Well on this occasion, we were all down at Circular Quay Sydney, where we boarded the Queen Mary ready to set off for the Middle East via Puna on the West Coast of India, there the British had setup intensive training camps. Some people don’t know this, but when the Queen Mary arrived, she already had American, British, New Zealand troops and others on board. As the Australian troops boarded there was much crying, hugging and kissing, the emotion was thick in the air. When the Queen Mary left Sydney, she headed south so far that we skirted the Antarctic, when they got to a certain distance, they turn right and headed west, skirting the ice flows, then when the ship got in line with India, they turn right and headed north.
Now I’ll tell you about a few incidents that happened on the Mary, on the different levels of the ship they had canteens, where the men could go and get a grog ration which they did. The rules were simple, don’t misbehave after a few grogs, though that wasn’t always the case, on one particular occasion, while heading north to Puna in one of the canteens there were some Americans and some Pom’s one of the Pom’s had taken umbrage to one of the Yanks, and a fight started, well I’ll tell you what a fight it was, the Americans were outnumbered by the Pom’s, because the Yanks were outnumbered, some of our boys jumped in to even up the score, they all went flat out hammer and tong, until the Provos arrived [military police], they were known as [The Head Crackers], because that is what they did, got it. They trained with a relentless passion, and were always ready for a fight and could handle it in every respect of that word, and then some, they all went into the fight and it ended pretty quickly, they rounded up all the offenders and put them all into the brig, which was down in the bowels of the ship, in a cell with a dingy red light until they all cooled off, after that they were all good, and the best mates of all , black eyes, broken noses, busted lips and assorted sundries and all, about 30 of them. And it only happened once, ok

A Cigar a Scotch and a Ruthless Game of Chess

Now on another occasion, the offices decided to have a chess competition, which is a game I love. Now the art of chess, is to be at least 6 to 8 moves ahead of your opponent, and that’s how I played the game. You see, Chess is a game of mathematics, there were hundreds of men in this Chess Tournament, and it was played by elimination, now near the start of the tournament, I played this gentleman who appeared to have a relaxed style, and came with a good reputation on the chessboard, in the first game he sat back in his chair in a really relaxed mode, he got beaten, in the second game, he moved forward about halfway onto his chair he got beaten, in the third game, he was sitting well forward on the front edge of his chair while I was carving him up on the chessboard, I prevailed three games straight, some of the men who backed him in the game, lost there hard earned money, but more to come about thist opponent further down the line, in Cairo hospital, he didn’t forget his ruthless lesson as you will see. I got into the Grand Final and won the best of five, the boys gave me the gift of the winning Chess Set, I had beaten everyone I played on the ship [The Queen Mary], and I carried that chess set with me right throughout WW2. and would play against anyone who loved a ruthless game of chess.

U-Boat

Now when we got about halfway up and parallel to the Western Australian coastline, the ship got alerts that they had a submarine sighting, straight away on the ship everybody turned into an observer, and those men with exeptional eyesightwere issued with binoculars and started looking for U-boats. This incident being the greatest danger of our journey, the U-boats were one of the greatest dangers of all at sea, because of their stealth and their very accurate torpedoes, so the captain decided to put the old girl into Full Speed Ahead, so he opened up his engines full throttle and that’s how we proceeded the rest of the way to Puna full-bore. Comprendo!

U-boat Statistics

THE GERMAN NAVY commenced World War II with fifty-six submarines, of which only twenty four were suitable for operations in the Atlantic. In the five and a half years of the war, German shipyards built 1,156 U-boats, of which 784 were lost from enemy action or other causes.
Their toll of enemy shipping was 2,603 merchant ships of over 13½ million tons, and 175 naval vessels of all types.
In terms of human lives lost, of the total 40,900 men recruited into the service 28,000 German U-boat crew lost their lives and 5,000 were taken prisoners of war. Some 30,000 men of the allied merchant service died, in addition to an unknown number of Allied naval personnel.
When the war ended, 156 U-boats surrendered, 221 were scuttled by their own crews and two escaped to Argentina.
German U-boats in World War II operated in all oceans of the world and were responsible for sinking enemy ships in areas as far distant as the Dutch East Indies and the Arctic Ocean.