When the war started I was a 19 year old Printers Apprentice, I volunteered in June for the Royal Navy, as an H. O. (hostilities only) at Skegness, after basics I was sent to Chatham for more training, there I went down with Peritonitis so I was in Chatham Hospital for a time and then Dartford for convalescence, I then got three weeks leave just in time for Christmas, then went back to Chatham where my draft had come through to join the Firedrake in Gibraltar. I then had to go to Liverpool and get the troop ship Strathmore which took me to Gibraltar so I finally joined the Firedrake and force H in January 1941. We’d only been on a couple of convoys and on operation ‘Result’ the shelling of the Italian port of Genoa, when we were back in Chatham again, we had ran aground off Spain, lost our ASDIC dome and bent a shaft so were back their for repairs. But we were soon back in the Med again, we then went on operation ‘Substance’ escorting a convoy to Malta we had been attacked by high and low level bombers and managed to keep clear but then we got one that was too close, it blew a massive hole in the starboard side which stopped our engines, we got a tow for part of the way back to Gib, but it was very slow going when we were nearly there the rest of force H passed us on there way back to Gib after delivering the convoy at Malta, all the ships giving us a wave as they went by.

Picture Right:-This photo was taken on Firedrake on one of the convoy Duties, notice we’re in our working clothes, the four standing from left to right first that’s me George Walker, then P.O. Death who also survived the sinking, and then Charlie Maher who went to the Christmas party at the Thorpe’s place in Boston poor Charlie a very nice bloke was lost when Firedrake was sunk in December 42, and Ernie Read who had also been to one of the parties at the Thorpe’s house, he wasn’t on board when Firedrake was sunk he had been transferred to another ship so survived. On the front row kneeling left to right is Jock Christison who was lost, Charlie Ireland who was also lost, and Mack Seddon who survived.

We left Boston in January after having the repairs completed and started work again as leader to B7 escort group working from Londonderry or the UK to Halifax, Nova Scotia or St Johns Newfoundland, Canada or America. On the first convoy from Halifax to Liverpool the ‘Belmont’ another escort destroyer was torpedoed and sunk with the loss of all hands, when me and Charlie Maher were in the railway café back in Derry two girls came over to us and asked if we knew if the ‘Belmont’ had arrived yet because there brother was one board, I just didn’t know what to say so I said I didn’t know, so they went to ask some one else. We did a lot more convoys to Canada and America and we saw a lot of ships go down.

On the 12th December 1942, we set out on another convoy across the Atlantic to Newfoundland we had been at sea for four days and lost a merchant man every night to the U-boats, so we were on our toes, also the weather was bad, it had been getting steadily worse and now had built up to a raging storm.
On the evening of 16th December 1942 me and my mate Charlie Ireland were in our hammocks in the cooks mess trying to get some sleep, we weren’t having much success because of the bad weather, the ship was being throne about. I was Charlie’s assistant he was the leading cook we had, had bad weather for days it was blowing a force 10 so you can imagine what the seas were like, at about 5 in the afternoon the ASDIC operator had picked up a submarine contact and we were still tracking it at 10pm we were about 5 miles south of the convoy when we heard a loud thump that’s all it was not a big explosion just a loud thump I went on deck to see what it was, and noticed a large pointed object floating by, I shouted Charlie to come and see, I said to Charlie what the blinking heck’s that, he said that’s the front of the ship mate, the whole front of the ship had gone including the bridge we had been torpedoed. There was a quick count up to see how many of us were left and then we got on with trying to save what was left of the ship.
Photo left: George Walker today.

We couldn’t contact the other escorts because the radio room had also gone, the stokers were trying to shore up the bulkheads, the torpedoes and depth-charges were made safe and jettisoned a group of us made a sea anchor to try and turn the ship out of the heavy seas, the carley floats were dropped over the side and tied to the rails and the guns crew were firing star shells to attract the attention of the other escorts, at about midnight the corvette HMS Sunflower came over to see what was going on, but because the Firedrake was so low in the water and her silhouette so short the skipper thought it was a U-boat on the surface and fired a shot at us luckily it missed, as they got closer they could see what had happened they tried to get close to take the men off but couldn’t get close enough, because of the bad weather, there were now 60 foot waves crashing over the stricken ship so it was decided that the Sunflower would keep circling till day light hoping the weather would improve.

At 0045 of the 17th the bulkheads collapsed and Firedrake started to go under the engineering officer shouted the order to abandon ship, I jumped over the side and was lucky I landed in a carly float my mate Charlie didn’t he and Jock Christison grabbed hold of a cork mat they were being throne all over the place, there were 11 others with me in the carly float and one in the water hanging on to the side, at this stage we were still tied to the rail of Firedrake but we soon got that untied and made our way to the Sunflower.

On one side they had scramble nets and the other they had a man with a rope tied around his waist dangling over the side, he was grabbing the men in the water then the others would pull him and the man he had hold of onto the ship this mans name was George Furey from Newfoundland he saved many a life that night, but when he tried to get my mate Charlie Ireland on board, he had hold of his life belt which snapped and Charlie fell back into the sea and was never seen again, we in the carly float got as close as we could to the scramble net and waited for a wave to get us as near to the top of the nets then grab hold and climbed abroad, there were 27 of us who got on to the Sunflower but one died later.

We had 10 days to go before we were due to arrive in Argentia Newfoundland so the food rations were getting very short we managed to get some food from one of the tankers but not before Christmas day because all we had for Christmas dinner was biscuits. After arriving in Argentia Newfoundland a couple of days later we had a memorial service for the 168 of the crew who were lost this was held in the cinema and was full of British, American, Canadian Navy personnel and Merchant sea men from all over the world. I did a few more convoys on the corvette Snowflake the sister ship to the Sunflower then got posted to a shore job at Scapa Flow till the end of the war.