ABOUT JACK SUE
| HOME | | OUR BOOKS | | DIVING EQUIPMENT| | ABOUT JACK SUE | | ABOUT BARRY SUE | | CONTACT US ||
Then, he was barely 16 years old - still too young to enlist.
He received the white
feather on a Tuesday. So deep was the offence, it had an immediate reaction.
He told Bruce Indersmith (his best friend who also worked at Atwood Motors),
that he intended
to go and join the Norwegian Merchant Navy. Bruce's reaction was simple; "wait
for me, I'm coming too!"
They both quit their jobs at Attwood Motors the next day.
Jackie put his age up on
the application form, forged his parents' signatures and passed it in for
processing.
Two days later, both boys stood on the deck of the MT Marina, an aviation
octane tanker as it cast off
Fremantle wharf while their mothers wept behind a wire fence barricade.
BRUCE INDERSMITH 1942
BRUCE INDERSMITH 2005
If adventure on the high seas was what
the two boys sought after, they received plenty of it. They
didn't learn until too late that octane tankers were prize targets for German U
Boats that lurked in
wolf packs beneath the foamy waves of the Indian Ocean. Jackie wrote a daily diary for the whole
time at sea where they
toured through the Middle
East and down to South Africa. There are numerous
entries of torpedoed ships during their travel.
Their 6 month tour of duty on the aviation octane tanker MT Marina ended
safely in Melbourne at
1015 hours on Thursday 24 June 1943. Soon after this, they both returned to
Perth.
JACKIE AND RON WALL AT BOMBAY 1943
JOHN RADFORD EDDIE BAKER AND JACKIE AT
THE 1994 REUNION
| HOME | | OUR BOOKS | | DIVING EQUIPMENT| | ABOUT JACK SUE | | ABOUT BARRY SUE | | CONTACT US ||
Copyright © 2006 JACK SUE WA SKINDIVERS
