Shrewsbury naval veteran looks back at wartime peril

Grandfather-of-seven Alan Wellington, from Meole Brace, in Shrewsbury, was just 17 when he joined the merchant navy in 1943.

He participated in many key parts of the war, being present at the Battle of the Atlantic and D-Day, as well as visiting the North African and Italian campaigns.

He fired on German submarines, survived bombing raids and even helped secretly transport a group of pregnant Wrens from Suez back to the UK.

Mr Wellington said he had been working for Rolls-Royce in Shrewsbury when he signed up, initially to the Home Guard and then joining the merchant navy – despite never having been to sea before.

After three months basic training, he travelled to New York and then on to Montreal and then by train to Vancouver. From there, he sailed to Panama to join a convoy of 50 ships crossing the Atlantic to take food and timber back to Britain.

He said as well as the threat of U-boats on the week-long voyage, the convoy also had to deal with stormy weather conditions.

"It was a terrible sea. The sea was going higher than the ship itself. We were down in it and praying we would come up. We had to release the timber to stabilise the ship."

As a junior officer, Mr Wellington was part of the crew supplying the shells to the guns when enemy submarines approached.

"You didn't know when your end was coming. When you were firing at planes and submarines you got scared, although we were young and it was exciting," he said.

After crossing the Atlantic, Mr Wellington's missions included trips to East Africa and several months in the Mediterranean to deliver supplies to troops fighting the campaign in North Africa.

He said there were several near-misses along the way.

"I got bombed once off Algiers. A tanker blew up just behind us. If it had been in front, we would have been in trouble."

He added that on another occasion, he was on a ship that had to pick its way through minefields. "I was evacuating troops from North Africa to the Italian campaign. We had to negotiate minefields to get through and we had netting around the bows of the ship to push the mines away," he said.

"In amongst them were dead soldiers with their heads down. I thought of their relatives receiving a letter to say 'your son is missing'."

Mr Wellington was also present for the D-Day landings, with his ship taking American troops to Omaha beach. "It was very bad the first day but we went on the second day. There was German gunfire all the time, but we did our jobs and lowered the boats," he said.

"It was dark and you couldn't see anything except the flashing of the guns on the beach. I wouldn't have liked to be there myself – they were the heroes. I remember our captain shouting from the bridge 'Good luck, lads'."

After the war, Mr Wellington' remained in the merchant navy until 1958, reaching the rank of purser and visiting 45 different countries – including places like China, Russia and even the Antarctic.

After returning to Shropshire and wife Doreen, who he met in 1946 and married in 1955, Mr Wellington worked for an insurance company before taking up a job at Cound quarry, where he was in charge of sales and distribution, retiring in 1985.

The pair had three sons and one daughter. Doreen passed away in 1998.