[BillCar]

Part II: 26 Days on HMCS Sudbury, Captain's "D" Draft, and Further Radar Gunnery Training

After Drumheller, I was posted to HMCS Sudbury. This miserable posting was thankfully quite brief. The Sudbury had just come out of refit, and I was drafted in as chief of radar. The captain was Elick McLarnin. He had been a merchant seaman in the Pacific, with a crew of Chinese coolies we were told he abused horribly. He treated us the same way as those poor men.

On one Sunday morning, while we were on workups in the North Atlantic in terrible weather, with waves washing high over the decks, McLarnin called for all crew to muster on the quarterdeck in full rig-of-the-day. I can still picture him as the crew stood there with waves washing up almost to their knees. None of us knew why we were there.

"Our Father who art in Heaven," he began. A seaman behind me shouted "Oh, what in the hell?" Turning around, he glowered at us, standing below bridge. "I'll fix you later," he shouted, before continuing: "hallowed be thy name." He, of course, was up on the pom-pom deck, and perfectly dry. He continued his sermon for over an hour. I, and everyone near me, was given extra watch hours for the rest of that week – a surprisingly light punishment from this particular commander.

Fortunately for me, the Admiralty called for a Captain's D-Draft the following week - an exceptionally rare event. The war was not going as smoothly as one would like, and money was needed for the armed forces. The government desperately needed to raise cash, and the best way they figured to do it was through the sale of Canada Bonds. It was decided that the best way to sell the bonds was to have a figurehead behind which the public could rally, and for this figurehead, they chose a ship. The HMCS Haida was nearing completion at Newcastle, and she was their choice.

Harry G. DeWolf had commanded the destroyer HMCS St. Laurent, but was now the Canadian naval attache in Washington. He was chosen as Haida's captain and, with a Captain's D-Draft, he could handpick his crew. Naturally, the bulk of his selections were permanent force RCN. The only reason I was selected was that naval radar had not really existed before the war, and I happened to have more sea time than any other radar candidates, as well as having received a very good rating from Captain Griffith on Drumheller.

So the Admiralty sent this information to Sudbury, and the signalman came to me and congratulated me. I went down to McLarnin's cabin to get my draft papers. When I got there, I asked him for my transfer, to which he replied that he had just torn it up and thrown it in the rubbish. I left, horribly depressed, and when I was up on deck later, the first lieutenant congratulated me. I told him what had happened, and he simply said "He cannot do that. Get your gear, and get up to Stadacona." I did, and when I looked back, Sudbury was slipping lines and going to join the convoy to Boston. I presume that McLarnin felt that once we were at sea, that was it so far as the idea of me transferring off was concerned.

He probably would have charged me with desertion (and been rather angry with the first lieutenant as well), but instead, when the Sudbury tied up in Boston, the entire crew - officers and men - walked off the ship and refused to return. It must have been a horrible trip. Nothing ever appeared in the navy records, but an officer from the Admiralty came to Boston and McLarnin was declared unfit to command. He was removed from HMCS Sudbury. This was, in fact, a mutiny, but I guess the whole crew was sworn to secrecy. McLarnin was put aboard a supply ship as a navigation officer. For a while, I was afraid that I would be charged with desertion, but nothing ever came of it. I only spent twenty-six days on the Sudbury, and now you know why they were my worst days in the navy.

I arrived at Stadacona without any papers, but as I mentioned earlier, Ray ********** was now working in administration on shore, and he was able to help me out. He told me there was no problem, gave me my leave papers, and told me to see him for the rest. I went to London (Ontario, not England!) for my first leave of the war.

On arriving back at Stadacona barracks, I was given my transfer orders to HMCS Niobe in Greenock, Scotland. My papers stated that I would ship out on the Hecla. This ship had been a cruise ship prewar, based in Australia, and was converted into a troop ship at the beginning of the war. When I boarded her in Halifax, I thought that the Royal Canadian Navy had outdone itself in stupidity. When I went down to breakfast the first morning at sea, I was the only one there. I felt that I must have made a mistake about the time, but the steward told me that I was in fact the only one eating because everyone else was too seasick. So there I was, the only Navy passenger on board a troop ship with five thousand soldiers. I told that story many times over the years until just about sixty years later, in 2002, when I was informed that I was the stupid one for not understanding why the RCN had put me on that ship. I was down by the pool at my condo when another resident by the name of Rosa ******* explained the situation to me.

She had been a WREN stationed at Admiralty House in London, England during the war. She explained that although Canadian navy ships were travelling across the Atlantic in huge numbers at least weekly, they were traveling through particularly dangerous waters, full of U-boats and minefields. Since I was a Captain's D-Draftee, it was determined to be too risky to send me to travel that route, and so I was sent on a troop ship. I am still not quite convinced that that made a whole lot of sense, but I'll defer to her greater knowledge.

At any rate, I arrived in Liverpool, England, and there was no one there to meet me. Fortunately, there was a British naval base nearby, and when I went there and explained the situation, they agreed to arrange for me to get to Greenock by train. They sensibly did not seem surprised that a Canadian sailor would arrive from overseas and have no idea of how to get where he was supposed to be (I assume they would have been surprised had I been a British sailor). So I got on the train with all of my gear and got to Glasgow, where someone was kind enough to direct me to the Greenock train. Arriving in Greenock, I was met by a jeep, and I was taken to HMCS Niobe. At least they were expecting me.

My service records show that I spent a lot of time at Niobe. In fact, except for the five weeks that I spent there later in the war with injuries, I was there for only two or three days at a time while being transferred to and from various places. This time, I was sent to a very secretive and well-guarded old castle north of Glasgow, which was a radar research station. Here I was to learn the operation of the advanced detection radar and gunnery targeting radar. For someone who really knew little about radar (despite it being my specialty!), it was an amazing experience. I was there for a couple of weeks, during which I was never allowed to leave the place. To this day, I am not sure precisely where it was.

I returned to Niobe for a couple of days, and then I was off to Chatham, England, to attend the advanced gunnery school. This place was not such a big secret, and we were allowed some leave. There is little that I remember about the city. At the barracks, there were excellent teachers who taught us all about the advanced artillery, which could be aimed and fired with extreme accuracy. While I was there, all of my shipmates were British, or attached to the British forces. Most of them were sailors on larger ships than I had ever been on at that point, but they were all friendly and helpful.