The death of Second World War veteran Owen Darrell brought back some painful memories for Will Scott. The Royal Gazette’s Jessie Moniz spoke to him about torpedoes, depth charges, and surviving the Arctic convoy.Back in 1943, 20-year-old Will Scott had a cushy job rewinding electric motors in Glasgow, Scotland.It was a protected job which meant he did not have to serve in the armed forces but his friends, who were all in the forces, started to tease him about avoiding his duty.So he volunteered and ended up serving in one of the Royal Navy’s most dangerous operations, the Arctic convoys.The Royal Gazette met with Mr Scott and his wife Audrey to talk about that time following the recent death of Owen Darrell, another local veteran who served in the convoys.Mr Scott did his boot camp training at HMS Collingwood, the British Navy headquarters. He then did electrical training at HMS Vernon Electrical Training School in Portsmouth. He did further training at Roedean, a famous girls school in Brighton before the war. From there he went back to the drafting barracks at HMS Vernon and waited to be assigned to a ship.“I was there for a few weeks when an amazing thing happened,” he said. “Because we weren’t doing anything, every morning we were divided into squads to do various chores. I seemed to always be missing out. This time they picked me for sentry duty at 12am overlooking the sea. The petty officer called out my name, and as he was handing out rifles, I said, ‘Chief, I’ve never fired a gun in my life’. He said, ‘Don’t worry son, I’m not giving you any bullets’. So there I was walking up and down for four hours with a rifle with no bullets.”After a few weeks he was drafted onto HMSPremier, an American escort carrier with the Arctic convoys. The convoys sailed from the United Kingdom, Iceland, and North America to northern ports of the Soviet Union. There were 78 convoys between August 1941 and May 1945. About 1,400 merchant ships delivered vital supplies to the Soviet Union, escorted by ships of the Royal Navy, Royal Canadian Navy, and the United States Navy. Eighty-five merchant vessels and 16 Royal Navy warships two cruisers, six destroyers and eight other escort ships in these convoys were lost during the war. Mr Scott’s job was to maintain the equipment needed to run take-offs and landings.“I joined HMSPremier at the bottom of the Clyde River and sailed across Firth and into Scapa Flow, Scotland,” said Mr Scott. “That was the home base for the Royal Navy. We served in about six or seven different operations where we provided convoy for American cargo ships.”He remembered being in an operation where a German destroyer carrying heavy water, an ingredient in nuclear bomb production, was sunk.“We were just north of Bergen, Norway,” said Mr Scott. “We were about ten to 15 miles to the rear of the convoy when one of our destroyers sank the German heavy water ship. After that we turned and were trying to get away pell mell, because we knew every German plane in the area had been alerted. We went to our alarm stations.”There was a contingent of Grumman F4F Wildcat planes on board Mr Scott’s carrier. They were flown off the carrier, but much to everyone on the HMSPremier’s surprise, they reappeared only a half-hour later.“It was a time of high pressure over the area,” said Mr Scott. “There was no wind or anything, but a sea fog developed. The admiral in charge just moved everyone into [it] it could have been ten square miles wide. The Germans were above our heads, but they couldn’t see us so they couldn’t bomb us.”Mr Scott said he remembered another time when he was standing on deck and sailing in a convoy of about 20 ships.“While we were there all hell broke loose,” he said. “The ship I was looking at was torpedoed and was sunk. Within minutes it was gone.”But life went on as usual. As he stood there, there was a broadcast over the ship’s loudspeaker. All men on punishment duty had to report to a certain deck for punishment drill.“I thought, ‘here we are on punishment drill and these poor buggers have just been blown out of the water’,” he said.But he said that being on an escort carrier meant that he was a bit more protected. The escort carrier was always kept at the centre of the convoy and never sailed on the fringes, which was one of the more dangerous places to be.“We were always the eyes and ears with planes searching for U-boats left, right and centre,” he said. “Our ship was stocked to the gunnels. While back at home we could only have 2oz of meat each week, on the carrier, we could eat as much as we liked. We became the mother ship to escort vessels round about.”He remembered seeing a ship he had worked on before joining the war, the HMSAmbuscade.“In 1942, she came into the Clyde and there was something wrong with her generators,” he said. “A top mechanic and I went to service that. Then, while in the convoy, there she was sitting beside us. The boys from the Ambuscade came aboard. We ran movies and they had food and then went back to their own ship at night. In the morning they were just starting to sail out, had taken up a position just off portside. It wasn’t [fairly close] when it was torpedoed by a German U-boat which had come to the surface. But the U-boat in its haste to sink the destroyer had blown its cover. It took a few minutes for the U-boats to go back down, and in that time one of our destroyers ran right over it and cut it in two.”Another time he remembered an Avenger bomber aircraft crash landed on the aircraft carrier, carrying eight depth charges (explosives meant to blow up submarines). It landed on the edge of the carrier and dangled precariously.“Why it didn’t blow up, I don’t know,” Mr Scott said. “We had to get an armourer and make him crawl under each wing and take out the fuses. It could have blown the back end off our ship. After the depth charges were defused, we took a great, big bulk of timber and eased it under the plane and tipped it into the sea.”His age made him naive to the danger, he insisted.“At 20 you never think you could die,” he said.At the end of the war he joined the crew of the HMSZodiac which was more of a good will tour. The ship would go from town to town in England and there would be parades of the victorious allies. He did sentry duty in Kiel, Germany. From there he went to Copenhagen, Denmark.“The Germans had occupied them, and when we won the war we became the great saviours,” he said. “When our ship came in they practically carried us off the ship. I made great friendships with the Danish people. Eventually, I went back to live with a family in a suburb of Copenhagen, but then we gradually separated through time and distance.”After the war he qualified for a medal, but never accepted one.“I was so disenchanted with war and all the things that were happening that I never claimed any medals,” he said. “War to me is only a sign of mankind’s stupidity. It is not something to be proud of.”Mr Scott came to Bermuda in 1963 on a three-year contract to work in Masters’ electrical division.“I have been here ever since,” he said. After a few years I qualified for status and I am a Bermudian. Then I started my own business, Saber Electric and ran it for about 20 years. I am now retired.”