249009 Able.Sea. John Illsley Royal Navy HMS Woolwich My Father, Jack Illsley, was called up in 1941 and following his basic training at HMS Collingwood, Portsmouth was sent to the Med along with 35 or so other ratings known as Mortar draft. All were sent to HMS Canopus (land base) outside Alexandria until used as replacements for ships.
All were desperate to leave HMS Canopus and would have gone anywhere.
I believe only 6 returned to the UK.
The loss rate of sailors in the Med was very heavy. One of his friends was known to have been on HMS Barham. Bill Clark my father's best friend was on HMS Havock and died shortly after repatriation in 1943. Havocks crew had been mis treated by the Vichy French after the ship run aground in 1942. One other man volunteered as a radio operator to serve on a fishing boat which was sunk by a U Boat that surfaced and machine gunned it. Another rating on the ship who was from Huddersfield was murdered along with a wren in Alexandria, both having their pay books and documentation stolen. This was a regular event in Alexandria as the Egyptians would sell the documents to German sources operating in Alexandria.
Jack was a gun layer on P2 gun, that's the second gun on the Port side, one of 4 high angle 4 inch anti aircraft guns aboard Woolwich. The guns trainer was a guy called Johnny Bull who was a regular seaman and trained diver. Jack was also gunners yeoman that involved looking after the small arms and hand grenades etc. Alexandria Port was regularly bombed and Woolwich put a barrage over the floating dry dock most nights, HMS Queen Elizabeth was in the dock having been damaged in late 1941 by Italian frogmen. His first job on arrival at Alexandria was to help re inter some of the bodies of her crew. After this event hand grenades were dropped each night from fast motor boats patrolling the harbour to deter frogmen.
He always considered HMS Medway to be a sister ship to Woolwich although technically they were not. Woolwich was the first custom built depot ship for the Royal navy commissioning in 1935, previous depot ships including Medway (submarine depot ship) and Resource (battle ship depot ship) were I believe converted from other civilian ships.
HMS Woolwich left Alexandria in June 1942 when the Germans were very near to overrunning the port (they were stopped at El Alemain)along with Resource. The Medway could not get her full compliment of crew back aboard in time and missed the tide. She was torpedoed the following day. They went down the Suez canal into the Red sea but returned to Alexandria I think that October. Jack left the ship in 1943 to come back to the UK and Woolwich went up to Trincomalee to join the East Indies fleet. She survived the war and was scrapped in 1962 following a stint in Harwich as flag ship for the reserve fleet.
Many photos on the internet of Woolwich pre war (1937 Spithead review she was the newest ship in the navy) and after the war while at Harwich. Wartime photos of her are rare as there was a photography ban in Alexandria. Woolwich had a dazzle cam scheme of black stripes over light grey base colour during this time.
My Father was from Barnsley and there were two others known to also have been from Barnsley. They were George Partridge tradesman plumber and Kenny Brookes AB.
I would love to hear from anyone who knew my father or who has any photos they would like to share.
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