WAR ADVENTURES

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 38, 25 November 1940, Page 8

WAR ADVENTURES

ABLE-SEAMAN’S RECORD. BOMBS, U-BOAT, AND DUNKIRK. “The last six months have been packed with excitement,” states AbleSeaman S. Bensley, whoi returned to the Merchant Slervice seven months ago after -a; period ashore, in a letter to a New Plymouth friend. “The ship I left New Zealand in started it. About six weeks out fjrom New Zealand we were in convoy in the North Atlantic when our engines broke down. We lay drifting in submarine infested waters for three days, but luckily nothing saw us. We tnen carried on home to England without escort.” But the excitement was not all over. Far from it. Some 200 or 300 miles off the English coast the ship was attacked by a German aeroplane. It dropped six bombs, but fortunately they all missed. That was about 5 o’clock in the morning. At 2 o’clock the same afternoon the vessel was attacked by a German U-boat. Enemy Submarine Sunk. “He opened fire at the same time as we sounded ‘action station,’ but we were mot many seconds behind him,” the letter continues. “His third shot scored a. direct hit on the bow, killing the look-out man and tearing the ship’s side open. But luckily all damage was above the water-line. ‘ ‘We continued to exchange shot for shot for two hours and .then ho dived and tried toi torpedo us, but missed twice. “Thie submarine kept diving and surfacing for the next three hours,” the writer continues. “Our 20th shot scored a direct hit oni his conningtomier and he sank stern first. We reached England the next day.” , Vessel Strikes a Mine. % Able-Seaman Bensley was in England only two days when, there was ,a call for volunteers to evacuate troops from Dunkirk. “I had two days and three nights of living riell on the beach there and would have been there to the end, but my motor-boat was sunk under me and i received a. splinter in my back,” he writes. “I soon got well and was in France when they passed their hand in.”

After about a week’s holiday at his house in Grimsby Able-Seaman. Bensley joined another ship bound for New Zealand, but the ship was sunk by a mine the first day out. No one. was hurt and he landed back in England two days after leaving it. “Two nights later 1 was sleeping in a. sailors’ hotel when a German aeroplane dropped a bomb on the other end of the building and wrecked the darned place,” he states. “But I think I have escaped the war zone for a, while- now, on a good ship heading I don’t know where.”