style="font-size:15px;"> “Before the morphine took its effect on me I heard the old man extracting the information we all awaited. The Englishspeaking doctor informed him that the nearest hospital able to provide adequate treatment for our men was ninety miles off in Vizagapatam. There was a small native hospital at Chicacole, fourteen miles away but no surgery was performed there and some of our wounded were in urgent need of surgery. It was seven miles to a mission at the nearest road point. The villagers possessed three ox-carts and were persuaded by the doctor to put them at our disposal; we were to make for the mission at dawn. I woke from my drug-induced sleep in daylight and to the sound of raised voices coming from the village compound. The natives were unwilling to harness their oxen without an extortionate fee for the services. The old man gave them a promise that this would be forthcoming and they reluctantly set to work preparing the carts. We were loaded into the straw-filled primitive conveyances and set off. Swaying from side to side, we bumped over the trackless baked earth, and each time we rolled over a bump we were thrown painfully against one another. The drivers cracked the slow-gaited beasts resoundingly on the rumps while urging the animals on, remaining completely oblivious to the sufferings of their passengers. The painful journey continued for over two hours until we reached the smoother surface of the road.
“The mission was a red metal building and we were welcomed by a Eurasian missionary who also supervised the unloading. We were placed very carefully upon thin straw mattresses on the floor of the little mission schoolroom and fed hot tea and sandwiches by our hosts. In the afternoon fresh transport arrived in the form of a delapidated old bus with open sides. And thus we continued our journey. The driver raced down the bumpy road at breakneck speed with the bus swaying sickenly at each bend. I was hanging on to the back of the seat with my good hand (my left one proved to be fractured) but eventually one turn was too much for me and I landed on the floor with an agonizing thud. This induced the driver to go a little slower and we arrived in Chicacole without further mishap.
“The tiny native hospital boasted a staff of one doctor and two nurses who worked on throughout the night as survivors from other ill-fated vessels continued to arrive. By next day about 200 seamen had been accommodated in the town, many of whom were wounded. The following day we learned that Vizagapaptam had suffered an air raid and that the hospital staff there had been sadly depleted because some native members of the staff had absconded into the countryside. Now our nearest hospital was 200 miles away and too small to handle our numbers.
Stanley Salt recuperated from his wounds for several months at the Presidency General Hospital, Calcutta.
“Fortunately, the District Commissioner arrived the next day and he made the necessary arrangements for our removal to Calcutta. We arrived there on the Saturday, exactly five days after the Sinkiang had plunged to the ocean bed.
“Her Second Engineer was to die a few days later. My own injuries confined me to hospital in Calcutta for seven months and then to an additional five months of medical supervision which included repatriation and convalescence. I returned to sea duty in March 1944 and served until discharged in 1945.”
Editor’s Note: The Japanese Malaya Force under its Commander, Vice Admiral J. Ozawa, was responsible for the havoc created among Allied shipping in the Bay of Bengal in early April, 1942. The Malaya Force was deployed as part of ‘C’ Operation, Naval Operations in the Indian Ocean, March-April 1942 under C-in C Vice Admiral Nobutake Kondo.
A light aircraft carrier, five heavy cruisers, one light cruiser, and four destroyers constituted the Malaya Force. The force was split into three detachments on 5 April, and separated to attack specific targets on or close to the east coast of India.
Of the fifty-five merchant ships ordered to sea during the period 4-7 April, with S.S. Sinkiang among them, twenty were sunk with a total loss of 93,260 tons. Having virtually no protection and without naval escort vessels, the merchantmen were easy prey for the Japanese warships. All were attacked close inshore.
It was 1950 when Stanley Salt wrote this account of his five-day wartime ordeal. Obviously the sequence and details of the Bay of Bengal incident were vividly imprinted in his mind.
The Englishman had trained at Colwyn Bay Wireless College and joined his first ship in August, 1940. “Having always been fascinated by stories of foreign lands and peoples, I had a strong desire to travel.”
In June 1941 he arrived in Montreal to join a large complement of seamen in the Montreal Pool. From this, Merchant Navy crews were chosen to man the new 10,000 ton, 11 knot Liberty Ships as fast as they were completed in U.S. shipyards.
“I had a three month stay and during that time became completely enamoured of Canada, emigrating in 1948 with my charming Welsh wife and our small son.”
For over twenty years Stanley Salt worked in the industrial electronics and parts distributorship field. Following that he was a property agent and appraiser but was forced to retire in 1980 due to ill health. His home is Lindsay, Ontario.
4
Salty Old Salt
Florence Tasker was an English girl working for the NAAFI (Navy, Army and Air Force Institute) at Oxshot, Surrey during WWII. She was to meet her husband-to-be, Harold Tasker in the canteen. He was serving with the 23rd Battery, 5th Medium Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery.
Now Florence’s father was an ex-Royal Navy man and although a keen member of the Home Guard (the British local defence force) he’d never reconciled himself to wearing the khaki uniform.
The family lived near Blindley Heath and dad was in the habit of riding back and forth to work on his pedal bike. One evening he was somewhere between Nutfield and Goldstone on his way home in the blackout when he was hit by a Canadian Army truck. Three soldiers jumped out, assisted him into their truck, took him straight to a doctor and then to his home. They also saw to it that his bike was repaired and returned to him.
Although not seriously hurt, the older man was unable to work for a week or two because of painful bruising. The Canadians visited him at home several times and Florence remembers that her mother was touched by their genuine concern.
On one of their visits the young soldiers were suddenly convulsed with laughter and when it was over they apologized to their accident victim. The cause of their hilarity had been the recollection of his cussing at them when they’d helped him up. Apparently he’d given the army boys a never-to-be-forgotten sample of his old navy vocabulary – prolonged and without repetition!
Florence can still hear her mother’s surprised and gently reproachful “Oh Alf, you didn’t.”
Harold and Florence Tasker live in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.
Uncle Joseph Watson in his Home Guard uniform.
5
To the Far Shore
The son of a deep sea captain, Iver J. Gillen was born in Victoria, British Columbia and moved to Vancouver at an early age. He joined
