New Zealand Nuclear Test Veterans’ Association
-Operation Grapple
February 10, 2023.
(Introductions)
Shimasaki:
What were you doing at Operation Grapple and what was your experience?
Hamilton:
Well I got a crash draft to the Rotoiti in September. She had gone to Grapple in 1957 and in 1958 she pulled out and they went to an exercise and then she came back. One of the stewards on there took ill, so she pulled into Devonport and took him off. But somebody else had to be on there, so I got a crash draft, a temporary draft, just to finish Rotoiti’s Grapple. I took that fellas place while he stayed in the hospital, he died not long after. He had blood cancer.
Shimasaki:
Leukaemia?
Hamilton:
Leukaemia. He got it from the tests because he was on the beginning of Rotoiti. I wasn;t registered on there because I just got a crash draft. Then the Rotoiti pulled out of the bomb test in ‘57 and we went to Malaya, we got called to Malaya for there. And Pukakai carried on with the rest, she did the rest, she did most of it, Pukaki. And so, that’s what happened to me. I saw on the Rotoiti and I stayed on the Rotoiti for five years. Well see, I did a course when I was at training at Mōtītī Island called, HMS Tamaki, that’s where they trained I think, and we did a shoot there and I went up to this shoot with the 303 Rifle and they gave us six rounds and I hit six bulls. They said, “this is unusual.” And, they said, “well have another six rounds and see what happens.” Another six bulls. So, the Officer said, “Right, you’re going to stay behind, you’re going to do your marksman’s badge,” which I did. I ended up as a marksman in the Navy, as well as being a Steward of course. But, I didn’t do much of that, I was mostly with the rifle and that’s why I ended up on Rotoiti for five years because they had no more marksmen, so whenever they went to the far east they had to have a marksman so I was there going backwards and forwards on that. We went to the far east again, on (inaudible) for two years as a marksman. That’s what I did there. I got transferred to the Royal Marine Command, SBS it’s called, because they wanted a marksman for an Operation they were doing that was run by the Navy, but when you run something by the Navy, the Marines take it over because it’s on land you see. So, I went with them. I must have spent a few months with those people and that was my job there. I was told that if anything happened I had to stay behind because being a marksman that was my job. If we found out where these guys were hiding we weren’t allowed to take him we had to come sneak off to the authorities and tell them where they were, unless we got into trouble- well, we got into trouble, so therefore, the other guys took off and I said, “well, I’ve got to stay behind and see what happens if these guys follow us,” because they didn’t want us to leave, no way. Once we found them, that was it, we were dead. So I stayed behind. When they came, I got quite a few of them then I ran out of people and there was no more coming so I left and carried on with the other guys and gone back to the barracks. And, my shipmate wasn’t back by then so I had to stay with the Marines for a few weeks until the ship came back. And, then I went back onboard and carried on doing landing on spokes all the time, that was my job. That was what I did. I was only a little while at the bomb test though. But, it was enough to catch whatever it was I got.
Shimasaki:
What did you do at the bomb tests? What was your role there?
Hamilton:
My role there was looking after the Officers but we all had to go up on the upper deck when the bomb went off. Of course you had a white thing on and glasses, but you weren’t allowed to look at the bomb. Once it went off, then you turned around and watched it. Then when all that was done you would go through the fallout, still on the upper deck and all that stuff was all radiation coming all over your ship. They wanted to find out what happens to sailors on board a ship when an atomic bomb goes off. We were guinea pigs. So what happens is, they die. Some of them died when they were twenty, most of them died when they were fifty, and they are still dying- with all the cancers. I’ve got skin cancer and now I’ve got something in my blood which I just found out it could be that. Because every week or fortnight I have to get a blood test, they think they see something in it.
Hamilton’s daughter- Chantelle:
Did you want to say something about how they had to scrape the ship?
Hamilton:
Yeah, when we came back we had to scrape the ship down. We were 24 miles away and the heat of the bomb blistered the side of the ship, it was all blistered. So, we came back, we had to scrape that off before we went overseas because you had to have a pretty ship before you go overseas, you’re not allowed to have an ugly thing. We were all down there scraping all this off, some of us took our shirts off, it was hot, and somebody come along with this geiger counter and it was going, “bleep, bleep” and he goes, “Oh, you better put your shirts on because there’s radiation here.” Nobody knew what radiation was. We put our shirts back on. Some of the guys that came onto the ship after the bomb test are dead too because of radiation. That whole ship was covered in radiation. Every so often we would go somewhere and they would check it for radiation, always radiation, going all the time until the day that they took those ships away and scrapped them. Both ships were full of radiation. So, and they were trying to say, oh no, we never got anything. That’s why these guys are here, there are a lot of our mates we’ve lost… There’s always something wrong with them. So it’s pretty bad, even if I was on for a short time, that’s how radiation hits you- you don’t have to be there for a long time to get any, right.
Shimasaki:
Once you came out of the Navy or when you were with the Marines as well, what did you do after your time serving?
Hamilton:
I worked at the railway when I came out of the Navy. I was there two weeks because you weren’t allowed to carry two parcels, little parcels, but of course they had a lot of people on the railway then so each person was allowed to carry one parcel, you weren’t allowed to carry two. I said, “damn this, I was used to the Navy where you carried everything.”
Shimasaki:
Take what you need.
Hamilton:
Yeah, that’s what you do. So, I left there and I went and worked in a hotel and that’s where I met Barbara (his wife)…
Barbara and I couldn’t have any children. Something happened once, didn’t it (to Barbara).
Hamilton (Babara):
Yes, I got pregnant and I didn’t even know it and when I went to my sister’s place to visit her. I went to the toilet and this big clot fell into the toilet… and I didn’t think anything of it because of not having been pregnant before. So, Doctor (inaudible) who was a Doctor that I ended up with later on said to me, “did you ever get pregnant?” And I said, “well, I don’t know because I remember going to the toilet at my sisters and this big clot passed,” and he said, “how big was it?” and I said, “at least the size of a breakfast cup.” “Oh,” he said, “you were pregnant.”
Hamilton:
We lost it.
Hamilton (Babara):
When we realised we couldn’t have any, we adopted Chantelle and Russell.
Hamilton:
So we couldn’t have children, you see, after that. We got the best kids in the world!
Shimasaki:
Oh you do, you got the pick of the bunch!
Hamilton:
I got the pick of the bunch, I tell you.
Hamilton (Babara):
Russell was seventeen days old when we adopted him, and when we adopted Chantelle she was sixteen days old. There’s about twenty months between the two of them.
Hamilton:
One look at Chantelle, Russell took off! We had to give him back [laughs].
Hamilton (Babara):
Took off, he was roaring his head off.
Shimasaki:
So used to being an only child. [all laughing].
Hamilton:
Yeah. But, that’s what happens to us.
I’ve got skin cancer as I’ve said, and I went to a skin specialist, and she was brilliant. She said, “That’s skin cancer you’ve got.” And I said, “yeah.” “Anything that you’ve done?” I said, “I went to the atomic bomb tests.” “Oh, that’s what it is.” I said, “yeah.” So, she wrote to the Veterans Affairs saying that I got skin cancer caused through the war. She didn’t say radiation, she said through the war, so that’s how we got our stuff. But now I’ve got something wrong with my blood. The doctor hasn’t got a clue, neither does anyone else have a clue what it is because when he said I’ve got something in my blood I said, “yeah, I’ve got core parcels in it.” But he says, “no, it’s not that, it’s something else.” Obviously seeing it today [the sign- ‘Dust in our blood’], I’ve got dust in my blood…
I’ve had five strokes. No blood though, dry strokes. But now I’m not allowed to drive or anything because I get mini strokes. I could be sitting there sometimes and it comes back again- that’s a stroke. I am not allowed to drive so Barbara does all the driving and Chantelle does most of it, does the driving for us.
Shimasaki:
Is there anything too from either of your perspectives as the spouse and the daughter that you would like to share?
[omitted].
Hamilton’s daughter- Chantelle:
I think growing up you said [to Barbara] that dad always used to get angry. As a kid, I must have been sheltered from that but that’s obviously the side effects.
Hamilton:
Oh damn, I don’t know how Barbara stood up with that, kept me going…
Hamilton’s daughter- Chantelle:
But yeah, I guess being you know, young, it wasn’t obvious. But obviously it’s medication and that helps control all that sort stuff as well. All those little things that you don’t really even [pauses].
Hamilton:
They sent me to a psychiatrist, and this lady was brilliant. I told her what I had done, what my service was at the bomb test and then being in Malaya behind enemy lines trying to find out where these people were, that was playing on my mind all the time. Even now I have some real bad dreams.
Hamilton’s daughter- Chantelle:
Yeah, and night sweats. Night sweats and I think things like this ANZAC day, even though it’s great and it’s good to be among people, it just brings it all to the surface again. It’s the price you pay.
Hamilton:
See, I’m on what I call ‘happy tablets’ because I’m on them for the rest of my life. Since I’ve been on those I’m good. The moment I go off those, I’m off again. So, I’m on those tablets all the time, I have them every day and I’ve never had a blow up or anything since then, I’m good.
Hamilton (Babara):
You’ve got the dog now.
Hamilton:
Said I needed a dog for a minder, well I got a Corgi, and she’s a minder all right- she’s the boss!
Hamilton’s daughter- Chantelle:
Yeah, that was sort of through the… Was that through Veterans? No, it wasn’t really. It was more of a psychiatrist saying you know, you need a companion dog as such and if he starts having tremors and that in the night, if the dog is there that will help calm.
Hamilton:
If I am having a bit of a nightmare, she comes up to you and pushing down on you, and you look up and there’s two big eyes, and you wake up then, you know there’s something wrong, and she goes back and lays down at the end of the bed to make sure you’re ok again. It’s bloody weird with those dogs.
Hamilton’s daughter- Chantelle:
That’s nearly seventy years. How old were you, eighteen, eighteen when you went in and 83 now?
Hamilton and Barbara:
84 next month on the 13th.
Hamilton’s daughter- Chantelle:
Yeah, so it’s not just a case of serve, come home, forget about it. There’s ongoing you know, not just for these guys, for all military personnel.
Hamilton:
Yeah, you just can’t forget about it.
Hamilton’s daughter- Chantelle:
It’s a big sacrifice to pay.
Hamilton:
They sit here, these guys today. They way they are talking, you see, they always talk to one another and then laugh, it’s always laughing, you know, as we did on the ship. But, in my case, I was the only one on the ship that went behind enemy lines. I had no one to talk to. So, when I come back, not allowed to say anything, it wasn’t until they lifted the state of…
Hamilton (Barbara):
A fifty year ban you weren’t allowed to talk about it.
Hamilton:
Yeah fifty years, sixty years… They lifted the time that you are not allowed to talk and then after that you can. Anyway, I wrote a book.
Shimasaki:
What’s your book called?
Hamilton:
Tich, T-I-C-H; That was my nickname, that’s what it was all about but there was a lot of funny things. The idea of writing that book was trying to get it out of my mind. You know. A lot of funny things come up and of course they all went in the book too. All right. Oh yeah, there’s weird things all right- the day when our ship went on its side, went down the Antarctic, I was on there, and all the ices gets the build up on the ship and it just roll over and then it will all come back again and it’ll roll over, and you’re doing a block thing like that while the planes are flying over to the Antarctic and if one of them crashed we were supposed to help them but we were under the water more than we were on top! The ice builds up and if you happen to be going along and the sea’s going this way and you end up going across that way, of course the sea is going to be against you and it;s going to roll the ship over. Well, when the ice we had one time there, it just got covered and we hit this side, and she went right over on her side and we thought, ‘oh my Christ, it’s like the Titanic.’ We were on it. Everybody was rushing around with ice picks and getting all this ice off and then all of a sudden the old ship comes back again. Old Timmy saying, “Hurry up! Get it off! Get it off, quick!” We had to get it all off. I used to have a thing of, I hated being the Steward, I spent eight years trying to get out of that and I used to sneak up on the Bridge with the binoculars checking everything for icebergs or God knows what but I used to take the kai, it’s like cocoa but thicker than cocoa, it’s real beautiful drink. I used to take that from the Galley up to the Bridge, all right. The only way you can get up to the Bridge, or you can go around the side of the ship but you’d never get up there, but you used to go outside, up a ladder and onto the Bridge. Well the ship was like this [motions one way] and then it was like this [motions the other way] and it’s up, its down, you got you’re kai, and a thing on the top, hanging on and the water’s flying all over you- by the tie you get to the Bridge you’ve just about drowned, you’ve still got the kai and you take it into the navigation little thing that they have up on deck and put the kai down, by that time I’m absolutely drowned. “Have a bit of trouble coming up there?” he says. “Yeah, it’s all this bloody skiing outside the ship, I tried to get this kai up here.” I said, “I’m giving up skiing.” So he said, “I think you better go back down and get changed then come back up here again, cause we need you.” So, I did. But I used to talk to the policeman on board the ship, and I used to say, “It’s really cold up there on that bridge, real cold.” I said, “You couldn’t give me a bit of rum in the kai could you?” So he had a bottle, yeah he put some in there. “Be enough?” Oh a little bit more.” And I would take this up the bridge and I would just get into the chart room, put the kai down, lift the lid, and the officer would be like [sniff noises], “what’s that? What’s that smell?” I said, “Kai.” “It smells better, a bit different.” So I said, well, “it’s a special brew,” and so I gave him a cup. “Where did you get this rum from?” I said, “the master of arms gave it to me sir. You’ll have to see him about it.” He said, “Well tell him to keep on doing it, it’s real good!” And that’s what I used to do, take the kai up on the bridge and then do watch because I hated that job, and being a steward, you know, they all used to sit there and moan about different things, moan about this… I loved the Navy, but the job I was doing I didn’t like. That’s what the book is about, how I tried to get out of it. Well, I ended up on the second trip to the far east, I took to be a stoker in the engine room. I went up there to the Cap’s table and he says, “Well, what are you here for?” I said, “I want to change my branch sir, I want to go be a stoker.” “Well, what’s wrong with the branch you’re in?” I said, “I don’t like it.” He says, “Alright, you can do the stokers job as well as your job, and at first the furnaces, and you have to sit a Boiler’s Ticket.” Everybody didn’t sit the Boiler’s Ticket it’s only when you get to the Chief or so, sit a Boiler Ticket and do an examination, all the time. So, that’s what I was doing. I used to look after the engineer’s office, he had all these books about engines so I used to borrow them, read them, and I got really interested in it. He thought it was great because I learned how to do this and so when I did my exam I had all his books and I passed it. Then, I had to get a Boiler Ticket which nobody does unless you’re a Chief or something, passed that, so I have a Boiler’s Ticket, a qualified engineer, but I’m still a bloody Steward. [All of us laugh]…
Actually I had all that and I was still doing the same job. Then when I finished the Rotoiti got transferred to the Royalist. Well, you’ve got to be a good boy on there, you’re not allowed to do anything different, except watch the rainfall, so we had to be very good. Then the Queen came out to New Zealand on Waitangi Day, that was ‘62, ‘63? Anyway, I got stuck in the Royal Guard. The Queen came past and I was standing there straight as a dye, I was straight and the rest weren’t because I am used to my back straight up and down when I walk, well that was normal, you see. She says, “It’s a pity you’re a little short, I would have had you in the Royal Guard,” and I said, “Yes ma’am.” She was still standing there and then she went past, carried on, and the old Duke of ‘Borough came past and says, “Well done lad!” And I said, “Yep” without saying anything. After that, I got a citation from the Queen. ‘And from now on, you are a Petty Officer’, and I was only a Steward, and then I became a Petty Officer. But the First Lieutenant on there, the Commander, he wasn’t very happy with that, because one of his boys, he was a seamen officer, and his seamen never got that. Well, he wasn’t very happy about that. He says, he’s mumbling to himself and I come past and he’s mumbling away, and look at that I says, “What the hell is he mumbling about?” And all of a sudden you hear him say, “bloody Steward,” and then I thought, ‘oh yeah.’ I got called into the Commander S’ cabin, the Commander Supply of Sea, he says, “You better get into your number ones,” and I says, “oh yeah, why?” He said, “You haven’t heard yet, have you?” “No.” He says, “You’ve got a citation from the Queen. I says, “Well, I was only in the Royal Guard.” He says, “Yes,but you were the best, and that was in my branch.” And I said, “Is that what the First Commander is talking about?” and he says, “Yeah, he’s livid because his seamen didn’t get it and you did.” So that’s what I got but, he wouldn’t let me have the PO Straight, so I wasn’t made an elite man then. I never got my PO Straight until I went to Philemon, that’s after I had been on the Royalist; five years on the Rotoiti, two years on the Royalist, only spent one year in barracks which I didn’t like, and there I got my POs. I got called to the table in Philemon, and the Commander there says, “I believe that you should have been made a Petty Officer.” And, I said, “Well, I got a Queen’s citation,” and he says, “yeah, that’s what it says. So, from now on you’re a Petty Officer, you better go and get a new uniform.” Well I only got the hat because I met up with some Australian and I had a Holden car, and she said, “oh, I can drive those cars!” She couldn’t drive at all; she put it into a telephone pole. Smashed it up, put me in hospital for a month. And I was supposed to come out of the Navy in a week. That’s my last time in the Navy.
Hamilton’s daughter- Chantelle:
Went out with a bang! [We all laugh].
Hamilton:
And I wasn’t on rum!
But that was my life, the most wonderful life you could ever have. Now the girls join the Navy now, they couldn’t join in my days because we used to sleep amongst the pipes with hammocks, well the women couldn’t do that, dare to do that. Today’s navy they have an ensuite, the crew have an ensuite, they have bunks, everything. They go in and get their dinner all dished up to them. In our day, we had to go up the galley to get a thing of dinner and come up/down the ladder and wait for the ship to roll this way, run right down the ladder without losing. I used to be in the pantry and I used to open the door and leave it open you see because when they came down from that thing they couldn’t stop, straight in the pantry. These are the laughs you had in the Navy I tell you. That’s what we did. It was a great life.
Shimasaki:
Is there anything else that you would like to add as well as your amazing Navy life to what we will be sharing on your oral history?
Hamilton:
I’m happy with that!
Shimasaki:
One question I have for you is, what would you like to see coming from your oral history?
Hamilton:
How good the Navy is, join it! Well, they’ve got ladies in there now and they do a beautiful job! You know, like I said, they wouldn’t be no good when we were there because we lived on hammocks and slept amongst the pipes, but like I say, today they got ensuites on those ships and everything’s computerised. We had to do everything by hand, even load the guns, do everything. On the Royalist, I used to go down the magazine, I was made Captain three times; Captain of the Magazine, Captain of the Bofors gun, and what else, I thought I could now long now I’ll be an Admiral soon. We used to load the hoist of the Royalist and we had 5.25 inch guns, the shells were about 100 pound, and we used to load them, and they used to fire eight a minute. That’s quite a lot when a big gun goes off and we had to keep them loaded. One day when we were on patrol off the Indonesian coast on the Royalist, the Army called up and wanted some artillery, well they didn’t have any artillery, only us, and we were just out there so they got ahold of us because they had a gun replacement that they couldn’t get past, machine gun, and they were giving them hell. So, they got hold of us, and a guy sent me the coordinates of where they were, and the coordinates that he sent were spot on because when he sent them to us, we hooked them into the radar because our guns were radar controlled and hooked it in- one blast, ‘boom’ and no machine gun. Then, they carried on, one guy happened to be there and he said, “we were sitting down waiting, you see. Next minute [whoosh sound] over my head.” I said, “Oh, I’m sorry, that was ours!”
That was our hundred pound shell going across your head. They took out the machine gun…
How to be prim and proper on the Royalist because that was the flagship and of course always carried the Admiral’s flag. You had to be nose cleaned and everything, you had to be very good, so everybody had to behave themselves. We couldn’t get up to mischief like we did on the frigates.
We were up the Far East, the Americas were there, we used to go on board this American ship and invite them to come and have a tot because they had a dry ship. They didn’t have rum, we had rum and beer, and they used to come on board and we’d share a bit of rum with them and they’d say, “What would you like?” And we said to them, “you don’t have steak do you?” “Oh, yeah!” They had the best food! A tot for steak. They’d tell us to bring a bag, they called it a rabbit bag, because you’d been shopping and that’s a rabbit bag, you’d go on board, come up load it, and you used to get the steak in thick packets; t-bone steaks, massive steaks, oh it was beautiful meat. And, we used to have to bring it back on board, sneak it on board the ship. We got so much there and we had to put it in our freezer and every so often the Officer Watch, it was the engineer officer or the gunnery officer, we’d say, “the menu is being changed tonight.”
He’d say, “oh yeah, what?”
“Steak!”
“Where did you get that from?”
“Not allowed to say.”
We used to give them steak. They thought it was great, t-bone… We never had that before. Then, when the ship was leaving, the American ship was leaving to go back to America they had all these turkeys. We didn’t get turkey, you got a chicken if you were lucky. Well, they had all these turkeys and before you go you have to throw them over the side, you’re not allowed to take anything back. We had some beautiful big hams- over the side. You couldn’t take them back. So, we did a swap with them. We went and saw their Supply Officer, there’s a guy I knew, a fella Joe, god he was a hard case! Anyway, he said, “well see the Supply Officer. These turkeys, you might as well take them with your ship because you’re going to be here for a while and you are going to be here for Christmas.” So we went, he said, “You’ll need a truck.” So we went down and borrowed a truck from the store’s people on land in the barracks and they said, “Kiwis! What do you fellas want?”
“We want a truck.”
“What for?”
“First Lieutenant has some stuff we’ve got to go and pick up.”
“Oh, alright then, you can borrow it.”
Give us a driver. Right oh Johnny, give it a go, pull up outside this big cruiser there. He says, “what’s the First Lieutenant taking?”
I says, “the ship.”
We went on board, 26 boxes later we come away from the ship; two turkeys in a box and we took it to the ship and we pulled up outside and we went on board to see the Officer of the Watch. “Sir, we’ve got some stuff here and we will have to unload it. Can we get some hands to help us?”
“Oh yeah, right oh,” and he says, “are all these boxes coming off?” and he says, “what’s this?”
I said, “they’re turkeys.” Everybody had turkey, yeah we all had turkey…
St Brides Bay came in the Harbour and something went wrong because it was going too fast, somebody had pressed full astern instead of full afore, well the ship went ‘whoosh’, smack and we went through two [inaudible 42:50] we did, cut them in half; there was nobody living on them. He was in trouble after that. When he did that, we slipped out because we were heading for Borneo and we slipped out to get away from the trouble before we had to go to a court martial or something because we saw it all happen. So we left. But the trouble was we were supposed to store the ship because we had been on patrol for quite a long time and of course getting a bit low, well we took off and we had no stores, we had a lot of biscuits but we had no stores. So, that’s what we lived on for about a fortnight, biscuits. It was the whole ship’s company. So I went to the chef and devised a recipe. I said, “We have plenty of condensed milk, and all that sort of stuff.” I said, “why don’t we get the biscuits, crush them up, mix them, and cook them as a patty.”
He said, “that won’t work.”
I said, “yes it will.”
He says, “who’s going to eat those?”
I said, “everybody, they’ll be good.” Just tell them it’s steak.
He said, “are you going to tell the Officers that this is steak?” [laughs].
So anyway, we divided it, and everybody got stuck in, they thought it was good! Oh yeah, we took them to the crew and put these things on the table and they went, “what are these things?” “What is it?”
He says, “It’s food we’ve made out of biscuits and that, just changed it a little bit.”
I said, “they are nice! We’ve tried them.”
The Chef said, “yeah, he had one, he’s not dead so they’re alright.”
Shimasaki:
That’s a good way to judge it. [All laughing].
Hamilton:
Some of the things that happened on our ship, I tell you.
Hamilton (Babara):
Was it on the Rotoiti you had to shoot this mine that was trapped in the channel?
Hamilton:
Oh yeah, being a marksman, you see, I was on the mine. The fisherman found a mine, the Chinese fisherman found a mine floating in the sea. Well, that’s pretty dangerous because they could hit a ship, would blow up. Even though it was old and come up from the bottom, it was still a mine. So there was all this shooting. Normally when you see a mine we use a Bofor gun and you shoot the mine and it sinks it or blows it up or whatever. The trouble is, we had gone past the mine, didn’t see it, everyone was doing a lookout for it, we couldn’t see it. The water is going up and down and everything like that. We had gone past it and all of a sudden they discovered it was behind us, with a propeller driving the thing it was bringing the mine slowly towards us and next minute you hear all this shooting going out there. I said, “what’s in the water?”
Officer says, “I think you better get out there and get rid of that mine.”
Next minute, “get out of the quarterdeck now!” he says, “for god sake, get rid of that mine, would ya?” The blokes have got holes in it… “For God sake, shoot it!”
I’m looking at it, and it’s going up and down, and the ships going up and down, and I said, “how am I going to do that?”
And he says, “Oh, you’ll get it.”
I said, “You got to hit one of those things sticking up don’t you?” and he says, “yeah, yeah that’s right you have to hit.”
I said, “you’re not going to tell me which one to hit are you?”
He said, “no, any bloody one will do!”
Well I went up and down with the ship, next minute I see it come up in the water, ‘boom’, the next minute, ‘whooo’, third shot, hit it.
Somebody said they had bets how long it would take for me to get it. First shot.
The explosion come up and he fell on his back on the deck because of all the water coming up, and he’s laughing- first time I seen the Jimmy laugh, I tell you that. The Jimmy is the First Lieutenant. I said to him, “shall we lower a boat and get the fish?” Because, we used to do it with the squid, we would have a big bomb like this, and we had the squid tank under for when you were hunting submarines. We used to shoot the squid off every so often to go fishing and then get it and row around and pick all the fish up, and take all the fresh fish. You know, I said to him, “shall we lower a boat and go get the fish.”
He said, “there will be nothing left of the bloody fish!”
So that was another thing, but that’s worse than being a markman, you had to do everything/ anything. When they went fishing in the sea, when they went swimming in the sea with the dolphins, the wild dolphins, you know, swimming in the sea and all the dolphins would be around and I was up on the deck with a bren gun, I wasn’t allowed to get in the water because if a shark came along I would have to shoot it. But the dolphins, no shark comes around when the dolphins are around; the dolphins kill sharks, they bang into them and kill them. So, the dolphins were swimming around with them and I could have been in there too. They sort of had to have a safety thing, so that was my job. I had some good things when I was a marksman, but some really bad.
It was a life, I will never forget it.