iMemories are made of this

John Ellson
I was born on the 8th of January 1924 in the same house I am living in now. My father was called Thomas James and my mother Louisa was born in Buckinghamshire. Dad was born in Ivy Lane. There were thirteen in the family. Dad always worked in the shoe factory whilst mum stayed at home.
Father was severely wounded in the First World War in Belgium and so invalided out in 1917. He then returned to the shoe industry. After the war there were no jobs and so everyone was poor.

I left school at fourteen and worked at the Co-op in the grocery department, I was a grocery lad. I started off at ten shillings full time and part time was five shillings and I worked from eight until six. I was there until I joined up in 1942 I got married in 1945 to Clarice Mary Nutton who came from Kent. I met her whilst returning from service.

I served on H.M.S Vimmy a destroyer that had been used in the First World War and I actually joined up in 1942. I started at seven shillings a week. I volunteered and joined up at Northampton and saw it as just a job. Mum was not very pleased as I was only seventeen at the time and Dad had to give his permission and I joined the navy.
I would say that the good days were when you got convoys safely across. We went to places like Newfoundland, Iceland, America and Canada- it was mostly merchant but we did carry some troops. However the majority of troops came by the Queen Mary.
I served in the Mediterranean for six months and then half of the ship would have leave whilst the other half remained on board to maintain the ship.

D-day was awful, really bad fighting not only the submarines but also awful sea conditions. When we were finished in Europe I went on a cruiser ship called HMS Berwick which had been converted to a troop ship and after the Mediterranean we went to the Suez Canal. On D Day we were told that we were going on the greatest adventure of a lifetime and that some of us may not return and that tomorrow we would be on the beaches…. it was deathly quiet…. he then said that I know you will do your country proud. In the early morning, 4am, and at the end of the middle watch we could not believe our eyes…6000 ships in the channel.

We were going to the beach at Omaha to offer support to the American sector that had been almost wiped out. As they had got onto the cliffs they were picked off and shot down .It was not until the evening that we got a foothold in Omaha beach but by then we were loading the wounded into hospital ships. We then continued to escort and protect but we got damaged in the evening by a lone German aircraft which dropped a radio controlled bomb onto us it didn’t hit us directly but managed to put our engines out of action. We were therefore instructed to make our way back with only one engine, which was most difficult trying to steer .Following repair we came back to Liverpool…dry dock… for two days then we went back to France again. We then went to and fro to France for weeks then onto East Coast Patrols where there was still danger.
We were on Atlantic convoys in Nov 1942 and the relief of Antwerp where we played a big part in Belgium, which needed to be relieved. I worked as a stoker in the engine rooms.
I recall how at the time we were surrounded by two packs and that there were fifteen U Boats in each pack .In a battle in the Atlantic we were always fighting not only the enemy but also the sea with enormous waves. Often you would be thinking that the ship would tip up and sink. We sunk a couple and that was never ever very pleasant. The worse thing was not being able to pick up your own men who were in the water. Sometimes you would have to go right though them ….wicked war. I think now of all the men in both the second and first world wars who lost their lives…. all those graves…. a wicked number of boys. Anyway we started at 6 30 am when the guns opened up trying to protect the chaps who were landing. Of course you were always thinking of your own life and others and as tanks got off the landing craft many just sank and men drowned. In the first half hour there was no one alive to give orders- they had to keep going trying to get close to the cliffs for cover.

Then we went down to Aden across to Ceylon, India, down by Sumatra. The American fleet arrived at Sydney and it took a month to get there. When we got to Australia it took a further week to get to Fremantle then it took a full week full speed to get to Sydney. We then had a lovely two-week break. We had to do some work in the Pacific before bringing a lot of people involved in the war as well as stores and supplies including food for this country and this took another month .We then had another two-week break then we stopped in Ceylon until the Japanese war ended when we came back to this country. I spend some of my spare time during those awful times writing poems on scraps of paper.

John Ellson on left of photo
Charles W. Harris right
Mrs Sturgess I was born in 1925 and had brothers called Alec and