A CALM SEA & A PROSPEROUS VOYAGE
Con Millard, RASC Field Butchery Coy
I came home for de-mob in the later days of 1947; I had gone out in late ’45 with an infantry battalion – a unit of over six hundred but I came home from a small RASC unit so I was ‘one on my own’. After some brief minutes stowing my gear etc. the tannoy system broadcasts various items of information for the journey followed by requests for various jobs to be allocated – clerical, butcher, baker, cook and such – so I joined the queue and joined the butchers for the journey home. It proved to be very profitable. I got paid in kind, a 14lb ham and 5lb mixture of butter, lard and margarine. As I came off the ship at Liverpool on the 19th December one lad spoke to me, “How have you done? You were with the butchers weren’t you? I was with the bakers and they have baked me a Christmas cake!” Obviously we both did very well. A ‘clam sea and a prosperous voyage’.
That might have been so but I wish to relate the day after I arrived home and on the front page of one of the national daily papers we were featured as the last troopship to arrive home in time for Christmas 1947. Some other troopship a couple of so days behind us and still on the Mediterranean was ordered to do a ‘few days of figure eight manoeuvres’ and enjoy a Mediterranean Cruise for Christmas!! If that troopship on the Med Cruise was named I don’t remember the name.
I will always remember the one I
was on, it was one of the Bibby liners, the Staffordshire and I have very fond
memories of working with some members of the crew, the ships butchers. I think
they were all ‘scoucers’, it was a Liverpool ship and they used
to remark of “one of Mr Bibbys coolie boats”. At the time I imagined
the reference to Mr Bibby as someone in the past tense but it is only some recent
time ago when a Mr. Bibby of Liverpool passed away and was revered as a great
and generous benefactor to the youth of Liverpool, a provider of sports and
youth clubs etc. Can I presume that was the Mr Bibby of the famous liners and
troopships like the Lancashire (recently in the Canal Zoners magazine) and,
of course, the Staffordshire.