Victor George Martin (Primary Source)

Transcript

My name is Victor Martin. I enlisted in the navy in 1940 in Hamilton. That was my hometown at that time. On the [HMCS] Saguenay, I was on a guns crew of seven. Learning on the job, one of our first tasks was out escorting the big ships, trying to find the Bismarck, which was the largest German battleship that was out; and they were looking all over the North Atlantic for it. We were unsuccessful, but others eventually found it with the help of the air power who eventually put his rudder out of business. The other ships were able to sink it. We were at sea quite a bit. It was quite often rough and if you got into a storm, which we’d got into one severe one, the ship was damaged to a degree that we had to go in and get the stanchions straightened out. You hit into the waves when it got bad and this creates a heavy pounding. The bow goes up in the air and when it comes down ̶ it’s a big thump. Eating your meals, makes it very, very tough; and you have your plate in your hand all the time with a good hold on it and try to eat that way. Your mess deck gets pretty wet from some leaks coming in. Your hammocks are swinging from side to side and it’s hard to get too much rest. I ended up on the [HMCS] Regina in January of 1942. Regina, had about half the crew, a smaller ship, one gun instead of four. We had a pom-pom [anti-aircraft weapon] with a smaller gun still and then we had AA [anti-aircraft] guns, which were anti-aircraft. It was more of a family because you got to know everybody, where on the larger ship, you didn’t. And they were all VRs, voluntary reserves on there, and the skipper was a former merchant seaman, so he wasn’t too interested in the old navy routine. So everybody was happy on there. It was a rough, different type of ship. It rolls in the waves, then the up and down, like a washtub. But you felt pretty, pretty safe on them. None of them were too severe and they dealt by the hardships of the ocean, but they just rolled. After a short time on them, you got used to the ship, to the movement. We spent the first six months on the North Atlantic and then in October 1942, we were shipped down to, from Londonderry, Ireland to Gibraltar, with a convoy. We didn’t make that trip all the way. We got in a severe storm and it damaged the ship bad enough that we had to go back to Belfast and get repairs. We lost part of our bridge; there was damage to our ASDIC [Anti-submarine Detection Investigation Committee] gear, which is submarine detecting, and our lifeboat was damaged beyond repair. It was just ripped apart. So the convoy we were with, it was everybody for themselves. There’s no chance of any submarines being around to bother you when the storm gets like that because they stay down the bottom; they’re not coming to the top. And the second trip, we escorted a convoy to the Mediterranean from Gibraltar over to Algiers. Before we got to Algiers, we lost one of our corvettes [convoy escort]. It got hit with a torpedo from planes flying in low off of the coast of North Africa. It was two days later, we were on our way further along the coast to Bône with one ammunition ship, and we come across the submarine on the surface. We went after it. It dove, but we brought it up with depth charges and it was damaged. They did get to their small arms and were firing at us and we were firing back. We put them out of commission totally in short order. They surrendered and we sent a boarding party aboard to take the prisoners back on our ship. We took 26 prisoners. We tried to get the sub into port, but it was impossible; it was damaged too bad. I wasn’t part of the boarding party, but I was part of the boats crew, taking the boarding party over and then bringing prisoners back. There was a three-man boats party. In those days there was no such thing as a motorboat aboard corvettes. It was all muscle, with a couple oars each. And they were very happy that it was all over for them. We have pictures in the corvette book, Corvette Canada [Corvettes Canada: Convoy Veterans of World War II Tell Their True Stories], and some of them are my pictures in that book. You’ll see the prisoners going ashore. They’re all smiling. From there, I went into barracks. They broke up the crew again, had a refit. And from there, I was drafted to Toronto to get a new minesweeper (that was a British ship) and we basically went over with a convoy to England and delivered the corvette to the English navy. And from there, I was drafted to one of our new ships being built in Clydebank and it was a new fleet class destroyer, the [HMCS] Algonquin. I spent the next 16 months on the Algonquin. Our ship was a bombardment ship at D-Day, ahead of the troops going in. It wasn’t good to see the army fellows taking the beating that they took because they all took a beating, both sides, on D-Day. Well, there’s always a threat but sometimes you couldn’t see your threat, but on D-Day, you didn’t know how much firepower was going to come off the coast; and whether the planes were going to hit you when they dropped bombs or torpedoes. I think I lived a charmed life. The Regina was sunk after I left it. The Saguenay was put out of commission when it got its stern knocked off by a freighter after I left it. It was almost like a, one of them four-legged creatures out. They knew there was danger, they jumped off, but I was drafted off. I eventually was sent up to Toronto for my discharge. Waiting around Toronto, they lost my papers. (laughs) Very convenient, I was sitting around Toronto for two months before I got out. I’d been away from my wife at that time upward for near two years. I wanted to get out, get a job, have a family. That’s what we did. I think I grew up a heck of a lot in five years time, going from an 18 year old kid to a 23 year old man. You have to grow up in a hurry.