Arthur William Murray

I thought I’d have a cup of tea and some toast. I opened the bread drawer. It was swarming with cockroaches. I just brushed them off, sliced the bread and made the toast. I couldn’t do that today. Oh God. Then when we refitted in Texas, we got these Texas cockroaches. Christ, they looked like the size of a small turtle. [laughs] I think they used to call them Palmetto bugs [American cockroach]. The hell … they were cockroaches. We did our work ups down in Bermuda, in the spring of 1944. I could sense it then. We got a good rating; and they were mostly all navy guys that worked us up. They gave us good marks, good ratings. When we were refitting down in Galveston, we thought we’d be part of the invasion force, but we were a couple of weeks late. I guess the ship was behind schedule. So we joined C2 Escort Group in St. John’s on the “Newfie-Derry” [Newfoundland-to-Derry, Ireland] Run. The North Atlantic was pretty goddamn awful. At one time, we’d get sounds and we’d drop [depth] charges [anti-submarine weapons] and it might be a school of fish or a whale, or something like that. But after a while, you’d know whether it was a submarine or not. As you get closer to the sub, the sound would get more intense. And a good operator, he could stay onto the sub. Once we honed in on the sub, had good contact, we’d put up the attack flag and then run in; and the captain would instruct what patterns to set on the quarterdeck and the depth charge throwers. And then, at that time, we had a hedgehog [anti-submarine mortar] which was a ‘throw ahead’ weapon. One night, I remember I was on watch and we had an exercise called scare stations [emergency drill]. That means that you could drop one charge, you come across a submarine, very suddenly, but you weren’t supposed to drop a charge. The poor rating [enlisted sailor] back there, he let one go; and I was on watch. I said, full ahead boat. Well, the corvette’s [lightly armoured patrol and escort vessel] only a single screw [single propeller] ship, but I’d been used to serving in twin screw ships. Jesus, it was about 50 yards, yeah, it was … 50 feet, and it didn’t damage the ship at all, but it was scary as hell.