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At last we were on the Atlantic Ocean , ,
I remember my parents telling us when we were young that when out on the Atlantic you could not see any shore or land for days. Well that is the way it was. For days all we could see were the American Naval escort and the grey hissing ocean. At night this great ocean sparkled by sea life in the bow wave of the Oronsay. This in itself was quite a show! Oh yes, U boats were on our minds, but I think we only had one alert.
Also it was a thrill for us as gunners to see the royal marine gun crews fire all the guns that were there for our protection. If I remember, there were some Lewis machine guns and one other three inch gun on the stern. But I may be wrong and it was just machine guns and a 20 mm gun.
In a sense I enjoyed the voyage and was not sea sick, but the gunners lot was pretty grim, and the crossing was not any pleasure for them. You were not allowed to throw anything overboard as U boats might pick up the items and follow the convoy. Also, you did not smoke on deck at night and all the ships were blacked out. Forward in the main lounge some one pulled back the cushion and here there was a great amount of machine gun bullet holes.
On questioning the crew about this , "they said about fifteen Australians Continued on #24 "''