For Posterity's Sake         

A Royal Canadian Navy Historical Project

An Interview with George Crewe, Telegraphist, RCN 

Crossing the Bar

 

© Anne Gafiuk 2014

 

Website - What's in a story by Anne Gafiuk

 

George Crewe passed away on March 6, 2014, in Fernie , British Columbia at the age of 90.  He was a kind, gentle soul, with an impish side to him, too.  He wasn’t a tall man and suffered from gout, making his hands gnarled, contributing even more to his elfin appearance.  He never lost his sense of humour, nor his way with words.  He was a consummate storyteller and had the greatest expressions.  I was privileged to record his experiences. ‘My sailor’ is how I started to refer to George E. Crewe to friends and family.

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For the past few years, I have been researching aircrew of the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War Two, as part of a fictional story I plan to write, based on a young pilot from Southern Alberta .  A mutual friend suggested I meet George, as George was with the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) during the Second World War.  To meet him might take me in a totally different direction, but I thought, “Why not?” 

 

I remember the first day I met George.  I brought with me a lemon meringue pie.  One friend commented how my baking was a foot in the door.  It worked with Gordon Jones, ‘my pilot’, and the subject of Wings Over High River.  I hoped it would work with an old tar, too.

 

Once we were settled in at George’s compact senior’s apartment in Jaffray, BC, with a perplexed look on his round face, he said, "You've got me buffaloed, Anne.”  He paused, “You know what that means don't you?"

 

"Yes," I replied. 

"Why don't you go to a museum....the one there in Calgary on Crowchild Trail?  Why come to me?"

 

"No one has your stories, George."

 

He pondered that statement.  “I’ve never been interviewed before,” he told me.  “No magazine or newspaper has ever contacted me.”

At first, George was hesitant but as we started chatting that morning, I could sense him relaxing.  The stories started to ebb then flow. We took a break for lunch, returned to his suite, had the pie, and we continued on until early evening, the tales surging, almost overflowing, until I had to depart.  I visited with George a few more times in the last couple of years, collecting his stories and the following are only a few of the tales from a ‘Terra Firma Tar’.

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George proudly hailed from landlocked Lethbridge , Alberta . At the age of 17, he joined the Royal Canadian Navy and became a Boy Telegraphist.

 

I asked him why he chose the navy over the army and the air force. “When I was about ten years old, I was given the gift of a book called My Picture Book of Sailors. I always attributed that to me joining the navy. I guess the stories and the pictures fascinated me. I still have the book. I wouldn’t part with it for $1,000,000!

“After I joined the navy, in 1940, that is the first time I saw the ocean in Esquimalt .  I was permanent force.  I had to sign on for seven years. There were two groups:  the RCN were permanent.  The RCNVR (Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve), they were the ones that signed on during the war.”

 

He had his opinions about those who did join the air force.   “I think back in the navy, they were very strict, more than in the air force.  As far as I was concerned, the air force personnel were a bunch of wimps.  They had a bed to sleep in every night, and sheets!”  He then laughed, “I wouldn’t admit it if I knew an air force guy!

 

“One of the things and this will shake you to the roots!  We got $15 per month when we were under 18.  But you were not old enough to spend $15.  They saved $10 for us.  When you turned 18, you received your back pay.  So you had $5 per month to spend.  It worked out.  We only got out of barracks once or twice a week, depending upon the watch you were on. When you turned 18, you got $37.50.  I used to send some home to my mother and I would spend the rest.” 

George told me about his training as well as the day to day routines of being in the RCN, including how they had to sleep above the mess tables.  “The first six weeks was basic training, then we went into our classes and that lasted about eight months.”  I learned about clews and hammocks, sailors’ uniforms and their kits.

 

“Friday the 13th, black cats, don’t go under a ladder?  I’ve always believed that,” said George, this time without humour.  “There was a superstition:  you do not place your navy hat upside down and on the bed. Definitely not on the bed!  Our captain:  if we came in on a Friday, he would talk his way out of it.  We would never sail on a Friday.

“You know the canned milk?  If you opened a can upside down, someone would take it and throw it overboard.  It was bad luck.”

 

George kept a talisman.  “I call it my good luck charm.  I got it from an Indian in Lethbridge when I was a kid.  I kept it with me all my navy years.  I think that is what saved my life!  I’ve kept it all these years.”

I was curious about what he meant.  George became sombre when he told me a few harrowing events. “These stories will curl your hair and then straighten it out again!

 

“We were in a storm and I happened to go out on deck.  A depth charge had got loose and there were a couple of guys wrestling with it and I went to help them.  I slipped and broke my collar bone and the depth charged rolled over my toes. They were crushed.  And I broke a tooth and hurt my back.  We were at sea and we didn’t get in for another two or three weeks.  We didn’t have an attendant or medic on board.

 

“Another time, I was aboard The Quinte. We just finished a refit and we were going from Lunenburg to Picton to get some equipment on board.  This was in the end of 1942 and when we left Lunenburg, I was on the radio.  The captain said, ‘I’ve got to send a message.’

“I said, ‘Well that’s fine.’  The message read:  ‘The forecast is for a big storm.  We have not got enough oil if we run into trouble.  Request permission to come into Halifax and oil up’.

 

“They sent the message back. ‘Sorry. You’ve got to keep going.’  We kept going.  We got off Cape Breton Island ...and we ran out of oil. We got pushed up against the rocks.  Punched a hole in.....”  George paused for a minute or so, taking some deep breaths, and apologized, tearfully, before composing himself.  “Anyway, we ran out of oil and luckily, there was another tug and two barges in the same area.  The tug couldn’t control the barges and they got pushed up on the shore, and the tug, too.  When I sent the signal, I tried to raise Halifax .  There is something called the ‘skip distance’.  It has something to do with the atmospherics.  And the only station I contacted – and it might be hard to believe – but it was Simonstown , South Africa !

 

“They picked up my signal and gave me a receipt and they transferred it to Gibraltar, to London to Halifax .  And I had a reply back within half an hour.  The captain and I were the last two to get off!  We stayed with the ship for two or three days and we went back to Halifax by train from St. Peter’s.  When we got back to Halifax , the ship’s company was sent this way and that way and every way.  I never saw anyone afterwards.” 1

 

George was very much a people person.  He met numerous people throughout his wartime years: his crew aboard The Quinte, “my love as far as the ships were concerned,” he said, a US Navy cook from the Southern States while in Boston, a Scottish woman who made him shortbread while George was at Scapa Flow, trading his rum rations for butter, sugar and flour, smuggling them off the ship.  In exchange, George was made to swear he would not tell the recipe to anyone.  He kept that promise until he shared the recipe with his wife, Evelyn, then daughter, Catherine, and granddaughter, Elleda.  Then there was the man in Lunenburg , Nova Scotia , who, after the war, built George a model of the Bluenose, one of George’s prized possessions. “I was very foolish in those days.  There were a lot of people I should have kept in contact with.   Just for that reason...I met so many people and I didn’t – and I’ve been sorry ever since.”

 

He has crossed the bar.  Smooth sailing ahead, George.

 

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Footnotes.

 

1.  The Bangor class minesweeper Quinte (I) entered service early in WWII. Built on Canada ’s west coast and having served on the east coast, she rescued a grounded British Aircraft carrier in the Caribbean and escorted many convoys. Because of a series of unfortunate events, she was accidentally grounded on a rock off Cape Breton and slowly sank on a beach. She was refloated and brought to the St. Peter’s Canal, where she has the dubious distinction to be the only Canadian warship to sink twice in 10 days, since she then rolled on her side and sank for a second time. Quinte was eventually refloated and repaired, and still finished the war as an active warship.

 

 

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