Escorted overseas by HMS Rodney

We were sent right away to the manning depot in Toronto This was in February when I was commissioned in the Air Force and I remember in Easter which would have been what, two months later, Easter we spent at sea on the transport, the HMT Georgik, which was a beautiful luxury liner in peacetime, she had been and Georgik was a very fast ship and there was another Polish ship, Batory and Rodney was our escort, the royal naval, Rodney was a cruiser, I guess. Anyway, these three ships could sail faster than any of the ordinary convoys and faster than the submarines too. So these three, we were escorted out off the coast of Nova Scotia by the Air Force briefly and then I guess we had a few corvettes with us to start with and then we were on our own, the three ships, straight across and we landed at Gourock, in Scotland.

Mr. Beall describes having his vessel, the Georgik, and one other troop ship escorted to Scotland by the battleship, HMS Rodney.

Herbert Beall

Herbert Beall was born in 1908 in Ottawa, Ontario. He attended Lisgard Collegiate, where he commanded the 94th Cadet Battalion, and also joined the Governor-General's Footguards. He entered the Canadian Officer Training Corps at university, and received his commission in 1931. In 1932, Mr. Beall joined the Royal Canadian Signal Corps. In February, 1941 he transferred to the RCAF as a Flying Officer with the rank of Lieutenant. His service in England saw him at radar stations in the Orkney Islands and the Isle of Wight. He later went to the Middle East, where he set up and maintained portable radar systems in Egypt, and to a lesser extent Kuwait and Jordan.