The word ‘torpedoed’ is usually associated with members of the Senior Service, but David Lloyd-Thomas of the Welch Regiment was one of those normally shore-based officers who experienced the terror of being at the receiving end of a submarine-borne missile.
He was trained as a machine-gun officer and, as the only machine-gun battalion in the British Army was stationed in Hong Kong, he expected to be posted there. Hong Kong had been captured by the Japanese in December 1941 though and his posting order was written like a telegram: ‘Port of embarkation – Greenock (Scotland). Destination – Far East’.
When he arrived at the seaport of Glasgow, He had his first sight of the SS ‘Llangibby Castle’, the pride of the old ‘Union Castle’ and where he was due to spend the following two months. She was a fine looking ship but his faith in her collapsed when she failed to sail with the rest of the convoy. Something was wrong in the engine room and it took two days to put it right.
On their first night at sea a howling gale gave passengers a good idea of what lay ahead for them. They were a mixed bunch from all three services but had one thing in common: to do a job in the Far East where the Japanese were devouring our Empire.
He had an eerie feeling in his stomach when he went on deck that first day. Gone was the comforting sight of land and all around were angry waves which he knew concealed German U-Boats. Fortunately, there were two destroyers which zigzagged fore and aft and helped to give him a feeling of security.
The ‘Llangibby Castle’ was an aristocrat of her day. She provided a comfortable billet for her passengers but speed was not her best feature. The two destroyers fussed about her like a pair of Jack Russell terriers urging her to ‘get a move on’ but instead, she sailed on serenely, unmoved by hassle and cajolery.
A few days later the ship caught up with the rest of the convoy. The weather improved and his first sight of the others was tell-tale plumes of smoke from their stacks. Soon he was able to identify individual shapes and passengers waving as the ‘Llangibby Castle’ took its place in the convoy. The two destroyers – their job done, gave a final pass and a few short ‘whoops’ of their sirens before setting off to another station on the perimeter.
About a mile ahead of them was the largest ship in the convoy – the French liner ‘Louis Pasteur’. She had been the pride of the French mercantile fleet before the war but her character had been changed by the application of grey paint, common to all ships that sailed the seas in World War Two. Other ships, all bound on the same course, radiated from the central position to all points of the compass. David felt reasonably confident that he had, by law of average, a good chance of getting to Cape Town - his first haven on the long journey to the Far East.
His feeling of security however was shattered when on the 16th January 1942 a deafening explosion cut short his ablutions.
David clutched his life jacket and raced up to the deck where he had practised lifeboat drills. He gathered that something serious had happened as the ship was losing speed and veering to starboard. A few minutes later a voice on the intercom from the bridge informed the passengers they had been hit in the stern by a torpedo that had blown the rudder off. The ‘voice’ went on to say that there was a large hole in the stern but the bulkhead doors had been closed and that the propellers were still turning. As an afterthought, the ‘voice’ informed them that many of the crew had been killed and injured.
David digested this unpalatable information and wondered what else lay in store for him. He did not have long to wait as two Fokker Wulf Kondors emerged from a bank of cloud. They were the eyes and ears of U-boats and were most probably the ones that had guided the killers to their quarry. David watched, mesmerised, as these huge aircraft, like the sea-eagles after which they were named, closed the distance between them and the ‘Llangibby Castle’. The few light anti-aircraft guns they had aboard pumped shells at them but the ‘great birds’ kept on coming. Their machine-guns opened up and, miraculously, only one of the passengers was hit. Then they dropped their bombs, but they were off target and fell harmlessly into the sea. The Kondors made a few more runs without doing any more damage and then they headed off for France from whence they had come.
Their next visitor, a friend this time, was one of the escorting destroyers whose captain asked what had gone wrong. He was told over the loud hailer that they had no rudder and a big hole in the stern. David and the others were astounded to hear the destroyer Captain reply: “Try and get to the Azores. Goodbye and good luck.” He wondered what had happened to those two nice destroyers that had looked after the ship him from the time she left Greenock to when she joined the convoy - they would not have left us – or would they? He knew that once you are hit by a torpedo, the old adage: ‘survival of the fittest’ takes on a real meaning. As the ‘Llangibby Castle’ lumbered around in a huge circle, David watched the smudges of grey paint and then thin wisps of smoke fade away below the horizon. They were on their own.
It was beyond the knowledge of landlubbers to know how the Captain and the crew managed to keep a course towards the tiny Portuguese sanctuary of the Azores. Throughout the time they struggled against impossible odds, the crew behaved with remarkable confidence. Their optimism was infectious and the passengers even put the possibility of another U-boat attack on the back burner as they willed the ship to keep her nose straight. After three days of painfully slow progress they came in sight of some volcanic out-crop islands that make up the Azores in mid-Atlantic. A huge sigh of relief was given when tug boats nudged them to their moorings in the port of Horta.
The British Consul came aboard and attended to the business of getting the wounded ashore and into hospital. He explained that under the International Neutrality Law they could stay in Horta for only two weeks. The German Consul, with whom he had been good friends before the war, insisted that the rule be observed but he, the British Consul, felt sure the Portuguese would not cast them out. Even though the Portuguese technically remained neutral throughout the war, such a callous act as making the ship put to sea in such a helpless state, was not in their nature. They are not known as ‘our oldest allies’ for nothing. Nevertheless, two weeks later a large Dutch ocean-going tug arrived to tow the ship to Gibraltar.
As David and the other passengers waved goodbye to those who had come to see them off, they were hailed by a British destroyer at the entrance to the harbour. “Good luck,” the Captain shouted through the loudhailer, and told them that the group of people on the foredeck were German survivours of a U-boat that had been waiting outside the harbour. It had been rammed and sunk. “Well, that’s one less,” said David to a shipmate. “Throw the b-----s back in!” he replied.
Even though there were three destroyers to escort the ‘Llangibby Castle’ to Gibraltar, all the terror of the first part of the voyage returned as they crept slowly towards the mouth of the Mediterranean, 1,000 miles away. During those terrifying days they were once again attacked by U-boats. They fired torpedoes but due to the erratic course of their target and the close attention of the escort, they missed. Nerves were at stretching point and two Army officers jumped overboard, never to be seen again.
At last, after six days out from the Azores, the ship arrived at Gibraltar. The familiar shape of the Rock, a bastion against so many sieges and the refuge of so many mariners, was the best sight David had ever seen. He remembers counting the ships in the harbour – there were twenty two, all blowing their sirens in a great musical salute.
It was reported that both Churchill and Hitler were kept informed about the ship’s progress from the Azores. Both looked upon the ‘Llangibby Castle’ as a tool for national morale – to be saved or sunk, depending upon which side you were on.
Two of the passengers were war correspondents from London newspapers. They had not been able to make any contact with their editors while at sea, but had plenty of time to write their stories. As soon as they were able get ashore, they broke news of survival to the rest of the world.
The grand old ship went into dry-dock and spent fifty seven days being patched up before she lumbered back to UK on her own. For the passengers, Gibraltar was only a staging post on the long voyage to the Far East and David still had a long way to go before boarding the ‘Dilwara’ at Cape Town.
Bombay was his destination and it was from there that he travelled overland to Nowsheera in the North West Frontier Province of India to join the 11th Sikh Regiment (a machine-gun battalion). It seemed, at last, that his military skills were about to be fulfilled, but for those who know anything about machine-gun battalions, Burma was hardly the place for effective use of those weapons.
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