all that he knew. As well as recalling the places he'd been, the people he had met, and pondered on those he knew would not be coming back. What were his thoughts as he left Stonehouse barracks in Plymouth for the last time that November day and took the long rail journey home to Leicester in his new demob suit, no longer a Royal Marine but returning to civilian life. I'm sure he was certainly planning on watching some cricket. He would be forgiven for pinching himself in odd quiet moments alone as he asked himself if it had all been real. Did he really spend so many weeks on an ocean liner, cross the Equator and visit South Africa, swim in both the Red Sea and the Dead Sea, visit the site of the Holy Sepulchre and see the Great Pyramid of Giza, experience and smell the sights and spices of Ceylon. As for bumping into his brother in Algiers, of all places on this earth, he revelled in that story for years. It was not so unusual, wartime is full of amazing meetings and coincidences in foreign places, but they did make wonderful stories at family gatherings. I had a lot to learn about the war, and the navy, before I could make sense of half of what he had told me. By the time I could figure a lot of it out, he was gone from us. I suspect that is true for many of you too.

He married his sweetheart, Joan, the girl he had corresponded with throughout the war, in the following October of 1946. It was 19-year old Joan, a quiet and shy diminutive young lady, who had braved the privations of a nightmare rail journey to Glasgow to see him when he was so sick. At the time of writing, Joan is aged 90, and still in the same home they bought together in 1948. Though back in 1946, still weighing only 7 stone - as Joan commented years later - Jack was still mostly skin and bone and looking not so unlike many of the British POWs that had come home from their ordeals at the cruel hands of the Japanese. In later years, he had to be very careful in what he ate, particularly in the realm of salad stuffs and fruit. As to bananas, he could never face them again, having lived on a diet of bananas and been almost force-fed them for many months whilst sick. That had been the only thing he could digest and get any reasonable amount of nutrition from for a very long time.

His war years seem to have cost him his previously sound digestion; but many men had to contend with much worse. Jack considered himself lucky to have got away with so little. Some years later, when we all visited the church in the village of Peckleton, his one-time family home, Jack saw the name of a lad he had gone to school with but had never seen again since those schooldays. The boy was listed on a brass plaque placed by his family as killed in Burma in 1944. Jack was visibly upset and it brought home the fact that he knew he had had several lucky escapes and maybe poor digestion was a very small price to pay for his good luck. That brass plaque underlined it all, and perhaps also recalled memories of mates that didn't come back with him.

He recovered enough to get back to a reasonably new fitness. At first, he went back to his old job as a counterhand in a knitwear factory, where he had first met Joan. But his experience of world travel and office work broadened his horizons and he gained a new job, as a clerk in a railway goods office with the newly formed British Railways. He spent a full 30 years with them until retirement in 1976. Apart from his two weeks annual leave and a family holiday to the coast courtesy of his family rail pass, Jack seems to have done with any major travelling. That is other than Wales, Scotland and many trips to the Isle of Wight. He certainly never showed any inclination to go abroad at all, least of all back again to the east. His last ventures onto the deep blue briny were the rather shallower waters of that Isle of Wight ferry. He had escaped the clutches of King Neptune, from the Pentland Firth to the Bay of Bengal and back, and knew his good fortune. The Isle of Wight ferry in summertime is generally a more gentle ride.

I was lucky to join them on one occasion, and we discussed his war extensively. I wish I could remember more of it. I do vividly recall his comments on what he thought of the habits of some he had met in the foreign lands he had visited - perhaps very witty though maybe not quite so printable. Forty years of marriage, buying his own home and raising two daughters, keeping a very productive and healthy garden, were all important to him. He really did make the most of his hard-won security for the rest of his life. But, as they say, once a marine, always a marine, and right up until his early seventies, Jack was immensely proud of his time in the Royal Marines. He had a superb record collection of the Royal Marine Bands, and as a young man courting his daughter, I was privileged to hear his music, browse his collection of photos and hear his memories. I only wish I could recall a fraction of what he told me.

It's safe to say he would have been totally flabbergasted, astonished beyond belief, if he could could have seen how this article had been put together, typed up on a little lap-top and instantly floated up through the ether to the web page where you are reading this now. And all this whilst occasionally listening to some of the music he introduced me to out of this very same machine, plus all the joys of the Internet and how much information has been put out there just to help researchers like ourselves trace the wartime journeys of men such as he. As to the superb resources like Convoy Web and Naval-History.com, he would have been utterly bewildered. I would love to have seen his face when I turned up photos of HMT Viceroy of India at the mere click of a mouse, reminded him that he came home on HMT Scythia, and how the mysteries of his hospital stay were deciphered from detailed medical indexes now available on the web. I can see him smiling now, just like in the very last photo below. Malaria or tropical sprue was perhaps not so bad. It's just as well he had nothing worse!


December 2015

Edited for corrections : December 2017