Friday, June 15, 2012

“GO WEST, YOUNG MAN”: Chasing my dad Part 14

[“I do not know the fate of the Silver Walnut but I do know for certain she was not sunk or in the words of my dad, “She did not go to Davy Jones’ locker.” And whenever I attend a naval reunion, talk usually turns to ‘those lucky guys’ who sailed aboard the Walnut and who called her home for three months.” Excerpt from Doug Harrison’s Naval memoirs, Chasing my dad Part 13]

Day 6 of my trip west to Vancouver Island

I have three pages of scribbled notes detailing some of the events of my sixth day away from home. When I wrote them I am not sure, though at supper time feels most likely, because after 11 lines of writing I include a reminder to “Email Michael, from Bard and Banker re Virago”, and I know I had supper at The Bard and Banker restaurant. (Photos confirm it, and I recently placed Michael’s business card atop my messy desk, or somewhere within reach.)

I have 157 photographs, as well, to help me retrace my own footsteps for what turned out to be a very, very busy and rewarding day. As I scanned the photos a few feelings of regret and surprise came to mind; I missed a couple of shots, so I’ll have to go back. I felt feelings of satisfaction too, because I’d jotted a few significant thoughts between bites of my supper and captured special shots in the midst of my busy day.

In my notes I recorded the following:

Old buildings, a deep long dock (Lock?) for building and repair, a brig ‘no one can get in, or out’, an old stone barracks w metal hooks for hammocks embedded in the walls; stellar views

["The Rigging Loft; enter, turn right to a fine workbench"]

Though I didn’t photograph the ‘old stone barracks’, I’m sure it is one historic building my dad would have recalled had he been there. He likely spent a night there, at Naden, as the base was known in the 1940s, before returning to HMCS Star in Hamilton for discharge on September 5, 1945, one day before his 25th birthday.

["The Rigging Loft's handiwork hangs everywhere"]

I’m very happy, however, I took a picture of a cluttered workbench just inside the front door of the Rigging Loft at Esquimalt. 

["This sturdy hawser reminded me of a story"]

It reminds me of the wonderful smells of the place. (When I told Terry Shafer, the boss and former journalist and a man my own age, that there would be some people who would want to work for him just to enjoy the smells of the place, he nodded knowingly.) The photo also focuses upon a thick white hawser (twined rope) and reminds me of a memorable story my dad told in his Naval memoirs. 

He wrote:

On November 11, 1942 the Derwentdale dropped anchor off Arzew in North Africa and different ships were distributed at different intervals along the vast coast. My LCM had the leading officer aboard, another seaman besides me, along with a stoker and Coxswain. At around midnight over the sides went the LCMs, ours with a bulldozer and heavy mesh wire, and about 500 feet from shore we ran aground. When morning came we were still there, as big as life and all alone, while everyone else was working like bees.

There was little or no resistance, only snipers, and I kept behind the bulldozer blade when they opened up at us. We were towed off eventually and landed in another spot, and once the bulldozer was unloaded the shuttle service began. For ‘ship to shore’ service we were loaded with five gallon jerry cans of gasoline. I worked 92 hours straight and I ate nothing except for some grapefruit juice I stole.

Our Coxswain was L/S Jack Dean of Toronto and our officer was Lt. McDonald RNR. After the 92 hours my officer said, “Well done. An excellent job, Harrison. Go to Reina Del Pacifico and rest.” But first the Americans brought in a half track (they found out snipers were in a train station) and shelled the building to the ground level. No more snipers. I then had to climb hand over hand up a large hawser (braided rope) to reach the hand rail of Reina Del Pacifico and here my weakness showed itself. I got to the hand rail completely exhausted and couldn’t let one hand go to grab the rail or I would have fallen forty feet into an LCM bobbing below. I managed to nod my head at a cook in a Petty Officer’s uniform and he hauled me in. My throat was so dry I only managed to say, “Thanks, you saved my life.” (page 25, “DAD, WELL DONE”, Naval memoirs of Doug Harrison, compiled by G. Harrison)

["An employee's boot was bronzed after he retired"] 

I can only imagine how my father would have felt after stepping through the sturdy front door of the Rigging Loft, taking his first deep breath of the rich aromas associated with thick twisted Navy ropes, then spying the thick hawser upon Mr. Shafer’s workbench. Would he have felt grateful? Grateful he’d once had the strength to climb one like it, grateful someone appeared on deck to help him off the rope, and grateful for his time on Vancouver Island in 1944 - 45 (“It was like heaven,” he wrote elsewhere in his memoirs).

["More climbing apparatus. What do you prefer?"]

I felt grateful on the day. When I asked if that was a hawser on his workbench Mr. Shafer said it was, so I didn’t feel like a complete goof. I felt glad to have spotted it and that it connected me - with the strongest of cords - to my father. I felt at home inside the workshop and happy to stick my toe into prohibited territory on a day when the Minister of National Defence was busy shopping for F-35s, so, no Navy brig for me.

["I was in and out in ten seconds flat! But I can't tell
you what I saw. M-I-L-I-T-A-R-Y S-E-C-R-E-T-S]

And the day only seemed to get better.

More to follow. (I told you it was a busy day!)

[Photos by G.Harrison]

***

Please click here to read “GO WEST, YOUNG MAN”: Chasing my dad Part 13

No comments: