I would very much like to find a history of this ship which must have been written by someone who knew her intimately having perhaps served out his wartime years as a member of her crew. I remember speaking in a church in Aptos, California -a seaside town some 100k south of San Francisco as the crow flies- back in 1976. I was speaking on behalf of The Gideons and told the folk that I had received a New Testament from the Gideons in 1943 when I was on board 'The Holbrook'. As I was shaking hands with people at the door after the service a man waited back to talk to me and told me that his Dad had served on the Holbrook throughout the war. We miss so many opportunities as we rush through life. I didn't even get his name. But, who knows? With the advent of the 'Information Highway' there may yet be opportunity to contact someone who remembers her and has told her story. From here and there I have picked up fragments. I know, for instance, that she was at sea and bound for Pearl Harbour with a complement of American troops, when the Japs attacked on December 7th, 1941. She then had to play cat and mouse with the Jap navy and Airforce, to avoid being found until it was safe to discharge her 'cargo'. I know also that, in 1943, she brought 2500 American troops to Brisbane. Under Admiralty restrictions "the numbers of personnel should be restricted to 250." (Presumably this was an Australian Admiralty restriction which the Americans took no notice of). Our total complement was 580 and, on a previous trip to San Francisco in late 1943, she carried 910 of RAAF, Navy, and American Army wounded. We boarded her at Hamilton Wharf in the afternoon of 5th May 1943 after a train trip from Sydney. We comprised a group of 12 officers and 188 sergeants bound for the United Kingdom. We had finished our Service flying in Australia, we all had our wings whether we be pilots, navigators or wireless air-gunners and we were bound now for operational training in England. Also on board were a further 35 officers and 169 sergeants bound for Canada. What they were going to do in Canada I don't know unless like us they were going to 'stage' through that country as we would through America with their final destination being the U.K. The remaining passengers comprised 4 Australian Naval Officers, 2 Petty Officers and 21 Naval ratings, 93 American army and navy personnel and 56 civilians -53 American and 3 Australian- and one RAAF Nursing Sister. I well remember the murmur of interest which went through the ship as this one lone girl came up the gang-plank the next morning. We saw nothing of her from that time forward but, no doubt, she was carefully looked after by the upper deck. We couldn't have been further removed from them or from her for we were accommodated in the depths of what once must have been a cargo hold. It was filled with three tier metal bunks and we were left to sort ourselves out once we had descended into its bowels. Had we been torpedoed we would have had no chance of escape as we were well below the water line. Nevertheless, boat drill became a regular exercise in the days that lay ahead to condition us to think that some of us, at least, might make it in the event of a catastrophe. On the morning of the 6th May I remember being on deck looking across the wool sheds at Nundah towards Wavell Heights and thinking of home and of how interested they would be to know I was here if only I was able to tell them. That, of course, was not possible. I could see the cars travelling towards the city along what is now Kinsgford Smith Drive and recalled how, in my civilian days in 1941, driving to work in the back of Mr Grimley's utility, sharing the space with the charcoal burner which produced the gas to run the car, he would often drive as close as he could get to the wharves to see what shipping was in the river. I wondered whether he had gone by this morning and whether Dad was travelling with him. Sometime in the early afternoon things began to stir and it was apparent that we were getting under way. What excitement! A long sea voyage at the Government's expense. A small compensation for putting our lives at risk in the service of our country. We were determined to enjoy every moment of it. So what:that we were not travelling first class! that we slept at night in the fetid atmosphere of a cargo hold filled with sweaty bodies! that we had only two meals per day, one in early morning and the other mid to late afternoon -hash and beans ladled into one compartment of our tin eating tray and the dessert, whatever it was, into the other! We were young and used to service life with its accepted privations and the happy camaraderie more than offset the loss of more refined travel arrangements. We were pulled out into the middle of the river by a tug and soon began to make our own way down to the mouth and out into Moreton Bay. The destroyer 'Vendetta' left its moorings at Caloundra at 3p.m. and set course to meet us as we travelled north towards Cape Moreton and then on an easterly course which would eventually take us to the north of Norfolk Island and then to an unknown course across the Pacific to San Francisco. Our last sightings of the land we were leaving were of the Glasshouse Mountains looking, no doubt, much as Captain Cook would have seen them when he named them. Apart from the destroyer which kept us company till night began to fall and which wished us 'bon voyage' by steaming alongside with its hooter hooting before veering off to starboard and rapidly vanishing into the dusk, we saw only one other ship. This was the ill-fated 'Centaur'. She must have been tied up in the river with us and left either soon before or soon after on her way to Sydney. There was quite a commotion on board when she was sighted crossing our bows. A little over a week later when we were in mid-Pacific, we were told that she had been sunk with a heavy loss of life off Cape Moreton on her return trip from Sydney to Port Moresby. I have read since that Japanese submarines operating out of their base at Truck in the Carolines had been actively patrolling the shipping lanes from Sydney to Brisbane and had, in the days before and after we sailed sunk numerous coastal vessels but none with such disastrous consequences as the sinking of the Centaur -a hospital ship, brightly lit and clearly identified as such. Life was very indolent for the three weeks we were at sea. Day followed day with much the same routine. There were the meal parades and the boat drills but little else regimentation. We filled in the days playing bridge and 500. Jim Tudberry, Phil Thomas, Sid Ward and myself regularly made a foursome. Nightfall was usually heralded with an American voice proclaiming over the ship's tannoy system: "Now hear this! Now hear this! All windows and portholes closed. No lights on the open decks." This meant no smoking on the open decks so all the smokers, who were most of us, had to smoke indoors. Some of the more enterprising types, with an eye to making money - but why anyone should be interested in making money at a time like that I do not know - hopefully their money perished with them-had set up a gambling den in one of the larger 'state rooms'. This was well patronised by fellows who had nothing else to do of an evening except to brave the cold night air on deck or to lie on their bunks and read. Much money was won and lost mainly at the Crown and Anchor table but the atmosphere was so thick with cigarette smoke that it could be cut with a knife. People these days are so touchy about the dangers of passive smoking -they would not have had words to describe their peril had they been thrown into that atmosphere. But, of course, they are much more conscious of health risks than we were, probably because they have no other risks with which to compare them. There was some attempt made by the authorities to stimulate our intellects and somehow or other I was detailed to take part in a debate on the question: "Should State Governments be abolished?" A stupid question to give to a bunch of nineteen to twenty year olds who, at that time, couldn't have cared less about what went on in the civil structure. Instinctively we knew that there were many issues of far greater moment which had to be resolved before it was time to even think about the 'weak piping time of peace' which would eventually come, and none of us could have any certainty that we would be around to be interested in it. Fortunately the debate never occurred. There was great camaraderie aboard particularly amongst those with whom we had trained at Uranquinty and elsewhere. We saw little of our officer colleagues -they were housed in cabins as befitted their status -no cargo holds for them! But we did not know, we could not, that one in three of that happy company would not make it back to the land they were leaving. On the 25th May we sighted the coast of California -the first and only landfall of the entire trip. For most of that day we made our progress northwards towards San Francisco. Navy blimps appeared in the sky -no doubt, keeping an eye out for submarines but all we saw in the sea were seals -we were now in colder waters. Next morning we entered San Francisco harbour with much excitement although, parochially, we judged it less spectacular than Sydney. The ship anchored in the harbour within sight of the island of Alcatraz and, we were transferred into lighters which took us to shore. There we boarded Pullman coaches and we were on our way by mid afternoon on our six day train journey to the east coast and Camp Miles Standish.

Strange that the things that have stayed in my memory concerning my school days at Toowoomba Grammar have not been academic endeavours, such as they were, or any of the other serious matters for which my father was paying out good money to keep me there as a boarder, but rather, the escapades that some of the boys, including, at times, myself, got into. The Oxford dictionary defines an escapade as ' a breaking loose from restraint; a flighty piece of conduct.' Boarding School was, of necessity, a place of restraint. The majority of the boys submitted to it but there were always some who did not. These might be termed ill-disciplined, rebellious, disobedient, disrespectful of authority or by any other appropriate epithet; maybe, these terms did describe some. But, for the most part, these were rarer spirits who, knowing the rules and the sanctions that were attached to the breaking of them, nevertheless prized their individual liberty and, in their thirst for excitement, were willing to balance the risk of being caught and its attendant painful consequences against the thrill of being free. We were still living in a man's world, between the two World Wars- in a patriarchal society- and boys were treated as men in the making. Boarding School was not only a place of academic learning, but, as a microcosm of the wider society, a place where a boy was being trained to take his place in the adult world. He was learning manly values; to take his knocks on the football field; to shake down with other men in a male society; to recognise and respect the virtues of honesty, truthfulness, fortitude and fair dealing and to shun such things that do not 'become a man'-deceiptfulness, cunning, cowardice, self-servingness, disloyalty and the like. And alongside all this, he was taught respect for women. Old habits die hard, develope3d as they were through home and school training. I still find myself raising my hat to a woman, standing up if a woman enters the room and offering my seat to a woman in a train or a bus. Usually I am told to sit down, my offer being interpreted as a patronising gesture. The modern woman abhors any implication that she is in any respect inferior to the male and the modern man seems to be prepared to treat her as his equal and quite happily lets her stand. But all this is having little bearing on the title to this treatise-'The Saturday Book'. This was an exercise book, suitably ruled, that was kept in the Masters' Common Room. In it were recorded the names of boys who, during the week, had been awarded a Saturday detention. This may have been for some mis-behaviour in class or for neglecting to complete an allotted task. The Saturday had to be worked out under supervision at School between 9 a.m. and 12 noon on the forthcoming Saturday and, on the preceding Friday assembly, the names of the miscreants were solemnly read out from the platform by one of the masters. There was a further dimension. If a boy earned two Saturdays in the one week, not only did he have to work them out on consecutive Saturdays, but he also earned himself a visit to the Headmaster's study where he collected the further imposition of two to four lashes across his backside from the boss, affectionately known as 'Harry'. 'Slim Jim' was a longish lawyer cane with a reaping hook bend towards one end from being frequently bent around a succession of boy's posteriors. 'Fat Jack' was shorter, fatter and with no bend. Each of them hurt, their sting being like a thousand needles but most boys preferred 'Fat Jack' because he had a more accurate trajectory and his stripes could be confined to the area that was protected by the football pants hidden under the outer trousers. On this week, Tudberry II (he had a twin brother at school who was Tudberry I), Wolf and Frizzell each has three Saturdays recorded before Friday. This was serious business. 'Harry' would not be in a good mood nor did the prospect of three consecutive detentions please. Some decisive action was needed and needed quickly. On Thursday night, when all were asleep in their respective dormitories, these three arose like ghosts, dressed, crept down to the Masters' Common Room and stole the Saturday book, thereby conferring a blessing not only upon themselves but also on the other boys whose names were recorded for that week- an unmerited favour that was duly acknowledged in the Friday assembly when no Saturdays could be read out. With their ill-gotten gain safely secured by one of them our three musketeers stole down to the bike-shed, appropriated three bikes owned either by boarders or by day-boys who had not taken them home, and rode through the night some twenty miles to Wolf's farm where, in the dead of night, the sods with their bayonet's turning, by the misty moonbeams ghostly light' they buried, not Sir John Moore, but the Saturday Book. Then they rode back and arrived just before breakfast. With sheepish looks they took their respective places at table but, before the repast was over, the 'buzz' had gone around the room and their nocturnal exploit and the blow they had struck in the name of freedom became common knowledge. At the time, no one thought it unusual that they had ridden forty miles to accomplish something that might just have easily been done within the confines of the school's 50 acres. But boys don't think with an adult's logic. For sure! That Saturday Book was dead and gone, buried, not in the sea of God's forgetfulness, but just as surely, never to be remembered again. What puzzled the masters who conducted classes on the Friday, and delighted the boys who were in them, was that, one after the other, at various times and in various classes, Tudberry, Wolf and Frizzell dozed off to sleep in the middle of the lesson and had to be prodded each time into wakefulness. For this exploit, if for no other reason, their names have lived for evermore in the memories of their school mates. Sadly, two of them have an even wider memorial. Bill Tudberry was killed on the night of 29 June 1944 in an attack against the railway yards at Blainville and Metz, and Cecil Frizzell died on 5 December 1943 when his Lancaster crashed on take-off at Waddington in England. Both were Air-Gunners serving with RAF Bomber Command.

The Air Force had their own particular jargon and whenever they went out to drop mines in enemy waters it was always 'to plant vegetables.' From the earliest months of the war mine laying had been a feature of RAF operations. The earliest sortie was by 15 Hampdens on 13/14 April 1940 to mine the sea lanes off Denmark between German ports and Norway and the last was by 14 Lancasters on 25/26 April 1945 to mine Oslo Fjord. My only trip was on 6 November 1944 as part of a force of 12 Lancasters, six of them from 460, each of whom was to lay six mines in Heligoland Bight. The round trip took four and a half hours but they were probably the longest flying hours of any that we spent on our tour. At briefing we were told that there was a front approaching rapidly from the West, that we would take off in clear conditions but that, on our return, the front would have passed over the East coast of England and would be out in the North Sea. There would be a band of cumulus cloud form with its base at 2000 feet and tops reaching to 16000 feet; icing conditions would exist and the only recourse for safe flying would be to come home under the cloud. Mine-laying was a delicate business. It was essential that they be put down in the right place and that we be able to tell the Navy just where they had been sown. The boffins had calculated that, given the existing wind conditions, if the aircraft flew at a certain height, a certain speed and on a certain course and then dropped its mines at a certain point on that course, they would land just where they were intended. They were, of course, parachute mines and the amount of drift would have been taken into account. To ensure that all these conditions were adhered to, a camera was rigged up in the navigator's compartment. It focussed on the H2S screen and, no doubt also, on the navigator's instrument panel (he had a duplicate set of altimeter, airspeed indicator and repeater compass) and its trigger was linked in with the bomb-aimer's release button. When he pressed his button the camera flashed and produced its picture. The instructions given at briefing were that a timed run had to be made from an identifiable point on one of the Frisian Islands on a particular course and the mines were to be released at the end of that run. As the met man was telling us about this approaching front, that rain was pelting down on the roof of the nissen hut which served as a briefing room. A loud guffaw greeted his statement that we would take off in clear conditions. Obviously, the front had moved in faster than had been anticipated and was already well over us, with its foremost cloud well out into the North Sea. We took off in the rain at ten minutes past six p.m. and climbed steadily on course to our briefing height of 12,000 feet. Instructions were to maintain this height on the outward leg and for the dropping of the mines and then to come down for the return trip. I was paying particular attention to the air temperature gauge as we were in dense cloud all the time. The temperature dropped steadily as we climbed, passed the zero degree centigrade and was just under four degrees below when we levelled out at 12,000 feet. This was in the danger area for icing. We were told in training that there was a meteorological condition of super-cooled water vapour: water drops which were actually below freezing point and yet not frozen -not turned into ice. But, if these drops were disturbed, say by an aircraft wing passing through them, they would immediately freeze. The effect, as it was explained to us, would be for sheet-ice to build up on the wing. The leading edge would, as it were, hit the water drop, the drop would flow back over the top surface of the wing and, as it flowed, would turn to ice. Any lengthy period of flying in these conditions would result in such a build up of ice that the aerodynamics of the wing would be altered thus producing less lift and this, combined with the weight of the ice, would cause the plane to drop out of the sky. If, as it dropped to lower heights and warmer atmosphere the ice melted, it could recover its flying ability. If the ice did not melt before it reached the ground: too bad! Well this was the theory and I truly believed it. I was determined not to stay at 12,000 feet but to climb still higher until I reached colder air where, if we were still in cloud, the water drops would be converted to ice crystals. These could build up like a rime frost on the leading edge of the wing but would invariably break off and cause no real flying hazard. So up we went. I failed in my captain's responsibility by not specifically telling Fred Smith , the navigator, of my intention although, if he had not been so engrossed in his charts, he should have heard me talking with Ian Hall, the Flight Engineer, and saying, "Ian, we are not staying here." As it happened, when Fred looked up from his charts to check his instruments. Navigators are a breed all of their own: they keep a careful eye on their pilot to ensure he is flying the course, speed and height as instructed and do not hesitate to come on the intercom with, "What course are you flying, pilot?" when he might be just one or two degrees off the one they have given him. He saw that we were flying at 17,000 feet he almost had a fit. "What height are you flying?" he shouted down the intercom. "How do you expect me to navigate when you're five thousand feet over the briefing height?" "Fred", I said, "I'm sorry you didn't pick up on it, but we couldn't stay at 12,000 feet." "God knows where we'll be on E.T.A. (Estimated Time of Arrival)," he said. He was navigating by dead reckoning without the aid of any means that could tell him where he was. We were over the sea and we had to maintain H2S silence until the given hour of 2000 hours (8 p.m.) when we should be over the aiming point. I tried to calm him down by saying, "We'll come down to 12000 feet on ETA, you can turn on the set and ,hopefully, we'll pick up some identifiable landmark." It was inevitable that we would find either the Friesian Islands or the Dutch coast. We couldn't be too far off course even though the winds could be quite different at 17,000 feet from those predicted at 12,000. Eventually we came out into clear air with cumulus tops beneath us and it was time to let down. We were still in clear air at 12000 feet although there was cloud all below us. At 2000 hours Fred switched on the H2S and soon announced that we were right over the aiming point. We should have been, according to his calculations, over the point at which the timed run was to start, so things were not too bad. But it meant changing course to get back to the starting point and coming over that point at the right height, speed and direction. It was not a healthy region in which to be wasting time as there were German night-fighter bases on the Frisians and I alerted the gunners to be on the lookout. At one stage Jack McQueen did see what he believed to be another aircraft slipping by in the dark in an opposite direction. He thought it was probably a fighter. But we came around at Fred's direction and started our run and at 2015 hrs Jack Trist released our mines. But one hung up! This created a problem because these were things that could not be jettisoned just anywhere. There was nothing for it than to go round again, do the run all over and try a second time to drop it. This we did but again it hung up. I was not prepared to tempt fate by having a third try so we determined to bring it home. We did not know why it had hung up. Was it an electrical fault? Or was it because the release mechanism had iced up? Would it fall into the bomb bays if and when the mechanism thawed out? What would happen when we landed? Was it likely to fall right through and, if so, what would then happen? Were we likely to go up in a sheet of blue flame? It was no good dwelling on these possibilities because we had no option but to bring it home and hope for the best. Steadily we lost height down through the cloud to try to find clear air under the cloud base. This should have been encountered at 2000 feet but at that height we were still very much in cloud and now we were encountering very severe turbulence. The aircraft was bucking around as it never had before. We finally found the cloud base at 500 feet and, at this height, with the cloud just above us, the sea beneath us and driving rain squalls all around us we drove steadily on towards home. Fred, who sometimes was troubled with a squeamish stomach got up at one stage to make his way to the elsan (the toilet) at the rear of the aircraft and be sick. As he was passing the WOP's position Harry Ellis grabbed him and offered him an empty pocket in his canvas WOP's satchel. Harry had already used the other pocket. The rest of us were O.K. but I have never had a bumpier ride. My feet and arms were working constantly to keep the plane straight and level and on course. Eventually we crossed the coast and could see drem systems, the circle of lights which surround airfields and indicate the circuit for planes landing at night, but they were of airfields to the north of Binbrook. Fred was able to give a correction that brought us into our own circuit. At 500 feet we circled the drome and told the control tower we had one vegetable hung up. "Stand by Oboe," came the response. No doubt there was much conferring in the tower as to what should be done. But again, what options did they have? We had to land there or at some other drome and I guess, they decided that they could hardly remove the risk, such as it was, to someone else. So the message came through, "Oboe, pancake!" It was still pouring with rain and as I came in on the approach, there was so much water obscuring the windscreen that I could hardly see the runway lights. For probably the only time in my tour I turned on the landing lights to help me see the ground. The rain, in the glare of the lights seemed to be coming like horizontal glass bullets and splattering against the glass in front of me but somehow I felt for the ground and eventually dropped it on without too much of a jolt. And nothing happened. The mine stayed where it was, still hung up. It was removed by the armourers next morning. We were the last to land - a good half hour after the first of our six and thirteen minutes after the fifth. Group Captain Edwards was waiting just inside the door to the interrogation room and he greeted me as I came in: "Good to see you Baskerville. We thought you were gone tonight!" But, by God's good grace we made it. Many times we had to fly in bad weather but this was the only trip in which I saw fit to comment in my log book, "Weather grim."