Basil Bradley

Basil Bradley

I joined the Royal Canadian Navy in August 1943 as an ordinary Seaman. I took all the different courses that the Navy offered and was drafted to the new Ship HMCS Stathadam under construction at Victoria BC. I was placed on the 4 inch Gun at my action station and enjoyed all the ramifications that took place on this Gun.
While on this Ship we traveled to many places including Gibraltar and Great Britain.
We sank the German Submarine 1302 and suffered the loss of six of our crew while
attacking Submarine 1024.
At wars end we were drafted to Scotland to take home 100 men who had been prisoners of war. This occupation really crowded us but we could care less as these guys had been though a lot and we were happy in being one of the ships that would take them home.
The weather was great all the way across; as we arrived in Halifax and nobody paid any attention to us which didn’t surprise us as we had been here before.

When we pulled into the dock we noticed that the army had a bunch of trucks to take care
of their men and when these guys left us some of them kissed the ground and they saluted
us and got into their trucks and left us.

I guess you can imagine how crowded Halifax was with all the ships coming home and after a very short leave we were ordered out. A lot of our crew left us at this point but we carried on cruising around Nova Scotia, Quebec, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. It took me till December before getting final discharge.