This novel traces the history of Rock music through the journey of one man:
The Blues Muse: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781518621147: Books
All at Sea with Guthrie
We watched from afar as Europe burned. There were mixed feelings about that Hitler and whether we should get involved. Many people thought back to the last time we sunk our boots in Europe. There were many families with places laid at the table but nobody to pick up the silverware. Yet the more we heard about Hitler the more agitated some of us became.
In the end we held off for over two years before the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour in December of 1941 pulled us in. By that time I had signed up to the Merchant Navy and found myself part of the Battle of the Atlantic. Our job was to get the supplies through to our allies in Britain and Russia.
Every day flotillas set sail carrying valuable food and military equipment for the beleaguered people of Britain and Russia. Without us they would have starved and without our replacement parts, weapons and ammunition everything would have ground to a halt.
Anyone who thinks it was an easy option only has to look at the death-rate. We were blown up by mines, torpedoed and harried by ships and planes. The Nazis threw everything at us to stop us getting through.
It was on those ships that I met up with a curly haired, fast-talking trickster by the name of Woody Guthrie and his slick sidekick Cisco Houston. I’d never met white men quite like those two. They had no side to them. As far as they were concerned people was people. They took ‘em as they found ‘em. Woody was the scruffy quick witted one who spoke with a drawl, and Cisco the refined ladies man with the pencil thin moustache, good looks and quiet smooth voice. They made an incongruous pair but you could see that they loved each other. Both men had seen life and come through. They’d done their share of ramblin’ and hoboin’. That was something we had in common.
Our love of music was the saving grace of those hazardous trips. We lay in our bunk listening to the throb of the engine and thud of the waves expecting any moment the explosion that signalled a mine, torpedo or bomb. There was no knowing when it would hit. It drove you mad thinking about it. On every trip we would watch as sister ships went down and did what we could to gather up the oil-smeared survivors. We saw the horrendous burns and wounds and knew that any minute it could be our turn. An invisible U-boat might be lining us up right at that moment.
To pass the time we sang and gambled. Our old guitars took a hammering as we made those ships ring. I bet Hitler could have heard us right over there in his German bunker. I bet we scared off a good number of those U-boats. They must have thought there was a whole fleet of us out to get them.
Woody was the one who sang loudest. We just joined in and egged him along. He made up song after song about Hitler and how we were going to beat his ass and kick him up the panzers. Some of those songs were hilarious and had us in stitches. They sure took your mind off what might be lurking beneath those waves.
It was on the SS William B Travis that we got both unlucky and lucky. We were carrying airplane spares to the Ruskies in Minsk when we hit a mine. It blew a hole in our side and killed a man. We felt the whole ship buck and judder when it hit. But we patched it up and headed for port, limping in to get fixed up.
I did many tours with those guys. Without Woody’s cheerfulness and music I don’t think I would have made it through.
Our last voyage together was in the Sea Porpoise. We were delivering troops for the D-day landings when we were torpedoed off the Utah beach. Once again our luck held and all three of us came through unscathed and we staggered through to dock in Newcastle to get patched up.