THE MIEGUNYAH PRESS
This is number sixty-one in the
second numbered series of the
Miegunyah Volumes
made possible by the
Miegunyah Fund
established by bequests
under the wills of
Sir Russell and Lady Grimwade.
Miegunyah was the home of
Mab and Russell Grimwade
from 1911 to 1955.
A MERCIFUL JOURNEYA MERCIFUL JOURNEY
Recollections of a World War II Patrol Boat Man
MARSDEN HORDERN
THE MIEGUNYAH PRESS
An imprint of Melbourne University Publishing Ltd (MUP Ltd)
187 Grattan Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia
www.mup.com.au
First published 2005
Text Marsden Hordern 2005
Illustrations from Marsden Horderns personal collection
Design and typography Melbourne University Publishing
Ltd 2005
This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means or process whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publishers.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Hordern, Marsden C. (Marsden Carr), 1922 .
A merciful journey: recollections of a world war II patrol boat man.
Bibliography.
Includes index.
ISBN 0 522 85165 7.
1. Hordern, Marsden C. (Marsden Carr), 1922Correspondence. 2. World War, 19391945Naval operations, Australian. 3. World War, 19391945Naval operations, AustralianAnecdotes. I. Title.
940.545994
For my mother who kept all my letters
Theres something in a flying horse,
Theres something in a huge balloon;
But through the clouds Ill never float
Until I have a little Boat
Rocking and roaring like a sea;
The noise of dangers in your ears,
And ye have all a thousand fears
Both for my little Boat and me!
PETER BELL
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 1819
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My principal debt is to my mother, Iris Mary Hordern. When I was a child she urged me to keep a diary, and when I left home she insisted that I write every Sunday to let her know how the world was treating me. She kept all my letters and after her death I found them here in a box in the attic. They sharpened and corrected the recollections of many of the incidents recorded in these memoirs.
Commander A. I. Chapman RAN (Retd), my captain in HMAS Abraham Crijnssen in 1942, supplied the details of her unusual commissioning into the RAN and the photograph of her leaving on convoy escort duty. The account of His Majestys Australian Motor Launch 814s operations in 1943 was greatly improved by Chips Wood, her First Lieutenant at that time, who read and commented on the relevant chapters.
Other people helped me too. Captain J. J. Doyle AM, RAN (Retd), a former RAN Hydrographer, prepared the maps, conversion tables and illustrations, and gave many faded and yellowing photographs a restored appearance. Josephine Tait, Archivist of Knox Grammar School, assisted my research for Chapter Two, and the late John Iremonger, sometime publisher of Hale and Iremonger, Melbourne University Press, and Allen and Unwin, tutored and encouraged me to continue.
In 1989 when my friend our family doctor Angus Cottee pronounced that there were two more books in me yet, I was doubtful. That he has been proved right is evidence of his continuing care, and I thank him for that.
I was most fortunate to have the editorial assistance of Clare Coney. The meticulous care she brought to the grooming of the manuscript was equalled only by the tact and tolerance she showed when she pulled me into line.
My special thanks are also due to the late Lieutenant F. O. Monk, my mentor on the second expedition up the Sepik River. In 1945 he led a dangerous patrol through that part of New Guinea, discovered the Indian prisoners held there by the Japanese, and gave me the Japanese generals pass reproduced in this book.
And for the third time I cannot express the thanks I owe to Lesley my wife for typing one of my manuscripts, reducing its bulk, and greatly improving it as she went along.
Rivenhall
Warrawee, NSW
Christmas Day, 2004
PREFACE
Like fingers of doom, the three chimneys of Battersea Power Station leapt out of the fog, flashing under the wing of Piper Cub G-AKAA. Sick with fright, I shoved the throttle forward, eased back on the stick as far as I dared, and climbed into the darkening sky. Now at least we knew where we were, and that was some relief.
Late autumn was known to be a time for fogs in the Thames Valley, but the forecast for 6 November 1949 had been promising, and I had left Elstree Aerodrome with Richard Rumbold on a return flight to Lympne in Kent in clear weather. A former RAF bomber pilot and aviation writer, Richard had flown the Cub on the outward journey while I navigated. We had got lost somewhere over the hopfields of Kent but with good visibility it had been a simple matter to pick out a railway line, follow it to the next station, zoom down to read its nameHeadcorn Junctionand fix our position.
Now we were lost again, but in much more dangerous conditions. We had left Lympne on the return journey late in the afternoon and I was at the controls. I had never flown at night; we had no radio or landing lights and, as we approached the sprawling suburbs of south-east London, the fog rolled in obscuring the ground. In desperation we began dropping lower through the overcast to identify a landmark and this often fatal practice nearly proved so for us when Battersea Power Stations chimneys dramatically revealed themselves.
Still unable to see the ground sufficiently to estimate our drift and correct our course for Elstree, we flew on blindly into the gathering night until Richard tapped me on the shoulder and pointed under the wing to a double line of orange lights. It was an aerodrome and, determined not to miss it, I began to circle the control tower, narrowly missing a Swiss Air Constellation coming in to land. When at last a green Verey light arched into the air, I touched down thankfully on the grass beside the runway of what turned out to be Northolt Airport. I had only learned to fly a Tiger Moth eleven months before and, unfamiliar with a high-wing monoplane, I was tense and nervous.
We had been saved by a miracle, orto use my fathers expressiona journeying mercy. He found them continually in everyday life. Bestowed by a kindly Providence to lighten lifes load, they ranged from discovering a flat tyre while at a service station or finding an electrician in the congregation at Evensong when the power failed, to unexpected deliverance from real dangers and disasters. As a child I had dismissed them as just lucky breaks but now, reviewing my long and happy life, I see many of my escapes from trouble as my father would have seen them.
Most of the incidents mentioned in this book were recorded in diaries, journals, log books, letters and reports. Others, however, not recorded at the time, are told as I remember them, and may be partly fictional for, as T. H. Huxley aptly observed, Autobiographies are essentially works of fiction, whatever biographies may be.
1 | MILK AND HONEY
M y mothers voice quavered on the phone. I dont want you to think, Lesley, she began nervously, that Marsden was named for that
