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Lieutenant Douglas Laurance GILLING RANVR
The last of the Australian Yachties

Douglas Laurance Gilling was born on August 3, 1921 in Mosman, New South Wales, and educated at Knox Grammar School and the University of Sydney; his father was the English-born architect F Glynn Gilling.

In July 1940, when the Admiralty extended to Australia its "Yachtsmen Scheme" (the Royal Naval Volunteer Supplementary Reserve or RNVSR), Doug Gilling was among the first to sign up.

It was intended for "gentlemen who are interested in yachting or similar pursuits", though, in practice, few of the eventual 500 volunteers had much previous knowledge.  Doug had done a couple of offshore races in his father’s boat.  He had also already passed the Royal Australian Navy’s anti-submarine warfare course, but was told: "You passed, and we’ll call you up when you’re 20."

That birthday was still another seven or eight months away, so Gilling said to himself: "Nuts to that."  Instead, in September he sailed with others in RMS Strathnaver to join the war.

Once he was in the UK, Gilling’s training involved a period at sea on the lower deck before being sent to HMS King Alfred, a stone frigate (land establishment) at Hove, Sussex, where between 1940 and 1946 some 22,500 officers would be trained in a 10-week course.

Gilling’s first sea time was in the Hunt-class destroyer HMS Berkeley, and he is thought to have been the only Australian to take part as an ammunition loader at a twin 4-inch gun, in Operation Jubilee, the raid on Dieppe in August 1942.

On 19 August 1942, Berkeley escorted the Dieppe raiding force, screening the landing forces.  Berkeley then provided gunfire support, but the 4-inch guns of the destroyers proved to be of limited effectiveness.  The Allied assault on the German-occupied port of Dieppe that day had been a disaster.  Of the more than 6000 predominantly Canadian men who made it ashore, almost 60 per cent were either killed, wounded or captured.

While the force was withdrawing, Berkeley was hit by two bombs dropped from Focke-Wulf Fw 190s which broke the ship's back.  Sixteen of Berkeley's crew, together with a number of Canadian troops, who had been picked up from a landing craft shortly before, were killed.


HMS Berkeley settling down in the water after being bombed during the Combined Operations daylight
raid on Dieppe.  One of the destroyers boats is still alongside, empty but still attached to its davits. 
Berkeley was torpedoed shortly afterwards by British forces.

Doug remembers that:

'The Captain came to the side of the bridge,' 

'He indicated looking aft towards us, "Get off''.

'We took that as 'Abandon ship', so we went over the side.'

‘Very few of the English sailors could swim',

‘We had blue blow up life jackets, but nothing else.’

'We waited in the water, which was fortunately warm, for some hours before being picked up by other vessels.  I was picked up by a landing craft and taken to a sistership, HMS Albrighton.  There I immediately resumed my duties as an ammunition loader on her twin 4-inch turret.'

'A few dozen Canadian soldiers who had survived the carnage on the beach, and were being tended to by the surgeon on board HMS Berkeley, were wiped out by the bomb that sank it.'

'Sadly, I think, the vast majority of those killed were Canadians than of our own ship's company'.

Once back at King Alfred, Doug undertook an officer training course and volunteered to become a diver and trained as a charioteer, and when "chariots" – or two-man human torpedoes – were superseded by three-man X-Craft or mini-submarines, he again volunteered.  He practised for Operation Source, the raid on the German battleship Tirpitz in September 1943.

Doug's role would have been to exit the X-Craft underwater, swim to the steel netting protecting Tirpitz, cut the net and guide his X-Craft through to where it could lay explosive charges.  But under training he caught his thumb in a wire and it was amputated, rendering him unfit for further diving.

He took command of Motor Launch 366 based in Mombasa, escorting convoys to India, before being promoted to Lieutenant, and returning to UK to command ML 195 based in Felixstowe, providing anti-submarine patrols protecting the supply routes to Europe.  There, in Cuxhaven in May 1945, he attended the debriefing sessions of British Army units which had freed the Bergen-Belsen concentration camps.

The versatile Gilling next trained as a fighter-direction officer and was preparing to join the British Pacific Fleet in a carrier when the atomic bomb ended the war.

He returned to Australia in January 1946 to await the arrival of his war bride six months later.  Bridget Sabina Corbett-Fisher was 21 when they met while she was nursing.  They were engaged after an acquaintance of three days and married after knowing one another for 14 days.  Bridget was, "a woman of straight back and English vowels, [who] came to Australia and became a leader of various civil liberty causes, particularly the campaign for abortion law reform".  They spent their honeymoon at the Lygon Arms in the Cotswolds, then a refuge at a reasonable price for Dominion sailors.  They divorced in the 1970s and in 1972 he married horticulturist, Sarah Horton.

On 1 May 2018 Doug visited Canberra for the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Atlantic National Service of Commemoration.  He shared stories with DVA staff, including that of his 21st birthday, celebrated 'quite handsomely by the sailors' aboard the Berkeley prior to its sinking.

After drinking his own tot of rum and 'sippers' from his messmates, he had come to in a deck locker, where he’d been stowed out of sight of superiors.

He'd had 'quite a long comfortable sleep' before waking to a fair bit of teasing from his mess and crew.

After the war, Douglas became an architect and was later a Life Fellow of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects.

Douglas Gilling passed away on the 15th July 2023, aged 101.  He was the last of the "Australian Yachties".  He is survived by his four children from his first marriage and one from his second.

 

Footnote:  It is believed the Yachties were the most decorated cohort of Australian service personnel in World War 2.  Their record speaks for itself:

  • Four George Crosses (GC),

  • Ten George Medals (GM),

  • 32 Distinguished Service Crosses (DSC),

  • 38 Mentioned-in-Despatches (MiD),

  • Three Orders of the British Empire (OBE),

  • Three Members of the British Empire (MBE),

  • Two King’s Commendation for Brave Conduct, and,

  • One Conspicuous Gallantry Medal (CGM) --- the only one ever to be awarded to an Australian Navy person.

 

Sources:
Australian Naval Institute
Veteran Affairs Newsletter Winter 2018
Imperial War Museums
Life on the Line
RUSI-Vic