Jack Watson & The French Connection
by Richard Taylor

Northumberland-born Jack Watson, whose overriding ambition as a teenager was to join the Royal Navy, found himself serving with the French in World War Two - and all his prejudices were confirmed. He hated it.

His happiest time had been early in the war as a signaler with HMS Glasgow. One of his more memorable experiences was when the 9,100-ton cruiser ran the gauntlet at Molde to rescue King Haakon of Norway, together with the Crown Prince, Norwegian government ministers and the country's gold reserve.

Jack wrote in his journal: "Arriving here with two destroyers (Janus and Jaguar) we found the whole town in flames, having been bombed all day... We prepared to shove off and as we did so we were attacked by a single enemy aircraft, which dropped a couple of bombs on the jetty... None of these did any damage and the plane immediately turned and machine-gunned the whole ship... The Jaguar, opening up with pom-poms, got a direct hit on the aircraft, which crashed into the hillside a few miles away."

This was only one example of the action Jack saw with the Glasgow, a ship he loved dearly. Indeed, when she was broken up at Blyth in 1958, he was able to get some of her brass and timber from which he had a miniature cannon made.

After the Glasgow, Jack spent three years with the infantry landing ship HMS Glengyle, seeing plenty of action at Dieppe, Crete, Sicily, Salerno and along the North African coast. He was later with the escort carrier HMS Stalker for the invasion of southern France. The US-built carrier also saw service off Burma and she was one of the ships at Singapore for the surrender of the Japanese.

But this is jumping ahead with the story Jack recorded so fully in his diaries. After the Glengyle, he served briefly in September 1943 on the British liaison team with the Italian destroyer Oriani, where he found his hosts a friendly crew who handled their ship in a workmanlike manner. He admired, for example, the way they brought the Oriani smartly into Ajaccio where they were running arms and ammunition to Corsican partisans.

As the tiny handful of British sailors left the ship, the Italian signals officer, who had made them most welcome, gave each of them a chain from which was suspended an anchor bearing the Oriani's name.

Jack felt quite sorry to leave - and even sorrier, according to his diaries, when he was detailed to Oran as a relief to the British liaison staff with the French destroyer Le Fantasque. It was an experience which, for him, could not end soon enough. He was with her from October 1943 to the end of June the following year.

In a biographical account completed later in the war, he wrote: "I know that I was not going to like it as my opinion of the French is very low. However, it was a ship and that was all that mattered to me." Le Fantasque was, he conceded, a fine looking ship, heavily armed but light - and consequently very fast.

"On board, conditions were very bad," he noted, "We lived in one of the forrard gun turrets and we had to make this our home. We could imagine what it was going to be like in a heavy sea and we were to experience it a good many times."

There was no spare accommodation below because of the increase in the ship's company. Jack recorded: "It had been decided that a gun turret was good enough for us. Worse was to follow. We discovered that we were to get only two meals a day, one at 1200 and the other at 1700. That meant no breakfast unless we cooked it ourselves.

"In accordance with Naval Regulations no rum was issued aboard foreign warships and that meant a great loss to us. We did have compensation for it by having an additional 6d a day to make up for our hardships."

Le Fantasque was name ship of a class of French destroyers, built under the 1930 programme with a standard displacement of 2,569 tons. Throughout their lives they were the fastest flotilla craft in the world. Le Fantasque, with three of her sister ships, was refitted in the USA in 1943-44, so all her W/T equipment and radar was American-built, but her Asdic gear was British. Her guns had been replaced and, wrote Jack, special ammunition was being manufactured in the UK. His diaries explain that she had been laid up in Toulon until the Germans arrived when she and her crew managed to make their escape to Casablanca.

Le Fantasque was undoubtedly a handsome ship, but this was no compensation for the conditions the British sailors had to endure in the turret. Jack's diaries often refer to their mess being flooded out in heavy seas. In February 1944, for example, they were called on to ferry coloured American troops from Bizerta to Naples. They had to drop their speed to 18 knots because of the heavy seas

Jack recalled: "Once more our mess was flooded and in a shambles. The Americans were all getting thoroughly wet as the French refused to let them go down below because of the congestion. However, we did manage to get a few of them in our mess and made them as comfortable as we could. At least it was sheltered from the wind, even though the deck was wet.

"At 0600 the next morning we sighted Capri. All morning the seas were bad and at times our ship nearly submerged. The Americans all wondered how we managed to keep our feet. One of them declared he would never go to sea again, and if he had to he would go by air. We entered Naples harbour at 0900 and all the troops disembarked by 1400 - and they weren't sorry to go, either."

Not long after, Le Fantasque had to make a similar trip with white GIs. The weather caused delays and the crowded troops had to spend the night aboard the ship. When she did sail the following day, the sea was as bad as ever.

Jack recalled: "The ship [was] going all over the place. She was plunging around like a mad thing and once more our mess had about two feet of water in it. While our mess was in this condition, we all stayed on the bridge and let things go on in the mess. Next morning, about 5 o'clock, the seas were even worse than they had been the previous night and an hour later we ran into another storm... As the troops left the ship they said they would remember the trip from Bizerta to Naples as long as they lived. I didn't blame them, as I myself will remember that ship as long as I live."

The return voyage appears to have been no easier. "The ship was more like a submarine than a destroyer, with everything flooded out. During the night, which I reckoned to be the worst I have had, I had to turn out of my hammock because of the water coming over our bows and into our mess. No sleep came to us that night."

At the time, none of this helped to encourage a mellower view of the French, but it is clear warm relations did exist with some of he crew. Throughout the latter part of the 1970s, Jack developed an extended correspondence with Jean 'Louis' Meirat, who had been a French signaller on Le Fantasque, going on after the war to become a naval historian. The letters show that more than an ordinary rapport existed between the two. Written as they are by an historian, Louis's letters shed further light on some of the experiences the two shared.

Jack's first trip with Le Fantasque had been in October 1943 in company with her sister ship, Le Terrible, and the British destroyer HMS Active, all of whom sailed as far as the Azores to meet the French battleship Richelieu, which was returning from the States following a refit after being put out of action by the American fleet at Casablanca during the North African landings.

On 2 November 1943 at Algiers, Le Fantasque was inspected by the French General Giraud, who presented the ship with the Croix de Guerre for services in Corsica. Much of the work in which the ship was involved was, however, of a very routine nature. Nevertheless, Jack had his first taste of action with the French when Le Fantasque, with Le Terrible and the cruiser HMS Phoebe, were send on a mission on 19 November to sink enemy shipping in the Aegean.

Jack recorded: "About 1710 I observed splashes around Phoebe, who was letting go with her 5.25in guns and pom-poms. Looking up, I saw about 20 Ju88s above the cruiser, who was about two miles astern of us. Five minutes later we got it, and bombs were dropping all over the place.

"All our guns were going and I saw at least one [aircraft] crash into the sea on our starboard side. The Terrible was twice blotted out by bomb splashes but luckily not one bomb found its target."

Then there was a lull until another half-dozen Ju88s appeared. "All their bombs were dropped from about 300ft and they came at us nearly on the water, lifting when they got near us. The Terrible never got hit, but twice I thought she had gone. Next we got it and all the bombs went down our starboard side with great splashes. Our starboard bulkhead was peppered with shrapnel holes, but luckily that was all. More bombs were falling... As one aircraft raced across the water, she was seen to stall, then crash. This one was claimed by the Terrible. The cruiser had only two bombs dropped on her during this attack and she also shot down the attacking aircraft."

Back in Algiers, Le Fantasque for some days stood impatiently at 90 minutes notice to go to sea. Then at 2230 on 23 December, she left in a hurry, steaming northwards at some 36 knots. The objective this time was to intercept a German merchant ship sailing from Valencia to Toulon, loaded with iron ore.

"This was what we had been waiting for for so many days," Jack confided to his diary. They arrived off the Spanish coast at 0800 on Christmas Eve, but it was 1300 before the sighted the German ship some ten miles away.

"We chased after her and when we got to about five miles we hoisted the international signal to stop. However, she failed to do so and went inside territorial waters, which she could very easily do as she was steaming so close. We fired about six rounds at her, but she still didn't stop and we failed to get between her and the shore.

"As we watched, we could see she had run aground and was well ashore. After a bit we watched her crew pull away. After that there was nothing we could except to keep a look out until dark, then set course for Algiers."

In his letters to Jack, Louis Meirat identified the German ship as the Nicoline Maersk, which had formerly sailed under French colours as the Felix.

On 20 January 1944, Le Fantasque, then at Malta, sailed with the destroyer Inglefield and the cruiser Dido, which was to bombard the harbour at Civita Vecchia, creating a diversion for the Anzio landings further south. Le Fantasque's job was to protect the Dido from attack by E-boats based in the harbour, but none in fact appeared. Later Le Fantasque was involved with Dido, Inglefield and Kempenfeldt in bombarding crossroads at Gaeta and Formia to prevent German troops from advancing towards the Anzio beachhead.

At one point Jack records that Dido signalled to Le Fantasque that the operation at Civita Vecchia the previous night had been completely successful. "The enemy didn't discern that dummies had been laid until 0730 the following day and consequently the real landing went undiscovered until some six hours after the troops had landed."

Subsequently Le Fantasque and Le Terrible saw action in the Adriatic and among the Greek islands. In June 1944, off the northern coast of Yugoslavia, they were involved in a sharp action with four German launches, two of which were sunk. An enemy motor vessel, as Jack described it, landed a shell on the bridge near him and shrapnel hit two of his shipmates in the legs. About 20 minutes after fire had first opened, the Terrible obtained a direct hit and the German ship went up in a cloud of flames and smoke with a loud explosion.

Back in Taranto, Le Fantasque received congratulations from the Flag Officer Italy and the French commander. "We laughed at this as it was pretty easy," Jack wrote in his journal. "We thought one British ship could have done it in less time. The congratulatory messages should have been for the German crew for keeping up their fire against us against such great odds. As far as I could judge, the action didn't merit any congratulations."

Footnote: After the war, Jack Watson continued in the Royal Fleet Reserve, earning the RFR Long Service and Good Conduct Medal to add to his wartime awards. He was subsequently commissioned with the Sea Cadet Corps in Ashington. He died in 1980.

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