The Sam Lake Story

handtohand22 · Mar 24, 2008

The Sam Lake Story

Overview

Sam Lake was a talented musician and singer. He took part in competitions for both disciplines both before and after WWII. For most of his working life he was a Painter and Decorator, a trade he shared with his brothers.
Sam joined the Coleraine Battery when it was first formed in May 1939 as the 6th Anti Aircraft Battery. He served throughout the war as a gunner and when there was no need for gunners he then joined the Argyll and Southerland Highlanders and fought in France and Belgium. He was captured in Belgium by the Germans and managed to make a successful escape. Sam then joined the Royal Ulster Rifles and advanced through Germany with them.

After the war Sam and his brothers took over Murphy’s paper shop in Society Street. His brothers Charlie and Eddy sprayed cars to the back of the shop and Sam ran a paint shop in the front.

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Sam was also a founder member of the Coleraine Working Men’s Choir after the war. The choir went on to win at every festival held around NI. Sam also served in the North Irish Horse, based in Ballymoney up to 1953. Sam died 19 March 2008.

Joining Up<O:p< O:p
Before WW2 started I was a member of the 1st Coleraine Boys Brigade Old Boys Silver Band. All the older members of the band decided to join the Coleraine Battery and I volunteered as well. That was in May 1939”.

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Pay<O:p< O:p
“The wages were 7s (shillings, or 35p) a week and this increased to 14s. Most of the gunners made an allotment of 3s.6d, another 3s.6d was put in credit and that gave you 7s for your pocket. The credit mounted up and allowed you to go on leave with a good amount in your pocket. By the end of the war the pay had increased to £2 a week”.

First Posting – Scotland<O:p< O:p
The departure of the Battery to Scotland was preceded; some say it was hastened, by William Joyce (Lord Haw Haw). William Joyce was born in New York, USA in 1906. He had an Irish father and an English mother. In 1939, at the age of 33 he moved to Germany and started broadcasting German propaganda to Europe.<O:p< O:p
Sam Lake recalled, “After war was declared, everything was going lovely, everything was great. We were at the Calf Lane Camp doing our training. We had lectures and training in the morning and football in the afternoons and then got paid on Friday. But that was to change. In one of his infamous broadcasts in October 1939 Lord Haw Haw referred to the Battery men as the ‘featherbed soldiers’ because we were still training and then going home at night. Within two weeks of that broadcast we were getting ready to go on active duty” (2005). <O:p< O:p
Sam Lake recalled, “We were at Rosyth Royal Naval dockyard carrying out guard duties. There was some high ground close to the dockyard. We had a patrol on the road. Davy Laverty saw a man walking about and this person eventually came up close to the guns. He was close to the naval guns, taking a good look at them so we knew there was something up. Davy challenged the man and he ran off. He then got into a car on the main road and Davy got two or three shots off at the car. The incident was reported and the police in Glasgow were told to watch out for a car with bullet holes in the back. Word came back to us that a man had been picked up”. (2005)
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The Move to Egypt
Sam Lake recalled,”The routine at sea was to have lectures and instruction in the morning. After a mid-day meal we had sports and competitions against the other units.” (2005)<O:p< O:p
Four days after leaving Capetown, the convoy was in the Indian Ocean. At this stage the destroyer escort had left the convoy. The convoy scattered and the “Dominion Monarch” spent one day anchored at Durban. This was close to Clearwood Transit Camp where convoys would stop to refuel and drop off or pick up troops. The next stage of the journey was uneventful but there was plenty of training and boxing tournaments to kill the boredom. <O:p< O:p

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Port Tewfiq - Egypt<O:p
The Battery War Diaries show that an Italian aircraft dropped two bombs on one ship in the convoy. Both these bombs missed but the Italians claimed to have sunk the “Dominion Monarch”.
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Sam Lake recalled,” The two bombs straddled the ship. First the ship rolled one way and then the other. We thought we had been hit”. (2005)<O:p< O:p
Dodger McKeown was the first Battery man to die in Egypt. Dodger was a butcher in Tommy Cameron’s shop along with Bertie Dunlop. Both of them died in Egypt.

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Fishing<O:p< O:p
Sam recalled,”We were on the mouth of the Suez canal. An Egyptian gave us all a fishing rod each. After we caught so many fish, he gave us the rods to keep. Then he would pay us for every fish we caught. When we were off duty that’s the way we used to pass the time.” (2005)

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Leave<O:p< O:p
Sam Lake recalled, “Once we were encamped close to Tobruk on stand-by. That was before we were posted to AA defence on the railway. Major Siderfin was in charge. He came along and asked the Troop who wanted a run into Cairo. He said he would take us as far as Tobruk station and after that we would have to run the gauntlet to Cairo. Willie Warnock and I volunteered and mounted the jeep.<O:p< O:p

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The train timings never varied and the German planes were waiting with their Me’s every morning. We were strafed by a German Me and Major Siderfin had to keep swerving the jeep to avoid getting machine gunned. He managed to overturn the jeep. If the Germans had only known this they could have come back and caught us up-righting the jeep.<O:p< O:p
On the train we were in the goods wagon with the doors open to let in some air and we were strafed again. We soon learned to travel with the doors closed”. (2005)

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Paddy Toner’s Death<O:p< O:p
Paddy Toner was the first Battery man and the first man from Garvagh to be killed in action. Sam Lake recalled,” We were travelling ten minutes behind Paddy Toner’s Troop. We saw a cloud of smoke in front of us. That was where Paddy Toner died, on the back of a 3-tonner after being strafed by a Messerschmitt.
Harry McWilliams had a close call. A bullet ricocheted into his stomach, but it was the blunt end that hit him.”(2005)

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Behghazi Harbour Defence<O:p< O:p
While we were on Benghazi harbour defence, a Chinese boat, the Lee Moon was bombed and stayed on fire for six weeks. The Germans had a great time bombing and strafing us.
Willie Maxwell was on the end of the pier, the Juliana Mole, and the Germans destroyed the end of the pier with their bombs. There was a danger of his gun falling off the end of the pier. It took two gun tractors to tow the gun to safety. One of the drivers was Harry Milford.
At one stage I was in charge of the NAAFI. The staff had all left and we had orders, “When the shells start landing close, set fire to the NAFFI and retreat”. The shells started to land close so I took a bar of Nestles chocolate before I set fire to the NAFFI. The truck then took us down the bumpy coast road and I was as sick as a dog on the chocolate”.

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AA Support to Field Guns at Gazala
From February 7 until March 24 1942 the Battery Troops were located behind the Gazala Ridge at Camuset-er-Regem. They were under the command of Maj Gen Stanislaus Kopanski. The Troops carried out patrol duties with the Polish Brigade in forward areas and supported the Polish field guns. The Polish field guns were there to cover the mine fields.<O:p< O:p
Whilst operating on the Gazala Line, Willie Campbell, along with Harry McWilliams were wounded on February 10th 1942. <O:p< O:p
Joe Bottomley, Johnny Teamby and Dick Burgess were conscripts from English Regiments. They had been posted into the Battery while they were in Egypt, just as Battery personnel were also posted to other units.<O:p< O:p
The Battery guns always engaged the attacking Stukas. By firing at the Stukas they forced them to release their bombs before they finished their screaming dive. On the Gazala Ridge the Germans had a ploy of using a British fighter plane as a decoy when they were attacking the Ridge. <O:p< O:p
On February 25, the Battery guns shot down three enemy aircraft. Sam Lake recalls, “The Polish Brigade, to a man, thought we were heroes. Every time a German plane came to our locations to attack us, we leapt out of the foxholes and manned the Bofors. We figured out it was better to shoot at the attacking planes and put them off aim rather than let them use us for target practice. <O:p< O:p
The Stukas dive bombed us all the time on the Gazala Line. We always tried to put them off on their dive in. They were easy to hit after they dropped their bombs. It took them a long while to turn out of the dive. One day we dropped three of them.” (2005)
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The End of the Desert War<O:p< O:p
With the Battery on board and a bow filled with cement, the SS “Almanzora” sailed out on November 17th 1943, calling at Augusta on November 22nd. <O:p< O:p
“When we started this trip we were not too happy. No one told us where we were going. As soon as the ship turned to the West we were a bit happier”. (Robin Martin, 2004)<O:p< O:p
Sam Nevin recalled, “When we returned home, we came through the Mediterranean Sea. It had not been cleared yet but there were minesweepers in front of our troop ship clearing the way. At Gibraltar we had to put on our life jackets because there was a greater chance of mines but there were no incidents.” (2005)<O:p< O:p
On this trip, Y Troop was under the command of the ship’s Gunnery Officer. They manned the ship’s 40mm Bofor guns for the return to UK. The Battery arrived in Greenock on December 9th 1943. <O:p< O:p
Sam Lake recalled, ”When we came back home we went up the Clyde. Our boys could not believe their eyes. They were shouting for us to look at the women in overalls and to look at the women driving trucks. The women were working away in the dockyards as hard as they could. The men were all away in the forces so the women had to do the work.” (2005)<O:p< O:p
After a mystery train tour to Lewes on December 19th 1943, leave started.
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Europe<O:p< O:p
Sam Lake recalled, ”After Egypt, I stayed with the Battery until we were in France. Then after Caen fell, many of us were sent back to England, there was a shortage of infantry.
I was posted back to England for infantry training. We walked from Brighton to Howard’s Heath to harden us up. That was over 50 miles. We marched from 6am and every ten minutes in the hour you had the chance to sit down and get your feet up.
We also had proper infantry training such as section attacks. I was a section Bren gunner with a No 2 called Joe McCool who carried the spare ammo. After four to six weeks of training I was back in Belgium attached to the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. In Belgium I was captured by the retreating Germans and managed to escape”

Prisoner of War
“We were on static lines, just sending out patrols. The sergeant said, “You lads have been working hard the past couple of days, you are tired out. You can do single sentry tonight, instead of double sentry, as long as you promise to stay awake.” We tossed a coin for first watch and I won. I woke up Joe McCool and went to sleep. The next thing I heard was, “Hande hoch!”
The Germans herded us into a byre full of cow dung and left a sentry at the front. Later that night Joe McCool and myself decided to dig down into the cow dung knowing that the planks would be rotten with the dung and damp. We pulled the planks off and then hedge hopped from pillar to post, keeping low until we had escaped back to the Allied lines. As we approached we were shot at by the sentries until Joe McCool pulled off his vest and swung it around. We were sent back to our own unit.
I finished the war with the Royal Ulster Rifles in Germany. As the army of occupation we spent a lot of time searching German houses. The sort of things that turned up was weapons and uniforms. We did not take our spite out on the Germans. They were ordinary folks like ourselves. We would talk away to them in their houses. Because of the non-fraternization policy this was not allowed but we learned to speak German”.

After the War<O:p< O:p
Battery men such as Willie Norris, Joe McGrotty and Sam Lake were all painters by trade. Many of the Battery men were unemployed after the war. That was why so many of them became self employed. Sam joined the North Irish Horse (TA). Their HQ was in Henry Street, Ballymoney.<O:p< O:p
Sam Lake recalled,”Battery men were always in work, usually self employed as tradesmen, butchers painters and joiners. The circumstances were such that when we came back from the war we had to pick up something and find our own work. I had served my time as a painter with Sutherlands. They told me, “You are going away in the army son, but there will be a job for you when you come back. After the war I came back to Coleraine and went to them looking for a job. There was no job.” <O:p< O:p
My brother Eddy was a sign writer by trade. People used to stand on the other side of the street and watch him working, he was quick. <O:p< O:p
His brother-in-law was Danny Todd. Eddy had married Hilda Todd and they had two children, a boy and a girl. She died when she was 28 years old from TB. That is so easily cured these days. Eddy was left to look after his two children. But he had to work and our sister used to look after them.<O:p< O:p
I started off with Eddy and we took on house painting jobs. I worked with Willie McKee, Archie Hartin and Willie Thompson and all the painters from around Park Street such as Archie McKay and Joe McGrotty. <O:p< O:p
We then took over Murphy’s paper shop in Society Street. My brothers Charlie and Eddy sprayed cars to the back of the shop and we also ran a paint shop in the front.<O:p< O:p
After that the work became scarce so Eddy went to work with TBF Thompson in Garvagh. He was employed to do the sign writing on all of TBF Thompson’s transport. Eddy did not stay long in that job because there were periods when he did not have any work and he did not feel happy taking wages for nothing.<O:p< O:p
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Pastimes<O:p< O:p
“Blinkie Gamble, Johnny Morrison and a group of us would stand around the Railway Station on the Coleraine side of the town. We used to sing in harmony. Then one day a school teacher called Harry Turbut stood and listened to us singing. He then said that he recognised us as former pupils of the Irish Society School. Then he asked us if we were interested in starting a choir. He promised us that if we were interested he would find us premises to practice in. <O:p< O:p
He managed to get us a loft at the head of Union Street close to where Rathaine Fold now stands. We were lucky at that time. A few good singers came out of Killowen Choir because of a row they had at Killowen. That included Hugh Clements and the Steen and Gough brothers. Johnny Gough was the deepest bass singer.<O:p< O:p
I was put in charge of the second tenors. The choir was called, The Coleraine Working Men’s Choir. We went on to win at every festival held around NI. We usually dressed in black shirts, white ties and grey flannels.

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Sammy Lake died 19 March 2008</O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<></O:p<>

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The Sam Lake Story

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