A (5:18)

Our next story is from Peter Ivermey. My father, Edward Ivermey, known as Ted, was third mate on BP tankers during the war. Taking thousands of tons of petrol across the Atlantic with submarines was a hazardous pursuit. He wrote down his experiences. I've included one of them below. After the war he joined the Metropolitan Police, retiring as Chief Superintendent. He painted seascapes as a hobby. One of his paintings showed a German submarine being sunk by a destroyer with a convoy in the background. It probably showed his fear and Dislike of German submarines acquired during many days of Atlantic travel. His account reads. On 7th July 1941, I was the third officer on MV British diligence and we left New York loaded with petrol. On 10th July, we arrived at Halifax and the convoy for home left. From there. We were bound for England and we occupied a position in the front row of the convoy which was very unusual for an oil tanker as we were normally placed in the stern. We were positioned on the starboard side of the Commodore, who flew his flag in the elder Dempster ship named Biafra approaching the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. Fog, as usual, closed in and we could only see the water line. There were 60 ships in the convoy and it was planned to make a 72 degree turn to port at 10pm to go up to Bell Island Straits and north of Newfoundland. In view of the very thick fog and darkness, we all expected this plan to be cancelled. The captain was on the bridge with me in anticipation of this. Instead of cancelling the move, though, the old fool, the Commodore, an ex Royal Navy officer dragged back for the war, gave a whistle signal of two blasts at 10pm indicating the turn should go ahead, as no submarines were operating in the area. He could have used the radio, which we all would have heard, but instead, only half the convoy appeared to have heard. The whistle sound is very deceptive in fog. As a result, the 30 odd ships on the starboard side of the convoy who had heard the Commodore's steam whistle signal altered 72 degrees to port whilst the remainder held their course. The result was utter chaos with 15 collisions in the next 30 minutes. The noise of crashing metal thumps, shouts and whistles coming out of the fog was quite frightening. We had to keep an even sharper lookout as visibility was about 40 yards. Suddenly there was a shout from one of our crew and we ran to the starboard wing of the bridge to see the bows of a large ship nudging our counter and we could hear the metal grinding. We increased speed to draw clear. The old captain said, I have had enough of this. We will leave the convoy. And I heartily agreed. There should have been nothing ahead of us as we were in the leading row. So after we had both listened carefully for sounds ahead and heard nothing, we headed straight on to leave the convoy. Almost at once a lookout shouted, ship ahead. And there was the Biafra on our starboard bow. She should have been to port. We were so close I thought a collision was unavoidable as we could not stop the ship. Even though I had put the telegraph to full astern and ordered hard a port. I shall always remember standing on the bridge beside the captain, waiting for the inevitable collision. Many people, some with gold braid round their caps, poured off the bridge and ran along the deck of the Biafra, shouting, go away. We are the Commodore. The captain said quietly to me, commodore, no, Commodore. Take that. And we gripped the bridge rail. As the ships hit, there was a loud crash and we were thrown forward as some 30,000 tons smashed together with a sickening thud. After the collision, we later learned that we had opened up our engine room. We fell back, but within seconds we saw the oil tanker named Comanche rushing towards us on the port side. She too was loaded with petrol. We could take no evasive action as we were stopped and down by the head. We could see lots of activity on the bridge of the Comanche as she swung hard to port. Her bow missed us, but her stern swung round and hit our forecastle. Masses of sparks shot up as the metal grated together, but as neither ship was hulled, no explosion followed. As the ships drove rapidly together, a mass of water built up between them, and just as we touched, a fountain of water shot into the air and splashed all over our deck. After the Comanche hit us, she disappeared into the fog, and almost immediately we heard a tremendous bang. We heard over the radio that several ships were in trouble and had started sending distress signals, breaking the usual radio silence. The Comanche had collided with the Biafra, hitting it directly in the boiler room, right next to a hole we had already caused earlier. Later, the Comanche stayed with the Biafra as it slowly made its way north. I believe the Biafra eventually ran aground on the coast of Nova Scotia to avoid sinking. Meanwhile, our own ship had a large hole in the forepeak, the front section of the ship, and the first mate and the carpenter were up there checking the damage and measuring how much water had come in. It was confirmed that water was rapidly entering the ship and we were going down by the head. The captain said, stand by the boats. I sent a messenger forward to tell the crew it was a great delight to awaken the Scottish second mate some two hours before his watch, as he was always late relieving me. At midnight. When I woke him, he moaned, what's the idea? It's only 10:20pm I told him the ship was sinking and he was to stand by the boats. This shut him up as he leaped from his bunk. I went to my cabin and put my life jacket on in the spur of the moment. I looked around for something vital to snare. It seems ridiculous, but I broke open a drawer. We had to lock things up as the steward had long fingers and pulled out several packets of nylon stockings I'd bought in New York and stuffed them in my life jacket top. They later got soaked with the fog. I went to the bridge and worked out the course and distance to the nearest land I can recall. It was 36 miles northwest to Cape Breton Island. I wrote this out three times and gave it out to the other three boats. I swung my boat in readiness. All the boats were swung out in wartime, but securing ropes had to be released and ladders prepared. After about 30 minutes we discovered we had stopped taking on water and so we stood down. All the time. The sparks could hear various ships in the convoy talking on the radio and about the difficulties they were in. We got under way and headed back to Halifax as our damage would not allow us to cross the Atlantic. It was very peaceful to be out of the convoy. The next morning on the 13th of July, I was on watch and blowing the whistle at 1 minute intervals as we went at half speed through the dense fog. As I stood on the port wing of the bridge, I was suddenly taken aback by a huge cargo ship passing us. Within 30ft she had not been using her whistle and she glided out of the fog and back into it without a sound. It was easy to see people on her bridge and she was flying the Greek flag. It was quite incredible. And had it not been for one or two crew on my ship also having seen it, I could have sworn I dreamt it. Anyway, no collision occurred, but it really was a near miss. In those days we had no radar and the only indication of obstruction ahead was of sound reflected or by hearing other ships whistles. If you heard a whistle ahead, you stopped the engines and waited until you could confirm where the other ship was. We returned to Halifax and anchored in Belvedere Basin. Repairers came out and put a patch over the hole in the forepeak and then filled it with cement. We went ashore and made statements in a solicitor's office relating to the collisions. We heard no more of this, but we all hoped that the Commodore had been forced back into retirement. And that story was from Peter Iverme.

C (13:04)

Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from Ebglis. After an initial dosing phase, about 4 in 10 people taking EBGLIS achieved itch relief and clear, or almost clear skin. At 16 weeks and most of those people maintained skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing.

E (13:22)

EBGLIS Lebricizumab LBKZ, a 250mg per 2ml injection, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema, also called atopic dermatitis, that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. EBGLIS can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to ebglis. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Epglis. Before starting Epglis, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection searching for real relief?

C (13:57)

Ask your doctor about ebglis and visit ebgliss.lilly.com or call 1-800-LilyRx or 1-800- Lowe's.

B (14:07)

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A (14:36)

Now I was looking for fun ways.

D (14:38)

To tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month is back, so I thought it would.

A (14:44)

Be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal, so there goes my big idea for the commercial.

D (14:53)

Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.

C (14:57)

Of $45 for three month plan equivalent to 15 per month required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of networks busy taxes and fees extra.

A (15:03)

Seminal.com.

D (15:17)

Our next story is from Daniel Woodrow. This is a story from a friend's family rather than my own, but I think it's absolutely fascinating and so I'm sharing it with their permission in case it is of interest. It's from Carla Graham, a teaching assistant at the primary school I work at and came to light when we were collecting our own family. World War II stories from children and staff for the recent VE Day celebrations. The story is about Carla's grandfather, Sid Graham A merchant seaman whose father was from Barbados, although he had never been himself. In February 1942, Sid's supply ship, the SS Scottish Star, was sunk by the Italian submarine the RIN Luigi Torelli as it crossed the Atlantic en route from Liverpool to Buenos Aires. Four lifeboats were launched and three were subsequently picked up by HMS Diomede, but CID and 15 other crew members were in the fourth and spent eight days on board as it drifted 600 miles towards, you guessed it, Barbados. This quirk of fate meant that far from falling into hands of the enemy and being subjected to the harsh environment that that would entail, Sid was able to spend the next six months being looked after by his Auntie Dorothy, who he had never actually met before then, until a ship arrived to take him and the other 15 survivors back. A lucky twist of fate. And that story was from Daniel Woodrow.

A (16:40)

The next story is from Andrew Broxham. Being an avid listener of We Have Ways, I thought I'd share some memories of my late father, Rex Poland. Dad was born in 1925 and grew up in Croydon, where he attended WhitGift School. Aged 18, he joined the Royal Air Force. Like so many others, he had ambitions to be a pilot, but unfortunately he wrote off the Tiger Moth trainer on his second solo flight and in his words, the RAF felt my efforts were going to prove too expensive for the public purse. He therefore chose to become an air gunner, having been informed that the RAF were shorter gunners, but without being made aware of the reason why. After training and being commissioned, dad joined 626 Squadron, based at RAF Wickenby in Lincolnshire, flying Lancasters as a rear gunner, having flown a number of operations. But before completing his tour, he was injured by flak towards the end of 1944 and while he was recovering in hospital, his crew flew with a replacement rear gunner. Sadly, the whole crew, including his replacement, were killed when their Lancaster was shot down on 22 February 1945. In the 1990s, my two brothers and I went with dad to the Reichswald Forest War Cemetery in Germany, where his crew were buried. His six comrades are all buried next to one another, but strangely, the seventh crew member, his replacement, Warrant Officer R.S. pyatt, Royal Canadian Air Force, is buried in a different cemetery. I remember dad saying that this was apparently the result of the tail section being recovered at a separate location from the rest of the aircraft. This was the first time dad had visited the cemetery and the emotion of the occasion affected us all. I can't remember Dad's exact words, but as he stood at the six graves, he muttered something along the lines that it should have been him there as well. I always felt that dad had had a sense of guilt at surviving the war when his crew didn't. But I am certain that visiting his crew's final resting place helped him better come to terms with this. Dad passed away in 2015 aged 90, but some years before, he had been asked to give a talk at a local aviation society. I've attached an extract from his talk which describes an operation in 1944 and which I think might be of particular interest. It should be mentioned that Captain Frank Potter, who features at the end of the narrative, was one of Dad's school teachers. Once the bridgehead in Normandy became established and the Allied armies had broken out into France and the Low Countries, the easier targets in support of the invasion forces became a thing of the past. With the onset of winter, Bomber Command's efforts were once again concentrated on German industrial targets known to all as Rohr bashing. Some operations being flown in daylight as we now enjoyed the luxury of daytime long range fighter escorts. On one such daylight, 400 plus Lancasters, including our own squadron, were sent in one early November morning to bomb a large oil refining and storage plant at Vanne Eichel, northwest of Essen. Like all industrial towns in the Ruhr, a happy valley to bomber crews, the target was heavily defended. At 15,000ft the flak came up thick and fast and very accurate on the run into the aiming point. Another Lancaster flying a short distance ahead and below. Bomb doors opened, took a direct hit. Everything disappeared in black smoke and flame as the 12,000 pound bomb load and the half full fuel tanks exploded, too close and too sudden for our pilot to have any chance of avoiding the flying debris. Our starboard outer engine stopped dead, the port inner sounding extremely unwell and trailing smoke. The front of the aircraft was badly battered, judging by the comments coming over the intercom from the mid upper gunner. And a sizable piece was missing from the starboard tailfin, 10ft from where I sat in the rear turret. For a moment I longed for the safety of conjugating Latin verbs in the comparative peace of home. But thanks to our unflappable 21 year old skipper and the competence of our flight engineer, who together got the aircraft flying the right way up again, we sorted ourselves out and managed to bomb more or less on target. At the second attempt, turning for home, flying in somewhat crab like fashion, it became clear that we had little chance of making it back over the North Sea to our base, and that the Sensible choice would be to set course for a friendly airfield on which to put ourselves down as soon as possible. Our navigator, at 38, something of a father figure, found us a recently captured airstrip in Holland which fitted the bill, and a couple of Spitfires, seeing our predicament, detached themselves from the high cover to shepherd us groundwards and prevent interference by a couple of Jerry FW 190s which were nosing around but keeping their distance, our skipper put us down safely with no further damage apart from a burst tire and a somewhat bent undercarriage. Royally lunched by a unit of the reconnaissance regiment on bacon sandwiches and the best hot tea we had ever tasted, we managed to catch a lift on a homeward bound Dakota. Returning to Down Empney in Wiltshire, the crew obligingly put us down at Manston in Kent, where we tried to organise one of our squadron aircraft to fly down and pick us up. This proved a non starter as all Lincolnshire airfields had become fog bound. Our Manston hosts put us up for the night and an extremely bibulous evening ensued. The next morning, a Saturday, with the Lincolnshire fog still clamped hard down, there was nothing for it but to take the good old Southern Railway. Arriving in London at lunch time, we dumped all our kit in a pile under the clock at Victoria Station whilst the skipper and our navigator went to the railway transport officer to arrange transport across London to King's Cross to catch a train to Lincoln. We must have looked a rather scruffy sight short of sleep, unshaven and still wearing our flying kit, when a gaggle of beautiful senior schoolgirls appeared, led by a smart civilian gentleman of military bearing, Captain Frank Potter. My old schoolteacher, no less. He looked a trifle disdainfully, I thought, at this motley collection of variously attired RAF bods. He certainly didn't recognize me. I had grown a rather fine handlebar moustache of which I was immensely proud. The habits of school days die hard. I said, good afternoon, sir, and he looked at me blankly, so I added, it's Poland, sir. He paused to take this in, then said, good heavens, young man, what on earth are you doing here? An impudent answer did briefly cross my mind, but the old school day discipline reasserted itself and I explained. We chatted for only a few moments as our transport was now waiting. We said our goodbyes, Bob our mid upper gunner doing so very reluctantly as he madly fancied the blond haired girl in the party. Frank Potter, a man of few words, gently took my arm and said quietly, you be Careful, young Poland. Good luck. We gathered up our kit. The besotted Bob, in a dreamlike state, picked up his parachute by the D ring instead of the carrying handle, thus pulling the ripcord and decanting the canopy all over the platform. Hoots of laughter from the other crew members, an appalled look on the face of Frank Potter, who seemed to be wondering how the war could possibly be won if the RAF depended on a bunch of semi disciplined, overgrown schoolboys, clearly unaware of which handle to grab on their parachutes. As we went our various ways, I heard him mutter something, shaking his head in disbelief at what he had just witnessed. Not catching his words, I asked Bob what he had said. I'm not sure, said Bob, but I think he said, God help us all. I hope that you find this of interest and would like to take the opportunity to name and remember the crew. Flying Officer D. Roger, pilot. Flying Officer R.W. donner, navigator. Flight Sergeant H.B. king, flight engineer. Flying Officer T.J. o', Neill, bomb aimer. Flight Sergeant C.R. badger, wireless operator. Flight Sergeant R Thompson, Mid Upper Gunner. Pilot Officer Ernest Rexford, Rex Poland, Rear Gunner and later Warrant Officer R.S. pyatt, rear gunner. That story was from Andrew Broxham. Thank you, Andrew.

D (24:50)

Our final story this week is from David Rogerson. David writes, My story involves the tragic bombing of two semi detached houses during the Little or baby blitz in 1944, called Operation Steinbock by the Germans, lasting from January to May 1944. My father, Reginald Rogerson, was born in 1925 and was therefore only 14 when war broke out in 1939. He lived with his parents and younger brother and sister in Kingsbury, north west London. In 1944, aged 17, he was employed as a trainee draftsman at the de Havilland Aircraft Company nearby. He also enrolled with the local Home Guard unit in Kingsbury when he was just 17. Don't tell him, Pike. Whilst at work he noticed a very attractive young blonde girl who also worked at de Havilland. He found out her name was Altama Metcalfe and she was 16 years old. Altama, a lovely and unusual name, was so called because she was the last member of her large family of eight. Dad would cycle home with her after work to Burke and Close and they became very good friends. On the night of Saturday 19 February 1944, a German bomber dropped a single heavy explosive bomb which struck the two semi detached houses at 11 and 12 Birken Close, killing seven members of the Metcalfe family and eight members of the Whitfield family. Only Vera Metcalfe survived as she was working a night shift. Three of the Whitfields also survived. Isabel, Joyce and Joan. The Metcalfes were all buried in the nearby St. Andrew's Church, and the Whitfields were buried in Alperton Cemetery. Dad never forgot Old Tama and used to visit and tidy the Metcalfe and Whitfield's graves for many years. Dad died aged 96 in 2021, and on clearing out his house, I came across photographs of her grave together. A poem written by one of Dad's workmates, expressing Dad's teenage love for Oldtimer, the blonde on the bike. I just wish he'd taken a photograph of her. Well, that's all for this episode. If you've got a family story you'd like to be considered for the show, please email it to we havewaysgoalhanger.com and please label the email Family Stories so we don't miss it. Cheerio.