DOMINION MONARCH

I was one of many five-year olds on the DM's trip from Melbourne to Liverpool, arriving in early August 1945. One of the two or three memories that survive may intrigue other contributors. When standing on deck during abandon-ship practice drill, we wore lifejackets of a type I have never seen again. Their shape was of a pair of bolsters, each perhaps two feet long with a circular cross-section nine inches diameter, one at the front, the other at the back, linked by canvas straps over the shoulders and under the arms. Perhaps the grownups had a different kind, or just larger versions of ours. Was their distribution limited to the DM, or to Shaw Savill ? Has anyone a photograph, or knows where one may be seen ? I enquired at the Imperial War Museum years ago, but with no luck. This is probably a trivial question to ask in the superlative story of the DM, but standing on the deck like a regiment on parade, generally at night, and wondering what might be out there in the Pacific, still comes back, almost stealthily to me, safe in my treasured little lifejacket.

I'm just reading a book entitled 'The Old Fellow's War' by Edmond Nyst where he described his wartime journey Liverpool UK to Sydney Australia. An entertaining memoir. Of course that prompted me to this page.