R/O Gordon Mumford

Merchant Navy Radio Officers

Gordon Mumford, Radio Officer, 1942 - 1947

Gordon's story is typical of many young teenagers and young men during the Second World War. They were all eager to join the armed forces, and afraid that the war might end before they could enlist. Not willing to wait, men from other countries such as Canada, Australia, and the United States, flocked to England to join the forces or the merchant navy.

The excitement and trauma of the declaration of war in 1939, coupled with the increasing presence in England of military forces who came from all over the Commonwealth, the United States, and other allied nations, fired his imagination. The air of excitement and adventure was appealing, and Gordon wanted to be part of it. At that point of time, he did not really comprehend the realities of war, and even the bombing of near his home in London only served to increase his desire to get into the war at any cost. He had no inkling of just how different the world that he was about to enter, would be.

When war was declared in September 1939, Gordon was just fourteen. The London area schools were evacuated, and Gordon's school moved to Derby, so his education came to an abrupt end. Gordon had been in the Air Defense Cadet Corp since he was twelve, and the RAF arranged for the air cadets to serve on various airfields throughout Britain. His unit was assigned to a fighter and bomber squadron at North Weald, located in the green belt surrounding London. Throughout the fall of 1939 and on into the winter, when the rain turned to snow and frost laid a hard covering on the ground, the cadets boarded the RAF transport truck at seven each morning for the fifteen-mile journey to North Weald, and returned home each evening. In the early spring of 1940, the threat of attack by enemy aircraft resulted in the withdrawal of all air cadets from RAF airfields throughout Britain.

Gordon was even more determined to get into the war. Not for him the "safe" job at a small arms factory in Enfield where his father found him a position as an apprentice. Within three months, Gordon quit and found a position as an office boy in the City of London where the offices of various shipping companies were located. He was too young to join the armed forces, but he knew that apprentices as young as fifteen were signed onto merchant ships. During his lunch break, he would visit those offices looking for an opening as an apprentice cadet or deck officer. When he got papers from Andrew Weir & Company Ltd., his mother refused to sign them. Realizing his determination, she did agree to let him train as a marine radio officer.

His chance finally came in September, 1941 when he entered the Holloway Radio College in London. After completing the special wartime radio certificate, he joined the Marine Division of Siemens Bros. in July 1942. In August, while he was still waiting for a ship, his father died unexpectedly; he was just forty-five years old. Now Gordon was the main breadwinner, responsible for his mother and his two younger brothers. A couple of weeks later, Gordon was at sea on an old Danish collier called the Soborg.

During the war, Gordon served on the Soborg, Scottish Heather, Empire Harmony, Empire Path, and the MV Luling. He also sailed on the Adolph S. Ochs before he left the sea. The Soborg sailed to Iceland, to bunker ships for the Murmansk convoys. The Scottish Heather was an oiler, refueling the escort ships when she was torpedoed in the North Atlantic, and the crew took to the lifeboats. The Empire Harmony was a heavy duty lift ship, used to unload war materiel in the bombed-out docks in the Mediterranean and North Africa. The Empire Path took a cargo of munitions and other essential weapons for the Battle of the Scheldt, and was sunk by a mine. The MV Luling, another tanker, took part in the beachhead landings in the Pacific, and then supplied the minesweepers in the clean-up operations at the end of the war.

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Gordon Mumford has written two books about his wartime experiences in the British Merchant Navy. The Black Pit ... and Beyond and The Sampan Girl are published by General Store Publishing House. For information about the books and how to order them, as well as reviews and excerpts, please see Zebra Zebra Publishing House.

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