Cyril Bartlett

Some time in… I was sent on the Murmansk Run, in Russia. Up there, just before we got to Murmansk, however, we had to pass a place called [Bardufoss, Norway]. And the enemy had a base there. At four o’clock in the morning, we were attacked. We had 32 ships in our convoy and we lost 30 of them. Quite a massacre on us, that. And one particular thing was that one of the ships was filled with TNT, that’s a very high explosive. The [German] pilot flew out and dropped a stick of bombs on the ship and it blew apart, there was no survivors. But he thought he could do a little better, so he flew around to see what he had done and strange enough the flames from the burning ship caught his plane and he burnt and sank a little way from the ship. There were no survivors. He didn’t survive and the ship didn’t survive. There was only two got through to Moscow [point of clarification: Bartlett is referring to Murmansk] out of a convoy of 32. We lost 30. A big disaster, wasn’t it? When I got back, there was a signal aboard - that’s a message, by the way - a signal and any Newfoundlander that hadn’t been home for two years - and I was the only one on that ship [HMS Pursuer], there weren’t many Newfoundlanders on it - that hadn’t been home in two years. So I applied for a leave and got home in two years, and 32 days’ leave.