Cruiser (39 page)

There was one more casualty: Churchill sacked General Wavell. There had been too much bad news, too many reverses, too many defeats in the Middle East, and the army Commander-in-Chief was to take the blame for them. The final straw for Churchill had been Wavell's unwelcome reluctance to embark upon the Syrian campaign. The loss of Greece and Crete, and Rommel's successes in North Africa, were then laid at his door. In a cable of dismissal sugar-coated by lavish Churchillian compliments, the General was packed off to become Commander-in-Chief, India.

It was deeply unfair, for the burden of responsibility for the catastrophe in the Mediterranean theatre lay with the British Prime Minister himself. Wavell, though no military genius, had loyally carried out the orders of his masters in London. His chief failing, perhaps, was that he had no luck – the attribute that Napoleon had once famously demanded of his marshals. The folly of Greece had been Churchill's impulsive brainchild, and so, too, the futile defence of Crete. These decisions had drastically stripped Wavell of the forces in North Africa that could have thrown the Afrikakorps back into the sea. The year 1941 had begun bright with promise in the Middle East, but by July's high summer that promise lay in ruins. And there would be more ruin to come.

Men at arms, those at the sharp end, have little time for grand strategy. They have no say in it, so there is little point in worrying about it. Combat is an intensely personal experience, which can be both exhilarating and terrifying, but the overwhelming desire is simply to get the job done and to be alive at the end of it. In all but the reckless few, bravery is fear surmounted. For sailors, the world beyond the horizon
is far away, almost unheeded except as a potential source of danger. The epicentre of existence is the ship itself.
Perth
's ship's company knew these things instinctively. In their six months in the Mediterranean, they had done everything that had been asked of them and more. Now it was someone else's turn.

On Monday 14 July, they knew for sure they were homeward bound. Alongside in Haifa, Bowyer-Smyth invited his fellow captains of the 7th Cruiser Squadron to a farewell lunch. That afternoon, the crew manned ship, at attention on the upper deck, as the wires were cast off and
Perth
began slowly to gather way, in company with two other cruisers and six destroyers. They passed by HMS
Ajax
, their chummy ship, the other half of the famous Hair-Trigger Twins, and were deeply moved by a rousing British cheer of farewell that rang towards them across the water. The next morning, they were in Alexandria again, entering the boom past a sunken ship showing only her masts and funnels above water.

Now came the moment of suspense. Draft notes had been coming on board, orders that might mean men transferring to other ships that were staying on in the Med. The thought of not going home now, of being left behind after all they had been through, was almost unbearable. And some men found their luck was out. To his great surprise, Brian Sheedy was packed off to Britain to serve in one of the Royal Navy's famous Flower-class corvettes, HMS
Kingcup
, on convoy duty in the Battle of the Atlantic. Returning to Australia afterwards, he stayed in the navy until 1950, when he was discharged with symptoms of ‘mild anxiety'.

Jock Lawrance had no luck either. Returning to the ship from a shopping trip ashore to buy a doll for his daughter Joan, he was met at the top of the gangway by the Master-at-Arms reading out a list of names. His was on it. The navy had posted him to
Vendetta
, one of the Scrap Iron destroyers assigned to the hazardous Tobruk ‘ferry' run.

And another to stay on in the Med was Norm King, the happy stirrer whose less than respectful view of naval discipline
finally tripped him up. An officer with whom he'd been having a private running battle pushed him aside in the narrow passageway outside the engineer's office, and King unwisely gave him a shove back. As chance would have it, the scuffle was seen by Commander Gray, who came around the corner at just the wrong moment, and Norm was put on captain's report for striking an officer. That was serious stuff; it could mean jail. But Bowyer-Smyth took a lenient view. Leading Stoker King was busted back a rate to plain stoker, lost his long-service stripe and was posted forthwith to HMAS
Stuart.
This he took philosophically, for it put him under the command of the by now legendary Hec Waller:

Basil Hayler, who remembered the scent of Princess Marina's perfume at Portsmouth, was also sent to
Stuart
. And some officers left, too. Among them was the Navigator, Lieutenant Gerard Talbot-Smith, who was replaced by another Royal Navy officer, Lieutenant John Harper, who had a fiancée waiting for him in Australia.

So the last few days ticked by. Dockyard hands removed the
Italian Breda guns along with the multiple pom-pom. Someone had scribbled on the side of the pom-pom, ‘Treat her gently, she's worth her weight in Stukas.' On Thursday 17 July came the sight they had longed for.
Hobart
steamed through the swept channel and into the harbour. Each ship hoisted the Australian flag in greeting and an echoing cheer rang out from the men lining
Perth
's sides and upperworks.

The next day was their last in Alexandria. Bowyer-Smyth and his officers welcomed what seemed like half the fleet on board to say their goodbyes – a parade of gold braid that included Admiral Cunningham and that kept Roy Norris and his fellow cooks sweating in the galley. That afternoon, 70 men from the sunken
Waterhen
hurried on board to join them for the trip home, including Surgeon Lieutenant Sam Stening, a 31-year-old doctor from Bondi who had been a promising young Sydney paediatrician before he joined up at the outbreak of war. Finally, at five o'clock, came the order they had all been waiting for:

Voyager
sent them a farewell signal as
Perth
wound her way down the channel. ‘Jerry and Wop will miss you sadly. Give our regards to Number One Buoy.'

They passed the Ras el-Tin light for the last time, the sun setting astern as they headed nor'east around the curving coast of Egypt and then down to Port Said and the entrance to the Suez Canal. There, they picked up a spare Walrus aircraft, which was lashed down on the quarterdeck, and, as Nelson recorded, the Captain addressed the crew:

Creeping slowly through the canal,
Perth
's ship's company had a brief scare when they passed a German acoustic mine, but, by four o'clock on the afternoon of 19 July, Port Suez was disappearing behind them and they were into the Red Sea. The heat there was a furnace blast that made it an effort to breathe, but at last – at long last – they were out of the reach of the Luftwaffe, and the ship settled into a normal cruising routine of three watches. Sleep, precious sleep. Undisturbed. No more the rattle of the alarms, no more tumbling out of hammocks for an Air Raid Red, no more weary nights closed up bleary and dirty and unshaven at action stations. It was almost unreal, but it was bliss, pure bliss.

Their passage took them into Aden at the mouth of the Red Sea, where they encountered the heavy cruiser
Australia
and happily beat her crew at a bruising game of deck hockey. After that, it became almost a pleasure cruise, with long days spent sunbaking on deck until some heavy seas put paid to that for a while. Past Colombo and down into the Indian Ocean, where the weather grew cooler, they began to experience the first stirrings of good old Channel Fever. Why was the ship going so
bloody slowly? How many more days? How much leave would they be granted when they got home?

Bowyer-Smyth eventually answered that last question on 5 August, just one day out of Fremantle. There would be 28 days for each man. It was far more than they had expected, and the announcement was met with something close to delirium. ‘He is a great skipper – the best I have known and no mistake about it,' wrote Roy Norris. ‘He also assured all hands that as far as he was concerned he would do his utmost to see every man stayed on the ship, which was very reassuring [to men] who have been under the sword of Damocles since Alex.'
²⁶

Perth, their civic namesake, welcomed them on Wednesday 6 August. It was James Nelson's 20th birthday:

It was Wal Anderson, the family friend who had taught Jim to play the cornet and talked him into joining the naval reserve. And, even better, there was a bundle of letters from home, most especially from Jean, beautiful Jean, the girl he had farewelled in Sydney as a teenager the previous year. Now he was returning to her as a man. He sent her a quick telegram: ‘Coming home, lots and lots of love, Jim.'

The west held them long enough only for a load of fresh meat, fruit and vegetables to come on board – Aussie tucker at last! – and for a formal photograph to be taken of the entire crew on the upper deck. The Western Australians went ashore to begin their leave, and then it was off again, rolling
through more cold weather in the Great Australian Bight. To the enormous disappointment of the South Australians and Victorians, they bypassed Adelaide and Melbourne, bound directly for Sydney.

At dawn on 12 August, a Tuesday, Sydney Heads rose slowly out of the western horizon. Like a seasoned actress preparing for her grand entrance in Act Two,
Perth
had her make-up and costume to do. Bowyer-Smyth, ever the stickler for proper naval appearances, piped ‘All hands including stokers, cooks and miscellaneous sections to paint ship'. When her first commanding officer, Harold Farncomb, had given the same order in the Atlantic on the approach to New York back in 1939, there had been a sullen grumble of discontent. Not this time. The rust and salt stains and the wounds of war would disappear under a fresh coat of naval grey, done with a will. They owed it to the ship and the good Captain who had brought them safely home, and most of all they owed it to themselves. With the Heads in sight,
Perth
hove to. Jim Nelson recorded the scene:

As they rounded the colonial stone of Fort Denison and turned to port into Farm Cove below the Botanic Gardens, those above decks, from the fo'c'sle to the bridge, could make out a milling group of family and friends waiting for them at Man o'War steps just a stone's throw across the harbour waters. They could see them waving, hear them calling, thought they could
pick out faces in the crowd. But they remained ramrod stiff in their lines until the ship secured to the No. 1 Naval Buoy and Bowyer-Smyth rang, for the final time, ‘finished with engines'.

The pipe ‘Liberty men ashore' had them tumbling over themselves to get into the boats, when, to their puzzlement, the order was suddenly countermanded. After a confused delay of an hour or so, Prime Minister Menzies arrived by launch and came up over the side to deliver a speech of welcome. The crew, in divisions on the quarterdeck, viewed him with sullen fury. Some bastard politician was gasbagging away, keeping them from their loved ones. As Menzies' oratory flowed on, discipline crumbled and there were catcalls of ‘What about liberty?'. Eventually, the Prime Minister took the hint and departed, freeing the men to go.