ODDS TOO GREAT

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 84, Issue 84, 11 April 1940, Page 7

ODDS TOO GREAT

RAWALPINDI 5 END VIVID FIRST-HAND STORY SMALLER GUNS SILENCED. SYDNEY, March 28. A vivid first-hand account of the naval action in which the auxiliary cruiser Rawalpindi was sunk by two German warships was given this week by two English stewards, Roy Leadbetter and Joe Bridges, who have been invalided out of the British Navy as a result o£ the injuries they suffered in the action, and wlho reached Sydney this week as members of the crew of a British steamer.

Leadbetter lost his brother Jack in the action. Both Leadbetter and Bridges were officers’ stewards on the Rawalpindi. They are sure that it was not the Deutschland which attacked them off Iceland, but the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. They identified the warships, they said, from photographs they had seen in London. Bridges began their account o£ the action as follows: —“It was 3.30 on the afternoon o£ November 23, and I was in the officers’ quarters making a pot of tea. I was waiting to serve afternoon tea to the first of the officers who came in when the alarm bells rang. Leadbetter was in bed, and he tumbled out and joined me. At first we thought that she waS* a British battle-cruiser. We looked at her as she came up at fast speed. Captain Kennedy came down and said that it was the Deutschland.” Bridges and Leadbetter were on ammunition supply to one of the after three-inch anti-aircraft guns, and they went to action stations. “The first salvo from her was fired at a range of 11 miles, and it fell 50 yards short,” said Leadbetter. “We were in for a bad time. We knew it, but we were ready to fight. Soon afterwards a salvo hit the Rawalpindi. I don’t know where it hit, but it gave us a shaking up." Gun Disappeared. It was at this stage that the two stewards had their first narrow escape. Bridges went round the corner of a deck-house to pick up a lifebelt. while Leadbetter was 20 yards away, picking up shells to carry along the deck to the gun. They heard a crash, and. running back to their station, discovered that the three-inch gun had just vanished. Not a trace of it was left. “Our gun had gone, so Bridges and I made our way forward to see how my brother was faring. Shrapnel was spattering about us. We passed one of the six-inch guns, shattered, with the crew stretched out dead around it,” said Leadbetter. “On our way we picked up three lifebelts and handed two of these to men as we hurried along. The third I kept for my brother. We found him in the fo’c’sle, with another man, sheltering from the shrapnel. By then the Rawalpindi was a sorry mess. The first salvo had carried away the bridge, and Captain Kennedy had gone. From the two six-inch guns down aft we heard firing. They were still blazing away as hard as they could at one of the German ships, and she was letting us have it hot and strong. The shooting of the other German was poor. “I gave the lifebelt to my brother and asked him and the other chap to hang on while I got another. It was a case of wait until someone was killed or find a dead man with a belt. At last I got a belt and ran back to the fo’c’sle, but when I got there my brother had gone. I have not seen him since.” The stewards said that the Rawalpindi amidships was now a raging furnace, but the poop and fo’c’s’le were not damaged. Bridges and Leadbetter struggled back towards the poop through flames and choking smoke. Six Killed by Shell. “On our way we saw six men killed by one shell burst," Bridges said. “A stoker was walking about with one arm blown off. He asked for a cigarette and walked round smoking it. Others grabed him and pushed him into one of the lifeboats that tyas being lowered. We saw him in the boat, but before it could reach the water a shell cut the rope falls and down it crashed into the sea. The poor fellow was drowned.” By this time the blazing deck was setting fire to the Rawalpindi’s shells brought up to feed guns that were now silent, and these shells added to the danger of moving around on the deck. The two stewards set to work seizing shells and throwing them into the sea, but as each weighed 1201 b. they could not keep it up for long. Bridges told how he saw a boat hurled into the sea from one of the top decks. It soon became waterlogged right to the gunwale. It was steadily drifting away from the Rawalpindi's side, but he ran down from the poop and dropped over the side. Then he struggled to the boat and climbed in. “I saw it too, and was not going to let it get away," said Leadbetter. “I had a lifebelt on, but could not swim a stroke. I jumped into the sea and somehow covered 100 yards to the side, where Bridges was waiting to haul me aboard.” Lit By Blazing Ship. By then darkness had fallen, but the scend was lighted like daylight by the blazing Rawalpindi. A gale was blowing, and the sea was heavy. The biggest German ship came to within 50 yards of them, but did not lower a boat. They could hear the throb of her engines and saw the crew lining the rails. “Pull alongside,” they heard a German call in English. Before they could comply they saw a signal searchlight on the second German warship flashing. Obviously it was a

warning, for the bigger ship turned away, and both went oft at nigh speed. The Rawalpindi had managed to flash out one message, stating that she was being attacked, and British warships were racing to the scene. At 9.30 a.m. the next day they sighted the auxiliary cruiser Chitral. They signalled with a coat on an oar, but the weather was so bad that it was not until noon that the Chitral reached them. With their feet swollen to twice their normal size and

their bodies almost frozen stiff, they were so weak that they had to be hauled aboard the Chitral by ropes. Their only food had been the hard ship's biscuits in the lifeboat’s emergency rations. These were so hard that several of the survivors with false teeth could not eat them. The younger men chewed up the bisayits and passed the mash over to the older men to swallow.