An Epitaph to Bill Linsky
An Irish Geordie
Who joined the Merchant Navy in 1938 at the age of seventeen
He was bombed and shipwrecked several times, spent seven days in an open boat, two other ships on which he served were torpedoed and were sunk. After many trips to Canada, America, and Russia he became bomb happy, and in 1944 this grateful country threw him out of the service and onto the human scrap heap, "Ceasing to fulfill the physical requirements of a merchant seaman" Similar to many others, Bill died unlamented in 1978. The following is the epitaph he wrote.
When I’d stowed away on my first ship I had wanted adventure. I was penniless, but
at seventeen it didn’t matter. The Merchant Service certainly supplied the adventure,
but I finished as poor as I had been five years earlier. My pay had started at around
£9 a month, increasing to £13 when war came, and again to £18 by 1942 however, more
than half that time I wasn’t on a ship, so my total earnings for five years were
only about £450. It’s no wonder that £200 from the Ironclad seemed like the wealth
of kings. I came out with a lot of experience and appalling nightmares to last for
the rest of my life.
In WW1, people like me were shot as cowards. In WW2 we were called
bomb happy and sent on our way. Now it is called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Subsequently, many years later, I was diagnosed as having PATS, and granted a pension.
it wasn’t until I 974 that the Merchant Servicemen began to get pensions, but then
only for wounds they could prove occurred in service. Almost thirty years after the
war ended, better late than never we were glad to receive it. Too bad for those who
didn’t last the distance.
When I walked away with my ‘mad card,’ as my friends called
it, I was given no psychiatric treatment. I didn’t notice this omission, as it never
occurred to me that I had anything wrong with me. In hindsight, I consider myself
very lucky to have avoided a frontal lobotomy, which left the patient just as crazy,
but more amenable and quietly half witted. So time took its natural course and now
I pass for normal, along with the millions of others who were war damaged, many of
them much worse than I. Just twenty-
Am I ashamed of my record? Most certainly not. I shoveled
a hell of a lot of coal bringing food to Britain. Every merchant seaman did more
to keep the country afloat than all the politicians put together. The newspapers
were constantly praising the Merchant Navy for their gallantry. ‘How can we repay
them?’ they asked. Well, money would have been nice for a start. The service was
treated appallingly. Not only was our pay stopped if the boat was sunk, but there
was no sick allowance and no hospitalization. Wives and children got no pension—nothing
except a telegram: ‘We regret to inform you that your husband I son / brother is
missing, presumed lost.’ I didn’t have a financial stake or any future prospects
to encourage my patriotism.
The fact that the King even thought that he wanted my
services in the army to help him defend his seven or more castles, his horse drawn
coaches, and the Crown jewels was puzzling. He’d had Churchill’s ‘two million soldiers
bristling with arms’ for years, and I was sure the millions of Americans would have
given a hand. His situation must have been desperate, but I didn’t want responsibility
for his welfare. I was glad they’d had second thoughts about my usefulness to him
and all his family. After reading over these recollections, I wonder why I survived
when 30,000 merchant seamen perished. At Tower Hill, near the Tower of London, there
is a monument to those seamen who died in both World Wars. I often go into the Garden
of Remembrance. The names of all the men are only carvings on stone now: there are
not many left to mourn them. I remember them, though. I can’t forget them. Many were
my shipmates.
