Mar 1953 - Overseas

19 March 1953   -   We got up at 0330 on Tuesday morning at Bordon and left at 0630.   We were at Waterloo at 0845 and the train from Euston left at 1020.   The train went right down to the quay at Liverpool Docks for us, you see it was an “Empire Halladale Special”, all troops.  

We are on “F” deck.   I know that sounds way down but it isn’t really.   Just three decks down, we are lucky I suppose because we are in the after end of the ship but right up forrard, almost under the end of the prom deck.

Troopship “Empire Halladale”.

Life on this heap is dead easy really.   Up at 0630, breakfast at 0800, clean out the wash house with the help of five others.   Inspection at 1030 and the day is your own.   I don’t know what it was like on your trooper, dad, but here it’s just a question of not tripping over bodies.   (My father was a Royal Navy Lieutenant in world war two and was posted to Ceylon and eventually Singapore at the surrender of the Japanese.)

I’ve just had a look at the noticeboard and it says that we have covered 307 miles, average speed 12.7 knots, the old wreck is pounding along quite serenely though.

Going down the Red Sea, one evening the word got out that there were porpoises around the ship.   A whole group of us gathered right forward on the forecastle, the very front of the ship, and looked down.   All around the bow of the ship, in the bow wave made by the vessel, there was a group of porpoises just gambolling around the stem of the ship.   A brilliant memory, still with me after all these years.