Peter Foxon on VJ Day

There can be no greater contrast between a quiet life on the riverside in the Deepings and the horrors played out in front of Peter Foxon during the Second World War. His book, Wave to Waves, chronicles the events from the early days of the war, when he was too young to be called up, to his passage back to the UK in 1946 aboard HMS Berwick.

The intervening years are described in chilling detail – the read is almost a cinematic experience! Peter had always had a fascination for the sea and trained to become a Radio Officer in the Merchant Marine. Before he could be appointed to a merchant ship, though, he received his call-up papers and was instructed to report to HMS Royal Arthur at Skegness. The relative luxury of his early days at the camp on the Lincolnshire coast were short-lived!

Fast forward to D-Day when Peter, on board HMS Nith, sailed for France accompanied by thousands of war planes. The ship carried some Army Officers and tank men who disembarked on Gold Beach. Peter recalls ‘Entering the bay shortly after daybreak, our ship was straddled by a stick of bombs dropped by a German plane. The vibrations they caused shook the ship violently. Big plumes of water went up into the air thus marking the shells’ fallen position.’ Later that auspicious day , Peter, taking a break, ‘stood on the upper deck (it was a pleasant sunny afternoon) watching allied tanks ashore firing at targets and seeing spirals of black oily smoke rising at different points along the coastline. Later that day I remember seeing the dead body of an airman float past the ship (kept afloat by the air pockets in his flying gear). At that stage in the invasion no attempt was made to recover the body as it ebbed and flowed with the tide.’ Three days later, Peter managed to get ashore, not sure what to do with his brief spell of freedom on a foreign shore and so soon after D-Day. Most of the traffic was heading for Bayeaux so Peter followed suit, hitching a ride with a jeep. The driver had heard that the vehicles were being fired on by a sniper, not a German soldier but a French woman with a grievance against the Allies. Over the years since the French capitulated, German servicemen had fraternised with the local French women; now their placid existence had been overturned as the Germans had been killed or retreated in haste. Without the necessary credentials Peter had to get off the jeep ahead of an approaching checkpoint and go behind the hedgerows but he was warned to keep close to them as the fields behind had probably been mined. Peter ‘gingerly picked his way through behind the hedges. The jeep driver was as good as his word as, when he regained the road again, at a respectable distance from the checkpoint he was there waiting for him.’

About three weeks after D-Day HMS Nith’s luck ran out. After the war was over Peter found out what really happened on the night of June 23/24th 1944. ‘HMS Nith was attacked by a Mistel (a German prototype drone aircraft) packed with explosives and remotely controlled by a mother aircraft which released the drone from itself at the appropriate time. The Nith was badly damaged and the hull holed in two places causing a considerable list. Eleven of the crew were killed and a fair number seriously injured. My friend Brian and I would have been on duty at periods during the night, so we availed ourselves of forms rather than sleep in our hammocks. We used forms to lie on fully dressed using our respirator cases as pillows. Brian selected a form for himself but I thought it rather stuffy in this spot so I walked a bit further down the corridor. At the moment of the explosion Brian must have died immediately by the nature of his wounds, and if I had been next to him I would have died as well.’

Early in 1943 Peter was drafted onto HMS Richmond, memorable for the ship’s dog named Timo, short for Timoshenko (a well-known Russian General). Timo had his own uniform, a lifejacket and a special tiny tin helmet (bearing the word Timo painted on the front), the strap going under his muzzle. A lively little fellow: sometimes when the waves slapped against the ship’s side, splashing onto the open decks, Timo would protect his territory by yapping at the waves. On one trip the decks had been treated with linseed oil, making it rather slippery, and it wasn’t many days out before the inevitable happened; when Timo attempted to pull up at the ship’s side he continued to slide along straight into the trough, a tiny figure rising and falling in and out of sight on the ocean’s swells. As soon as the Skipper was informed he left the Convoy and back-tracked for about half an hour before someone spotted the little chap weakly paddling in that vast expanse of water. The Skipper broke all the rules by stopping the engines so they could drift up alongside Timo and scoop him from the water. Timo was brought on board, the engines restarted and the ship was back to its position in the Convoy. Timo was squeezed and made to vomit up the water and a little rum was poured down his throat; he slept for the most of the rest of that trip and although recovered he was never so active again.

As VJ Day approached Peter’s theatre of war had moved to the Far East and he found himself on a R Class Destroyer of the East Indies Fleet as a member of Commodore D’s staff.

‘We sailed from Ceylon to Burma on a scouting operation to intercept any Japanese ships making a run for it from Rangoon now that their position there was precarious. The Allied invasion was only days away. During the night, whilst patrolling the Gulf of Martaban, we came upon a Japanese convoy which was attempting to escape to Moulmein, 100 miles away. A night action ensued

and we outgunned the enemy escorts, it was a rather onesided affair in our favour. At the moment of firing our first salvo, a colleague and I were sleeping under one of the forward heavy calibre guns. The effect upon us of the blast caused damage to our ear drums. I suffered from a loud hissing sound for some weeks and to this day I suffer from tinnitus…. I believe our Flotilla sank seven vessels during this engagement… because I could not reach the radio office, I found myself down in the magazine store feeding cordite and shells up a hoist to the gun crews above, nearly choking in the stuffy atmosphere of acrid smoke and fumes from the heavy calibre guns. By this time all the fingers of my right hand had swollen up like sausages and I could hardly move them and later bruising marks appeared.. The next morning we sighted one of the Jap vessels with just its bows sticking out of the water and about half a dozen Japs clinging to it. We slowly moved towards the wreck, intending to send a boat across to take them prisoner but just as our (armed) sailors were about to push off in the whaler, there was a loud bang and the Japs were blown in all directions. They had huddled together over a small bomb or hand grenade evidently preferring to die rather than have the disgrace of being taken prisoner. As we moved up past them one at least was alive and bobbing about in the swell, waving his arm, but we sailed by. It was evident that he wouldn’t last too long in the shark infested waters and he was wounded and many miles from land. It was on that same morning as we turned for our home port that we passed the Allied invasion force heading for Rangoon. We had done our bit but having some ammunition left the Commodore made good use of it. Our little flotilla had to sail past the northern part of one of the Andaman Islands, so each vessel as it went by gave the Jap residents of the islands a broadside from our 4.7” guns, the three destroyers passing the island in line ahead formation. We certainly knocked over a few palm trees if nothing else.’

So this vivid depiction of his war years and the answer to the question ‘Where were you on VJ Day?‘ is a testimony to the sacrifice made by a generation and one young man from Sheffield who has made his home in the Deepings

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