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The Seaforth News, 1943-05-20, Page 6, P +r $EA'ORTH NEWS TMUIi€PAY, MAY 2Q, 1945 he Return Home Walter R. Legge, After many false rePerts of date of departure for Canada, we we finally given fairly definite word that we. would start home on Friday, Oc ober f. We had returned from til West part •of , Englad' the " previou Sunday, and liad.spent=the intervo Mg days in final conferences, las minute visits to famous places 1 ,London, and preparations for th journey, These preparations include having our notes officially sealed IS that we would have no trouble i taking.them trough the ports of em barkatiou and arrival. On that last Thursday, I paid Anal visit to St. Paul's Cathedral anns gazed on the expanse of ruins whie surrounds this shrine. In the afternoon, I went to se "The Belle of New York" at the Col iseum Theatre, one of the most bean tiful theatres I have ever seen. Walk ing back to the Strand Palace Hotel, where we stayed the last few days in London, I found the Strand crowded with people, the first time I had seen any streets really crowded in Eng- land, A fruit store near the hotel, I not- ed, was selling peaches for S shillings each, and grapes for 16 shillings a pound. Friday morning we started on a trip during which we were destined to use many forms of transportation, First an automobile took us to the station. Then we travelled on a train, the most luxurious one we had seen in England, to a port of embarkation, At the railway station, a bus was waiting for us in which we went to the Airways office. here our baggage was weighed, our tickets and passports checked, and a light lunch served, after 'which we got into a launch which took us out to a British Overseas Airways Flying boat. When we finally took off, this flying boat was carrying sixty-nine passengers, all their baggage, and the crew of eleven. A few hours later, this huge artific- ial bird with its heavy load came down at a transfer point, settling so gently that few of us knew just when we touched the water. This place was in Eire and again our passports were checked. We were only there long enough to send off a few postcards. Then once more we got into a launch which took us to a Sikorsky Ameri- ean Export Ace. It took in all the members of the Bomober Press and a few other passengers. The return journey was consider- ably slower; but very much more comfortable than the trip over in a bomber. The hostess, Miss Dorothy Buchanan, looking very smart in her attractive uniform, started passing around American cigarettes, (you can smoke cigarettes but not cigars or a pipe in an Ace, but smoking was forbidden in the bomber), chew- ing gum, and the latest American magazines. LateLatera hot dinner was served, and soon after the hostess and steward started making up thh berths which were very much like those in a Pullman. Early the next morning the flying boat came down in Canadian waters. There was a strong wind and very rough water so that the launch took off our party with some difficulty. Before we left the transfer point the previous evening, we watched a Pan-American Clipper take off. We arrived in Canadian waters in time to see the same Clipper come down beside us. For a trip of about two thousand miles over the Atlantic, the two rival planes were only a fewmin- utes apart. .After passing our baggage through the customs, we took taxis to the railway station for the last leg of our journey to our homes. The first thing most of us bought were some oranges, which we had not seen for nearly seven weeks. In a few hours we had again been transported across the ocean from one continent to another, and what a ,contrast we found. If Canada was not the Promised Land, it was at least flowing with milk, sugar, butter, eggs, matches, soap, and nearly everything that we had been learning to do without, .And the lights! How strange to see lights at every little hamlet and town the train passed through! Pro- bably the most depressing thing in Britain is the blackout; here were brilliant lights in the train and in all the towns, They made the war seam so very far away, almost as if this country were not in it. And those were not the onl ythings that gave an impression ahnost of unconcern about, the war, The stores were well - stocked and crowded with buyers. Everywhere we missed that feeling of intense determination. We found that Canadians were greatly interested In everything over there. We all spent a very busy time answering questions, giving talks, writing articles, and generally trying to bring home the pictures of things as we found them, 12 we have been able to show par encs that .their soils and daughters overseas are well taken care of, that they are active and enthusiastic, if we have .inspired workers to greater efforts; if we have trade others anx• dols to practise self-denial as all aid to victory; if ive have helped to re- assure Canadians as to the fighting fitness of their 'forces; if we have created a greater desire to buy ;,mere Victory Bonds to provide the needed shrews of war, the work of the Bonlb- ei' Press will have been well worth while. Just a few closing words of thanks to all the °facers and officials who helped to make our travels so agree- able, and who sparedno effort to meet our slightest wish to see any special activity; also to the editors and readers who have written ex- pressisg their appreciation of the effort to tell thorn what is going on in Britain. And so we leave our Canadians and others in Britain, with a feeling of conadence that when the time conies, they will acquit themselves with glory. .As General McNaughton told us at our last conference with him, "They are holding the outposts in the defnce of Canada," In Lincoln Cathedral, there is a Minitel dedicated to the heroes of former wars, and under some old battle -scarred flags, held together with netting, I found these words on the wall. "A moth-eaten rag, on a worm-eaten pole, It does not seem likely to stir a man's soul; 'Tis the deeds that were done, 'Hoath that moth-eaten rag, When the pole was a staff, and the rag was a flag." Fishing For Mines Yon see them leaving their harbor moorings just before dusk, small un- lovely craft, threading between the warships. They pass through the boom and out of mind. A cruiser leaves the port, or a destroyer -.or a submarine, and you picture battles at sea, lasdings on enemy shores. War- sbips return, impresively reach their moorings. The trawlers, drifters, whalers, or whatever they may be that slip out each dusk, return un- heralded by anything except the scream of their siren and a flagged ship's number run up the rigging. The skipper finds an empty berth by the quayside or alongside another of bis ship's small breed. A pot of tea is served in the officers' ward room, the crew start on their deck duties. A mine -sweeper has another job of *work.' Minesweeping routine differs with the ports. For a long time sweeping in Tobruk had to be done by night. The ships were easy targets by day for the deadly guns of the Axis. One of the routines is to set out near sun set. The minesweepers plug through the harbor and out to sea, where they anchor for the night at positions marked on the chart in the port mine- sweeping control office. Here they keep their night -long watch over the harbor, listening for the distant drone of enemy bombers, watching for the dim, swiftly -moving aithou- ettes of E -boats, but looking above all for parachute mines dropping over the harbor, The captain and lieutenant take turns on the bridge, pacing backwards and forwards. The quiet on a calm night is only broken by b'u'sts of harsh, staccato code words coming from the wireless — "apple, hairpin, junket, toadstool, spanner." In some ports the invasion lights' blazing from the boom turn night into a sickly bluish -green day, silhoufetting the sweepers as they Lock or toss at anchor. When an air raid warning comes through, followed by the loudening drone of planes, the fallen stars flash- ing from the boom disappear sudden- ly, as though they had sunit into the sea. Instead, searchlights send their beanis groping over the harbor. The crews of the sweepers have tumbled up on deck; all eyes are strained shorewards. As the barrage starts, the harbor becomes bright with bursting ack-ack shells, bombs• and tracer. Down come the mines, dangling on their parachutes. Each one as it falls is noted by the skipper on the bridge of his sweeper, He takes the bear- ing, signals it back to the control of- fice. The mines, thus located, will be dealt with by day. At that light the minesweeper weighs anchor, ruts up the rest flag, and heads out to sea at a steady seven to nine knots along the nar- row channels, the arteries of the Midlife Eastfl The ships sweep as far as the thirty -fathom line, for beyond this, rrlitles oI1 the seafloor are most- ly ineffective. in quiet spells, their work may be done by mid-morning, and they pass in through the boom to their moorings. If in the course of the sweep they have sent Off a mine, there 16 jubilation aboard, For, to the crew of a minesweeper, the mine, magnetic, acoustic, or whatever it may be, is as the Stuka to the ack- ack battery. They reckon that just CANADIAN PACIFIC GOES ALL OUT TN WAS:. The phases of the Canadian Pacific Railway's war effort are manifold and far-reaching. On land, on sea and in the air, the company is making a vast contribution toward ultimate victory. Trains haul untold tons of vital war' materials across the country, and carry and feed troops on the move to and from training centres and to emlyarkation points. Company passenger and cargo ships, garbed in drab war paint, are on Admiralty service, plying the perilous waters of the seven seas. Many of the company's vessels have been lost by enemy action; chief casualty being the famed luxury liner, Empress of Britain. Canadian Pacific Air Lines, besides flying passengers, freight and mail, also operates six aifi observer schools and one elementary flying training school in conjunction with the Royal Canadian Air Force as part of the British Commonwealth Air Training Scheme to make a major contribution to the Empire's fighting air power. At company shops, the sinews of war are manufactured; at one big shop, Valentine tanks were made; at another, naval guns are being turned out. More than 14,000 members of true company's peacetime personnel are now on active service and to help fill the gaps thus created at home, women workers are coming increasingly to the fore in taking 'men's places. They serve as car -checkers and "call -boys" and some have already invaded the §round-house—a once -exclusively male territory—as engine wipers, and some even nurse ambitions to drive engines one day. • And employees are steadfastly upholding the home -front end with all-out support of Vieto'ry Loan campaigns, Red Cross drives, war relief measures, blood donations, and by the work of Women's service organizations within the company. one mine destroyed justifies the cost of a mines,weeper•. Some sweepers in Mediterranean waters have forty and: more mines to their credit. t Besides the Patrol Service, there are "smokey Toes" that are part of the navy proper. Some have been specially constructed as minesweep- ers. Then there are the Greek caiques, most graceful of all sweep- ers — and the slowest. They sweep at some two knots. The crews are Greeks, who alone know the intrica- cies of sailing these craft. The skip- per is handsomely paid for the loan of his ship, but then his job is a haz- ardous one. The Grimsby trawler is the most homely of these minesweepers and the Greek calque the most pictur- esque. Those with the most colorful pasts(. though, are the whalers. They cost some $100,000 to build, are equipped with high-powered Diesel engines that will take them at eight knots, 3,500 miles without refueling. They are clean, ,seaworthy, compact craft. Whalers are coveted as mine- sweepers, because, unlike the "Smok- ey Toes" or coal -burning trawlers, they are clean and need. minimum stoking, stokers being chiefly con- cerned with regulating boiler adjust- ments. The captain sleeps in a small cabin under the bridge, furnished with bunk, desk and couch, Seamen slap and eat forward. GIANT PLOUGH A giant trenching plough weigh- ing four tons is now at work in England turning acres of water-log- ged ater-looged ground into land which will yield crops next year. It is an ingenious trenching im- plement designed in the North of England chiefly for use in land drainage. The new machine cuts channels to a depth of two feet nine inches at the rate of a hundred yards in four minutes. The base of the trench is cut by a share, while cutters carve the sides, the earth passing up inclined boards to ground level where it is formed into equal ridges on each side. The implement is hauled by a pair of windlesses, driven by two diesel engines placed at each end of the field. One windless pulls the im- plement along when cutting, the other returns it into position for cutting the next trench. The standard windlass employed for this work by the designers has a range of gears with different speeds for different soils, and the winding drum carries 450 yards of steel plough rope. The implement can be hauled by the steam cable engines used for ploughing and cultivating, or by the large types of direct trac- tors. In the Zuider Zee reclamation, a machine from the same designers cut two million yards of trenches in 20 months. Count Ch.e.c: • We Tire Selling Quality Books Books are Well Made, Carbon is Clean and Copies Readily. All styles, Carbon Leaf and Black Back. Prices as Low as You Can Get Anywhere. Get our Quotation on Your Next Order. • The Seaforth News SEAFORTH, ONTARIO,