RECOLLECTION

Franz Wessel 1988

“Saved by a Bogey”

One of the least liked duties of a Petty Officer was taking his turn at being Master-At-Arms. This duty usually lasted a minimum of three months. Now for the benefit of our wives and you Apprentice Seaman aboard our ship the dictionary defines Master-At-Arms as a Petty Officer on a Man-of-War charged with the maintenance of order, discipline with control and authority to enforce Regulations and Orders.

After an arduous voyage from Placentia Bay, New Foundland to Reykjavik, Iceland escorting a convoy, we arrived there on Friday 26 December 1941. Captain Kingsley scheduled a Captain inspection for the next day. It was my duty as Master-At-Arms to insure that the Aft Sleeping Quarters, which was located just forward of the Aft Steering Room, was clean and shipshape. I remember that particular day I was really hard on the fellows who had their bunks in this section, to insure that their bunks were neatly made and their gear stored in the proper location. Some of my shipmates even threatened to deep six me !

We were still swabbing the decks and tidying things up when I heard the Captain and his party in the next compartment. Hurriedly we stored the buckets of swab water, swabs and other material we were using for cleaning in a small storeroom to the aft sleeping compartments. In our hurry the buckets of water turned over and we had water , soap and cleaning material all over the small compartment.

Meanwhile Captain Kingsley inspected our quarters and seemed pleased with the appearance of our sleeping compartment. Then the Captain approached the dogged down door of the compartment where we had dumped our buckets of water and asked what was in this compartment. I believe we were supposed to have some gear stored for the Aft Steering Station there. At any rate, I started un-dogging the door, as any obedient Petty Officer would have done, with thoughts of places I’d rather be when it happened . General Quarters sounded. RADAR had picked up a “Bogey”, which was an unidentified plane. Well, that ended the inspection and saved me from doing a lot of explaining!

I remember another little incident while I was Master-At-Arms, I thought I would hang the swabs , attached by a line , over the side for cleaning. We were steaming at about 10 knots escorting a convoy. Yep, you guessed it. Suddenly we picked up a Sonar contact and as the ship increased speed to investigate the contact, and there went my swabs!