TheRecord.com - CanadaWorld - Local: Merchant sailor witnessed world at war Grateful Russians have given Leslie Forrest a medal for what he did for them 65 years ago. In 1942, Forrest helped deliver war supplies to our desperate Soviet allies. He was just 15 when he joined an Arctic Ocean convoy. The convoy came under enemy attack. Forrest watched in horror as Nazi bombers blew a British freighter out of the ocean. Stunned and frightened, he wondered: Would he die next? Three years later, he watched in awe as U.S. warplanes filled the sky over Tokyo Bay. At 18, he witnessed the Japanese surrender that ended the Second World War. In between, he hauled troops on the Mediterranean and ferried wheat in the North Atlantic. He carried high-octane fuel into the Pacific, learned to swim in the Suez Canal, and danced with Hollywood star Bette Davis in New York. Forrest, now 80, did all this despite being too young to fight. He was not too young to serve in the British Merchant Navy, which saw more than 30,000 killed in the war. In November, Forrest beamed with pride as Russian Prime Minister, Viktor Zubkov, visiting Canada, pinned a medal on his chest to honour the courage he displayed as a boy at war. Cheers of "bravo" and "well done" filled the Senate foyer on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, where the ceremony was held. It was an emotional moment for the Waterloo senior. "I got that feeling, at long last, here was somebody recognizing you, for what you had done," Forrest says. The sea battle of May 27, 1942, burns in his memory. Forrest, 15, was aboard the freighter Empire Selwyn, among 36 ships on an Allied convoy heading for Russia. It was his second sea voyage. Suddenly, about 100 Nazi aircraft screamed in to attack. There was a thunderous drone from above. "All hell broke loose," he says. Three dive-bombers targeted the Empire Lawrence, sailing to port. Forrest watched a string of bombs fall onto the doomed ship. "You heard an explosion and she just disappeared," he recalls. "The ocean just swallowed the whole ship up. . . . That was a frightening thing." German surveillance aircraft, based in occupied Norway, had been circling the convoy since its departure, six days earlier from Iceland. Forrest could hear them overhead. The day before, a German submarine sank an American freighter. "We knew it wasn't going to be a happy trip," Forrest says. The Empire Selwyn was carrying tanks, ammunition, food and clothes, supplies that were badly needed by the Soviets. They had been invaded 11 months earlier by the Nazis and were still losing ground. Forrest was a mess room boy. His job was to look after officers, change their sheets, serve them food and tea, keep the mess room clean. He was not trained to fight and had no weapon. But he was at sea. Growing up in Scotland, this was what he had always wanted to do. At 14, he quit school to hang around the Edinburgh docks and plead for jobs. His mother was dead, and he was estranged from his father. "I was fascinated by ships," he says. The Germans pressed their attack, dodging fire from warships guarding the convoy. The Selwyn, unarmed and without armour, steamed past survivors splashing in the ocean. Forrest heard them cry for help. But his ship could not stop. Stopping would have made them a better target. "We could do nothing," he says. "We were on a zigzag course." Nazi airplanes sank five Allied ships that day. A sixth ship, badly damaged, sank the next day. With a total of seven ships destroyed, the enemy sent almost 20 per cent of convoy PQ 16 to the bottom of the ocean. "I was pretty well shook up," Forrest recalls. Most of the remaining ships sailed into Murmansk on May 30, where Russian women unloaded the freighters. Most Russian men were away at war. "It was just one dead town," Forrest recalls. There were no restaurants. There was no food on the shelves, nowhere to have a coffee. It was a bleak, miserable place. Forrest was often put in harm's way during the war. Once, he stood on the deck of a cruise ship off Iceland, waving at a lone aircraft. His ship, converted into a troop carrier, was ferrying servicemen to Britain. He was a galley boy. Their warship escort misidentified the airplane as friendly. Suddenly, it attacked, raking the troop ship with machine guns. "The bullets were flying everywhere," Forrest says. "We just threw ourselves on the deck and screamed like crazy." The enemy airplane dropped a massive bomb on to the troop ship. It splintered a dozen staterooms, but miraculously failed to explode. A big fright came just after the Japanese surrender in September 1945, off the coast of China. Forrest, 18, had worked his way up to assistant cook aboard the Wave King, hauling fuel to aircraft carriers fighting the Pacific war. When the Japanese signed their surrender, his ship was in Tokyo Bay to witness the ceremony. Forrest was most struck by the U.S. flypast, just weeks after two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. "The sky was black with the might of the American air force," he says. "It just blew you away when you saw it." Returning to Hong Kong, the Wave King broke its driveshaft and began to drift. A typhoon struck, blowing the helpless ship towards the rocks. The captain sent out an SOS. A tugboat arrived but was too small to tow them away. The winds howled. The crashing waves rose. Desperate crew began to lose hope as their ship was pushed toward the rocks. One man knelt in the galley, praying and crossing himself. That's when a battleship showed up to tow them away to safety. It was the HMCS Ontario. "They saved us from certain death," Forrest says. "I owe Canada my life." Forrest sailed in three of four oceans, on five different ships, between 1942 and 1945. The summer of 1943 found him in the Mediterranean. He was 16 years old, a cabin boy on the Empire Glory, ferrying Allied troops from Egypt to Italy for the fighting there. In 1944, he visited New York, taking in Coney Island and visiting several music halls. He saw Frank Sinatra sing, and took a spin around a dance floor with actress Bette Davis, who was cheering up troops at a nightclub. He was 17, a trim young man with an exotic accent. A splendid 1942 Christmas in New Brunswick is happily recalled. Forrest, 15, was ill in hospital while his freighter, hauling wheat, was stuck in Saint John harbour for repairs. That's when a local family stole him away from his sick bed. He had been to their house before, invited for a meal. The Canadian family took a shine to the Scottish teen. They laid him out on a couch, and he joined them for Christmas. "It was just one of the best Christmases I had ever had," he says. "That's why Canada was one of my favourite countries." After the war, he wrote his New Brunswick friends to announce his marriage to Muriel. She was a stranger to them, the sister of a Wave King shipmate. In the mail, they sent her a spectacular wedding dress and veil, finer than anything she could have found in Britain. "I was ecstatic," Muriel recalls. "It fit perfectly." Warm memories of Canada helped persuade the couple to immigrate in 1964. They will celebrate 60 years of marriage this year. In Canada, Forrest pursued a career in sales. His Scottish accent and friendly demeanour left a strong impression with customers. Looking back, he is amazed by his luck and grateful he was too young to be scarred by the war that raged around him. It seemed there was always another adventure looming, to distract him from the uglier parts. "We were at an age where nothing really bothered us," Forrest says. "Everything was exciting."
A very good read, Andy, and thanks for posting it. Spidge has already echoed my thoughts. EMPIRE LAWRENCE official number 168919 built in 1941 for the Ministry of War Transport (MoWT) was bombed and sunk by German aircraft on May 27th, 1942, off the North Cape on a voyage from Reykjavik to Murmansk. The captain, 11 crew and three gunners were lost. The ship that Forrest sailed on ss EMPIRE SELWYN official number 168924 built in 1941 for the Ministry of War Transport (MoWT) survived that trip but was sunk in 1942. She had been transferred to the Belgian Government and renamed BELGIAN SOLDIER. On 3 Aug, 1942, whilst in convoy ON-115 she was attacked and damaged by U-553 (Thurmann). BELGIAN SOLDIER (Master H. Sanglier) then fell out of the convoy and was sunk by a coup de grâce from U-607 (Mengersen) on 4 August. 21 men were lost. He also served on ss EMPIRE GLORY official number 123107 built in 1943 also for (MoWT). This ship survived the war eventually wrecked north of Madras in 1963. Regards Hugh
It always made me so angry that these men were in the thick of dangerous activity all the time and when they were sunk, their pay stopped. Finally corrected, however one of the travesties of the war.
Looking forward to remembering them "officially" on my first (knowledge of) Merchant Navy Day this September.
MN Day 3rd September Hi Andy, Well I hope come September the new Aussie government will have it officially in place. Australia and New Zealand are still plugging away at getting 3 September on the official calendar. I am led to believe that this is one election pledge of your newly elected Labor government. Now they are in power, will this drift of the scene or not....many people will be reminding them, I am sure. Regards Hugh
