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Serving Ladysmith, Chemainus and area
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
The Learning Commons : P. 13
WWII a job that needed doing Bill Hopkins, outside the Ladysmith Branch of the Royal Canadian Legion, where he shared some memories of his experiences as an able bodied seaman aboard the HMS Eastway, a troop ship that participated in the D-Day landing of June 6, 1944. Craig Spence the chronicle
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In the fall of 1942 Bill Hopkins, age 17, was turned down by a recruiting officer when he tried to enlist. Undeterred, he went for lunch and a pint, returned that afternoon, and was passed through by the same harried recruiting officer. Seventy-three years later, just shy of his 90th birthday, Hopkins cheerfully sat down in the Ladysmith Branch of the Royal Canadian Legion to share his experiences from before, during and after the Second World War with the Chronicle. What emerges is the biographical sketch of a man who never accepted ‘no’ as the final word, and whose stint in the Royal Navy as an able bodied seaman aboard the troop carrier HMS Eastway was a formative chapter in his life’s story. “It was such a good ship,” he said toward the end of our conversation. “I wouldn’t Concerned that loose-lips might alert have had no complaints about going on lord, that established the Allies in Western Europe with a force of six infantry the Germans to the invasion plan, Allied it for another year.” The Eastway - originally dubbed The divisions – 156,000 soldiers plus armored command ordered troop ships like the Eastway to stay at sea. ”They sent us up Battleaxe when she was launched May units. Hitler found himself fighting on three around Scotland because they couldn’t 21, 1943 in Newport News, Virginia – was a Light Service Dock or Dock Landing fronts after D-Day, with the Russians at- allow the sappers to go ashore in case Ship. Her job was to carry soldiers to tacking from the east; Allied forces com- they said something. We had to kill time.” On the rescheduled D-Day the Eastway invasion points, deploy them in landing ing up from the south, through Italy; and craft, then pick up the landing craft after now a new Allied front opened up in the found itself too far up the east coast of west through France. England to reach Juno at its appointed 6 a battle was over. D-Day didn’t come off without a major a.m. time, but a couple of hours later she “We would sit about a mile offshore, or wherever it was calm enough, and then hitch, Hopkins recalled. The HMS East- played her role in the epic battle. “When flood-down and open the gate and they way was assigned to ferry sappers to the Canadians went in, they only opened Juno Beach to secure it and prepare it as up a little small beach to get the troops would just take off,” Hopkins recalled. ‘Flooding-down’ was a process where a conduit for Allied forces pouring into in that were there,” Hopkins recalled. the stern of the Eastway was lowered, Europe. But the forces of nature did not “Then sappers went in, and they cleaned off the rest of Juno and opened up the admitting sea water into a bay so land- cooperate. ing craft carrying troops and equipment, “Because of the bad weather they post- whole front.” poned invasion day. It was supposed to A fellow vet at the Chemainus sawmill could be launched or docked at sea. She joined in the D-Day Juno Beach be on the first of June, but they post- where Hopkins worked for 25 years afinvasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, poned it until the sixth,” Hopkins re- ter emigrating to Canada, used to rib Hopkins about the delayed landing. “You a pivotal battle, named Operation Over- counted.
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were the guys who kept the sappers out, so we had to do all the bloody work,” Hopkins’ co-worker groused. “He gave me a bad time,” Hopkins chuckled. Important as that crowning episode was for Canadian and Allied forces in Europe, it’s the camaraderie of life aboard the HMS Eastway that stands out in Hopkins’ memory. Skipper Wallace Fletcher set the tone. “The skipper was a merchant navy guy, and a real nice guy. He’d walk around the deck and come along and say, ‘Hi Hopkins,’ and I’d say, ‘How you doing sir,’ and he’d say, ‘Oh, just fine’… You couldn’t say that to a blooming RN officer. They’d shoot you.” Like just about all of his crew, Fletcher was not a career navy man. “He owned a butcher shop in Liverpool,” Hopkins recalled. See Vet, Page 3
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