Yangtze Incident

[Art]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrxwxcT0pLA

The link is to a movie depicting the last military action in China by the British. It began when the Frigate HMS Amethyst was fired on by Chinese Communist artillery while on a routine run to Nanking in April, 1949. She was very badly shot up, suffered very heavy casualties and was bottled up for 100 days before she was able to slip away. The movie is very well done. Much of it was filmed on the Amethyst which was not operational at the time and one of her operational sisters. The rate of fire of WWII era quick firing or "automatic" dual purpose guns was impressive and you get to see a demonstration of that with 4" twin mounts really cranking out the shells...I mean blanks.

An item not mentioned much in the movie is Simon the ships cat. Simon was a black and white tuxedo cat and a very good "ratter." During the first engagement he was badly wounded by shrapnel but he medics patched him up and before long, even though he wasn't fully recovered he started catching rats again. This became a very useful function because the longer Amethyst was stuck the worse the rat problem became. There was a very large rat on board the crew named "Mao Tse Tung." They were worried that the not fully recovered Simon would go after "Mao" and be seriously injured or killed, not to worry, after a hard fight Simon killed "Mao." As Simon's exploits became public he actually began to get fan mail and a member of the crew was assigned to answer it. Simon was promoted to "Ship's Cat First Class" and awarded the "Dickens Medal" (sometimes called "The Animal VC) which is given to military animals that have shown exceptional courage.

As I said it's a full length movie and just under two hours long. It is not boring.

[lyman]

I need to go look for it, but here is a website out there I found over on gunboards of ships cats and mascots,

very interesting site

[Mark in Ottawa]

Shortly after we were first married (50 years ago today) we purchased our prized semi-detached house in the suburbs of Toronto. Our next door neighbour was a retired Royal Canadian Navy chief petty officer who told me that he had been on exchange duty with the Royal Navy and was on the RN ship that went up the river to meet the Amethyst. I was aware of the incident but stupidly never asked him to elaborate on it. I was much more interested in the fact that in the navy, he had become an expert in logistics and on retirement was hired by a very large grocery chain at several times his navy salary.

[lyman]

Happy Anniversary Mark and Mrs Mark!!

[Mark in Ottawa]

Lyman: Thank you. Because of the pandemic, we couldn't get together as a family but we used facetime and had virtual toasts.

[rayg]

Congratulations Mark...As you know, not a lot of marriages last that long these days.. The wife and I make 60 yrs last month...