low, and this one was his fourth prison camp that he had been in, with some having been far worse, he would quietly sit it out to the end!
Amongst the Geordie crews was a Norwegian boatswain “Lugs Larsen”, named because he had enormous elephantine ears. He would tell me that when he was a small boy and had done something naughty, his Father would reach for a large chopping knife, which he would hand to him with an order to go into the woods and return with a birch branch . He would then have to bend over and be given 6 swipes with it, and finally an extra one for what he had not yet been caught doing, so he could remain in credit! One day after I had bothered him, he grabbed hold of me over his knee, and gave me one whack on my bottom with his broad leather belt “That did not hurt ”, I said as I rose up smarting. So he grabbed me and gave me another one . “That didn’t hurt either ” I said again, barely able to hold back my tears as I was so sore, so I got a third whack and cried and did not answer back the third time. He was a very kind and gentle man and a great friend of mine and I bore him no ill will but instead the greatest respect for his firm action. .
There was one small red haired seaman Sid Powell who was fairly bald and constantly wore a woollen knitted hat, who was a man of few words who spoke little and only enjoyed playing cribbage with his mates. However prior to coming to our camp he had already been torpedoed and picked up four times in the North Sea and the North Atlantic before he went down for yet a fifth time on the Kirkpool and had somehow survived. During the terrible shelling of the Kirkpool as the crew had congregated forehead, he quietly and without any fuss got out the first aid kit and was busy patching up and bandaging victims as they lay shell shocked during the action, some with their entrails all hanging out across the deck. The unsung sheer heroism of these ordinary merchant seamen who would lay their neck on the line every time their ship left port during the Battle of the Atlantic, under the freezing cold conditions and the expectation of almost certain death should they be torpedoed, was an inspiration to everyone that knew them. They all looked after us boys as though we were their very own sons or brothers. Never once, in spite of been severely warned by Mother, did I ever have any sort of homosexual approach by any member of these working class lads from Tyneside, who throughout the two years that I was in their company , acted always like perfect gentlemen and who nurtured us both in sickness and health and helped us grow with supplements from their meagre rations! David Millar Chief Officer of the Kirkpool, who used to give me lessons in maths, too had been sunk previously off the North East Coast at night in mid winter, and was lucky to survive a second time as his letter to Mother included at the end of this chapter, graphically illustrates. He was a tremendous character, a real leader, and an inspiration for everyone with his quiet level-headedness and philosophical approach. He greatly admired Mother, who was very similar and would regularly write to cheer her up when she was depressed and in the blues. Another man with a tremendous spirit who always saw the funny side of life was the Kirkpool’s radio operator Malcolm Scott. A radio operator in those days would sit earphones on listening and transmitting messages in Morse Code….dots & dashes. They were so fluent and conversant that they could hear the messages and write down the text instantly as though it were the spoken word. He would always have a funny story to tell, always had a chuckle on his lips and excelled at writing doggerel rhymes often nicely and amusingly illustrated. He was an inspiration to us all and we were fortunate to have such a man with us to cheer everyone up.
One of the key occupations on the men’s side was in following the progress of the war each day. We had no newspapers at all as the Tokyo English Editions never came our