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Location
At Sea
Age
17 Years

27th October 1940

BEEF

I turned in at 8AM in the morning, fully clothed!

5 minutes later a loud explosion quickly followed by another, brought me out of my bunk and onto the deck. An airplane was just swooping up after a dive attack. Altogether 4 bombs were dropped and two direct hits were scored – one on the commodore, who after transferring its dead and wounded to a destroyer, and taking a doctor off one of the “City” boats taking troops out east, she turned about and made for home. The second one was on a Canadian ship. It blew half her bridge away, but she hadn’t dropped out at dusk! After all this had happened, the destroyers – about 5 of them – opened fire, some with 4’7” guns. Then the ships joined in and was there a racket? The plane circled around the convoy for about two hours, sometimes going off in a westerly direction and then returning. I managed to get my sleep during the afternoon. Everybody has been asked to keep a watch on their A.A guns. She returned in the evening, but did not attack. Somehow there was something almost cheeky about the way the convoy kept going at it’s 9 knots; you read about it in the papers but its different in experience. Even the commodore who was badly hit on the foc’sle, and was smothered in a black pall of smoke, kept going for about 10 minutes.

And so – TILL TOMORROW.