Ken Gadsdon
1924–2021
CFVA No. 2500
Ken who was part of a large family, grew up in Greenwich, were his father, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, ran a greengrocers. He attended Wanstead County High School, akin to a grammar school. Sometime after the outbreak of war, the school was evacuated to Malden, partly taking over the girls’ grammar school there, but later the entire school, girls and boys, was evacuated to Gloucestershire. They took over Pauntly Court, the manor house for the medieval estate of Pauntley, which had been acquired by an Anglican religious order in the 1930s to provide shelter, and training in general agricultural work for young male vagrants. Wayfarers continued to call in, unaware the house had been taken over by the school, leading to some interesting encounters as Ken recalled.
Most children at that time finished school once they reached the age of sixteen, with few continuing on to university. Ken returned home at the end of the school year and was sent to the Labour Exchange where he was told to report to the curious sounding Council for Scientific Research and Technical Development, housed in a building near the old BBC off the Strand in London.
This body was later to incorporate the Scientific Advisory Council whose brief was to advise the Government on scientific problems, and keep it appraised of promising new developments that could prove of importance to the war effort.At one extreme the Council received ideas for aiding the war effort from the general public and service personnel alike, whilst at the other controlled a number of specialist panels and sub-committees, that amongst other initiatives investigated the warlike development of atomic fission.
By this time the Germans had commenced their daytime bombing of London, and Ken who was out on the river one Saturday with the local Sea Scouts recalled one of their very earliest attacks on shipping at Barking Creek, near Fords at Dagenham. A gasometer ashore which Ken and his friends had early speculated would likely go up in flames if hit, did just that after being struck by one of the bombers. Ken and his friends found the whole spectacle exciting.
During one night time raid the Council for Scientific Research was also hit, spreading confidential paperwork all down the Strand and along the Thames foreshore, which Ken was dispatched to help pick up the morning after the raid.
It was while working in central London that Ken found his way to the Royal Navy Recruitment Office on the Strand, which he used to go into while on his lunch break. The head of the place was an old Chief Stoker, who took a liking to Ken, but who told him to go away until he was eighteen. Ken, fed up at work, and wishing to join the Navy early, persisted, and managed to find out about the ‘Y’ scheme, an officer training program for ‘clever lads’ with a grammar school education. Ken was a member of the Sea Scouts, a rival organisation to the Sea Cadets, who he described as being more of a civilian outfit than the Sea Cadets, and who ran around in shorts, having something of a Christian element to them. Their base was a three-masted ship, Discovery, moored on the Embankment in London, and its Captain, keen to see their organisation promoted more, encouraged Ken to attend interviews at the Admiralty to become a ‘Commission Worthy’ or CW candidate as it was known.
After passing at interview Ken was to enter General Service first as a sailor. The status of CW candidates within the Navy was kept hidden, with only the officers in charge being made aware, and candidates themselves instructed not to discuss the matter. In reality though many CW candidates were easily identifiable to the rest of a ship’s crew by their accents or general attitude. The spell below decks was intended to serve as an apprenticeship of sorts, with candidates being given extra duties, and their performance monitored by officers as part of an ongoing assessment.
Ken served on HMS Highlander, a H-Class Destroyer, engaged on convoy escort duties. Although in theory one half of the Atlantic was meant to be covered by the United States Navy (USN), and the other the Royal Navy, Ken would sail two-thirds of the way on Highlander, but on one occasion they sailed all the way across to Newfoundland, after the USN escorts failed to turn up on time. At times the escort consisted of just two destroyers with two corvettes, as cover for some fifty ships, and they had to charge around the ocean with a vast space to cover, deploying depth charges, with little chance of actually hitting a submarine. Better techniques came later with a system for convoy escorts developed by Captain Walker.
After a few such trips Ken was called in by a senior officer, and told he had passed the test, and would now be sent to King Alfred, the officer training establishment based in Brighton. Aged just eighteen, and with his parents unable to afford the uniform and wardroom costs, and with some other CW candidates in their thirties, Ken felt it was all happening too soon, and at too young an age. He spoke to one of the senior officers about deferring his candidature, but with other candidates waiting in the wings, was informed this would not be possible. He was initially offered an alternative position as a leading P.E. instructor, but Ken was unhappy at the prospect of a shore based role. Reluctantly, Ken he was driven to seek a return to general service at this point, a decision he later felt was a mistake, and one he came to regret.
Ken had originally aspired to being the skipper of a small vessel such as a trawler, and had not heard of Coastal Forces, but he ended up straight away at St Christopher to undergo training on MTBs. He then found himself posted to the newly commissioned MTB 651, meeting her crew for the first time on picking up the boat at the builders Tough Brothers at Teddington. He spent a few weeks there before ‘sailing down to war’ as he put it, stopping off at Westminster, then on down to Tilbury and round to Milford Haven. This was the collecting point for other boats in his flotilla, the 33rd MTB, later to be the 61st MTB/MGB Flotilla. The boats were bound for the Mediterranean, and initially sailed out across the bay of Biscay with no guns, no depth charges, and the decks including the fo’c’sle fitted with additional fuel tanks. Their guard was a lone trawler, and their instructions were to jump overboard if they were ever to come under attack from enemy aircraft. Although the boats had four engines, they crawled along using just one screw at a time in a crab-like motion, while the crew took turns with the coxswain at the wheel. For some of the crew it was their first time at sea, and Ken found the slow pace of their journey very boring, whilst apprehensive all the while at the possibility of aircraft.
Ken was in the Port of Bari when the air-raid there took place. Unable to make it out to sea because the harbour entrance was blocked by a drifting ship, they instead made to a place of safety within the harbour itself. Although none of the crew were affected by the mustard gas that was released, they had to stand by haplessly while sailors in the water were caught in fires on the surface of the water.
The boat’s Commanding Officer was Lieutenant Kenneth Horlock, who Ken recollected as a stand-offish type who didn’t gel with the crew very well and never communicated anything about where they were going or what they were tasked with doing. Instead the ship’s crew got their information from the Telegraphist who told them things without divulging confidential matters. On one mission from Malta they sailed to Sicily and up the Messina Straits as part of a larger Royal Navy operation to confront the Italian fleet as it attempted to move resources from one side of Sicily to the other. The mission had to be carried out in broad daylight which they did whilst flying the Italian flag. At one point they were circled by six German Fokke Wolfe’s, and later on were fired upon by shore batteries. They made their withdrawal, but on their way out of the Messina Straits were suddenly met by the sight of an Italian submarine which had come to the surface, presumably after completing a patrol. The submarine challenged the Coastal Forces unit, and the two sides then exchanged fire. The only weapon available to the submarine was the Breda gun on its bridge, which managed to hit and wound the coxswain on the bridge of 651, and he slumped forward on to the wheel. Ken had been in attendance on the bridge, and on seeing one of the officers take over the wheel, helped carry the wounded man from the bridge with the aid of other members of the crew, down to the Telegraphist’s office, before returning to his position.
The Dog boats were by this time circling the submarine and a failed attempt was made at torpedoing it. The Flotilla brought its guns to bear on the sub’s rudders and it slowly started to settle at the stern. As it did so, it was also attacked with a depth charge. The submarine sank and the flotilla then withdrew, but now found themselves off course. A while later they were confronted with the sight of what they believed to be two Italian cruisers, being accompanied by E-boats, which they proceeded to charge head on, with 651 launching its second torpedo at one of them, which also missed. The vessels it transpired were the Royal Navy ships, , which were participating in another phase of the operation against the Italian fleet, and radio messages sent to Malta enabled all concerned to be alerted to the fact of friendly fire, and abort all further attack!
At one point they were sent to Korčula, Croatia, which was held at the time by the Partisans. Suspicious of the Royal Navy, the Partisans, who included women in their ranks, placed strict limitations on the crews’ movements ashore, expressly forbidding all forms of fraternisation. The Partisans were renowned for strict discipline within their ranks, with severe punishment handed down to rule breakers, and when one of the boat’s crew known as ‘Neddy’ was caught in the company of one of the female Partisans after offering her a bar of chocolate, the boat’s officers had to utilise all their diplomatic skills to rescue him from the scene.
Ken’s usual position was on the bridge as support for the Coxswain if needed. This area of the boat afforded an element of protection from stray bullets or shrapnel, being armoured and surrounded with padded mats. During one night's patrol, Ken's unit engaged one of the well defended German coastal convoys, the encounter erupting into a ferocious fire-fight which was to prove life changing for Ken.
As the attack got under way the C.O. ordered smoke.The smoke laying apparatus which lay at the stern of the boat was ordinarily the preserve of the stokers, but the bridge could not raise the engine room staff on account of a signalling system failure, and so Ken was sent to perform the task. As he left the bridge to make his way aft he found himself exposed, and it was at this point that he was struck first in the shoulder, and then had his jaw smashed by a second round or ricochet. Ken recalled having previously wondered what it might be like to be hit, and now he knew.
He continued on his way to the stern of the boat, but felt his arm go funny. Searching around for the smoke apparatus, he found he couldn’t get it to work, and was making his way back to the bridge to report when he collapsed near one of forward gun bins.
After the flotilla managed to extricate itself from the firefight, Ken was taken to the Partisans who tended to his wounds initially before the boat managed to get him back to Bari. There he was placed alongside other wounded in the care of an army surgeon whose peacetime practice was in Harley Street. He was marked for medical evacuation and a flight home, which was cancelled several times, before the plan was abandoned after Ken developed a raised temperature. Instead he set sail from Naples one one of two hospital ships —the other ended up being bombed. He was put ashore at Algiers for recuperation, before onward passage to the United Kingdom.
He eventually found himself in a convalescent hospital for the naval personnel in Bristol. Patients of the institution wore blue suits with red ties outside of the hospital, identifying them to the citizenry of Bristol as wounded sailors, and they received assistance and recognition wherever they went, such as being clapped in the cinema when the lights went up. They were invited to organised social events by a group called the Bristol Savages. This was a group of local artists whose meeting place was the Red Lodge in Bristol, today part of Bristol Museums.