The following is an extract from my uncle’s memoirs of his time serving on the light cruiser HMS Aurora.
Bob Porter served on the ship from 1941 to 1943 and was subsequently transferred to the battleship HMS King George V on board which he serves the remainder of the war.
He had hoped to complete the remainder of his wartime memoirs, including tales of his time on the latter ship, but unfortunately he died in March 2013 at the age of 92, before he could accomplish this.
“I joined the Royal Marines in September 1940 having first volunteered 6 months earlier. After undergoing by basic training at Eastney Barracks in Portsmouth, I was drafted to HMS Aurora in August 1941 My drafting orders required me to report to the ship at Scapa Flow which entailed a 900 mile train journey from Portsmouth Harbour station up to Thurso, and then a ferry crossing to Orkney.
I was accompanied on this journey by Bert Worrall who was more experienced than me and suggested that we could break the journey and wangle a day’s home leave.
We had 48 hours to get to Thurso and he suggested that he would get off at Rugby and visit his family in the Midlands, and I should get off at Crewe and go home to Southport, on the proviso that we both catch the same train the following day.
As agreed I got off at Crewe but without a travel warrant had to rely on a railway porter to get me off the station via the luggage lift.
Having got home and surprised the family with my brief appearance, I managed to get back to Crewe the following day and was anxiously awaiting the arrival of the Scotland train to see if my companion was aboard as we would both have been in trouble if we did not meet up.
Fortunately, as the train pulled in I could see him hanging out of the window to see if I was there.
He was clearly as worried as me that we would not meet up. We were both relieved to see each other and we continued on our way to Thurso without further mishap.
When we eventually arrived at Scapa I was notified that the Aurora was at sea and was not due back for a week or so and I was billeted in HMS Iron Duke to await her arrival.
When she did arrive and I was able to join her, as a member the Marines six inch guns crew. “B” turret, which was the Marines turret on Aurora, which therefore became my “action station” with my “defence station” being on the Bridge as a lookout.
When Aurora left Scapa again, she headed for the Denmark Straits, and after a short period spent patrolling there, then sailed for the Mediterranean, arriving in Malta at the end of October.
There were just two cruisers, us and the Penelope, and we were the senior of the two.
We along with two destroyers Lance and Lively, were the only striking force operating from Malta during the blitz which started in earnest at the end of November 1941.
We would get a message that a convoy had left Italy for North Africa and our job was to intercept.
We always seemed to be called on a Saturday night, and we called it “the club run”.
Our most successful foray in this role occurred on the night of 8th/9th November 1941 when we have left Malta at high speed to intercept an enemy convoy of transports, going from Sicily to Benghazi. At five minutes to one, we sighted the enemy convoy, consisting of 14 ships. There were 10 merchant ships and 4 destroyers. We attacked right away, and we succeeded in sinking 2 of the destroyers in five minutes. We continued firing all of our guns and we fired 2 torpedoes—each of which sunk an enemy ship. We fired 300 rounds of 6inch and numerous rounds of 4inch etc. The battle was very fierce all of the time, and after it had lasted exactly an hour, we had sunk 12 ships in all. I understand that this action is now known as the “battle of the Duisburg convoy”.
Another run I recall was after we were joined by the heavy cruiser HMS Neptune and her more senior captain took charge of the force. We were again told of another German or Italian convoy coming from Italy and we were to leave Malta with Neptune in charge, to intercept it. Unfortunately we missed the convoy and ended up only eight or nine miles off the port of Tripoli. We only then realised that we had strayed into a mine field when we heard over the Tannoy at about two in the morning, that we were in a “tense position”, and ten minutes later we heard a tremendous explosion. Once we realised that it wasn’t us, we heard someone shout that the Neptune had struck a mine and sunk, of a ship’s company of over a thousand men, I later found out that only one man survived.
After that our captain, Captain Agnew, took command of the force again. He addressed us very calmly and told us we were still in the mine field. He sent the destroyer Kandahar which was with us, to pick up any survivors, but five minutes later she too struck a mine. Then there was a further explosion and this time it was our turn. The bows were blown off the ship, but fortunately no one was killed.
We could now only do about nine knots, and we had to get out of the mine field and try and get back to Malta before dawn, as we would have been a sitting duck for the Luftwaffe in daylight. Fortunately we did get back before daybreak but the ship was so badly damaged that it would not put to sea again until the end of March 1942, and she spent the rest of her time Malta in the dry dock.
The six inch guns were generally only used against surface ships, so while Aurora was in dry dock, the six inch ammunition was taken off the ship, leaving only the four inch guns to be manned for use against attacking aircraft. In the event of an air raid therefore, we six inch gun crews were of no use to the ship, and the ruling was that anyone not on duty as a watch keeper, should leave her and go into the underground shelters in the rocks around the harbour. These shelters were only yards from the ship, but my mate Johnny Gay, (a fellow breach worker and “captain of the gun” in “B” turret) and I, wouldn’t go in them. I think that we thought that it was too sissy to do so, so instead, when off duty, we stayed on deck while the blitzes were on and had a grandstand view. You’d see 30 or 40 aircraft at a time coming over diving like birds.
I do remember one particular occasion however, when having heard the call “all men to blitz stations”, and seen everyone, either manning the guns or leaving the ship, I decided to have a little sleep by the turret as it was a nice warm day. Unfortunately our sergeant major was on top of the turret firing at the Stukas with an oerlikon gun. When he noticed me he shouted out “Marine Porter, you get in that shelter, that’s your duty!”, while all the time firing at the enemy planes. I’ve never seen such coolness and went into the shelter feeling very sheepish.
During the time that the ship was laid up I used to go ashore as much as possible. You could get a little bed and breakfast hotel for sixpence a night. One particular night I stayed at a hotel on the seafront at Valetta called “The First and Last”. Up to then the seafront hadn’t been bombed. As far as I can recall I was the only marine ashore from the Aurora that night, and I fell soundly asleep. When I woke up the following morning I found that my hotel and two other buildings were the only ones still standing on the seafront, all the others had been blitzed and were just rubble.
By the end of March 1942 the ship was ready for sea again. We took on heaps of stores, mail, and survivors on board, about 150 of them, so it was apparent that we were going to make a run for it, but where to? At 7pm on the evening of 29th March we left Malta and the Commander then told us we are going to Gib , which meant going at high speed towards Pantellaria, we called it, “Bomb Alley” and we expected trouble there. We eventually reached Gib without too much trouble and on the first of April, Captain Agnew told us that were sailing for Liverpool that night.
What a sight on Easter Sunday 1942 when we sailed up the Mersey and entered Brocklebank Dock for further repairs. The ship was laid up there for three months which was my happiest time of the war. During that time the ship had only a skeleton crew and we had plenty of opportunity for leave. It generally worked out that half the crew would get six weeks leave at time while the other half manned the ship and vice versa. As I only lived up the road in Southport I arranged for two of my shipmates, boy seaman Alex “Ginger” McLeod from Edinburgh, and Marine Jim “Jasper” Willis from Newbury, to stay over at our house at various times and we had some good nights out in Southport. I was also able to arrange for my family and friends to have a tour of the ship while she was in dock.
Aurora finally left Liverpool on 4th July 1942. After short visits to Greenock and Freetown, our next “action” was to take part in Operation Torch, the North African invasion in November 1942.”
