The heroism of the men of the Merchant Navy who risked Axis submarines to keep Britain supplied with goods was marked by a march in Newport on Saturday. Today, MIKE BUCKINGHAM tells the story of one of the men given the freedom of the city

EVEN during the grimmest times during the war at sea there were lighter moments to be treasured.

It was in Mar del Plata on the River Plate in neutral Argentina, a riotous place for sailors for as long as their money lasted, that 19-year-old Keith Watkins of Varteg came down with appendicitis.

"The officer in charge made light of my pains and wouldn't do anything about it so I washed and dressed and went to the hospital by myself," says Keith, now 80 and living in the same Varteg street that he left all those years ago to go to war.

"I was seen by a German doctor who said I had appendicitis but would be all right until I got back to Britain.

"When I told him that seven other members of the crew had been left in hospitals in ports where we had called in Africa and India he agreed to take me in.

"I was operated on the next day. When I came round I found I was in the next bed to my mate from Pengam.

"A staff nurse was moving around the beds talking in a language neither of us could understand but which I definitely knew wasn't Spanish.

"Eventually we discovered she had been speaking Welsh, her grandparents having emigrated to Patagonia from North Wales.

"We had heck of a job convincing her that not everyone from Wales understood Welsh!"

From the moment of joining the Merchant Navy at Newport in 1941 at the age of 16 Keith was compelled to face hardships which to a modern teenager would be intolerable.

"My first ship was a Dutchman who had been in port when Germany invaded Holland and therefore could not go home," he recalls.

"I was shown to the deck crew quarters where a dozen men were having a mid-day meal of pig's trotters.

"What with the coal-dust everywhere it was worse than Varteg. The table had a gallon of tea at one end and coffee at the other and the trotters in the middle. I was invited to dig in but settled for a cup of tea."

The cheerful squalor of a merchantman was, a few weeks later, harshly counterpointed by the terrors of war when German U-boats attacked the SS Veerhaven's convoy off West Africa.

"We were off Freetown in Sierra Leone when they struck. Five of our ships went down on the first night and four the following day including a tanker that was just in front of us.

"We rigged a cargo net over the side so the tanker's sailors could scramble aboard. Most of them were covered in thick black oil with their lungs choked with oil and too exhausted to swim. Some of our sailors who could only watch helplessly had tears in their eyes.

"Two men reached the net but were too weak to scramble up it so our sailors climbed down and hauled them in. One of the rescued men was in a very bad way and died in the night."

Having slipped the submarine ambush the Veerhaven's convoy made its way to Buenos Aires in Argentina and it was there Keith struck up a friendship with a Spanish family and in particular, a young beauty by the name of Juanita Bochatay.

"I decided to walk off the ship. The thought of sailing home with those surly, miserable Dutchmen was too much. After I while I went to the British consul and told him what I'd done.

"I thought they were going to treat me as a deserter but since I was only 16 I was too young for military service anyway."

In June 1942 Keith joined the SS Nagara homeward bound from Australia with a cargo of meat.

"On the crossing our escorts - two destroyers and two corvettes - made the best of an impossible job. After Gibraltar we got a little air cover but five ships went down before we got to Avonmouth.

"My next ship was a tanker, the SS El-Atelo, and although our destination was supposed to be a secret it was obvious we were going to Canada or the USA. I wondered why we were taking fuel oil to a place from which we normally imported it.

"All was revealed when re-inforced 10-inch pipes were pulled out for the refuelling of warships at sea.

"Our tanks were replenished in Canada and we set out for the return journey. We lost 11 ships on the outward journey and 15 on the homeward trip. On September 11,1943 I joined the SS Empire Don at Newport taking guns, ambulances ammunition and a locomotive and tender to North Africa."

At one point the loco broke loose and was only secured by the superhuman efforts of the crew. This however, was a mere mishap compared with the attacks the Empire Don was to suffer from dive bombers and submarines.

The encounter with the Welsh-speaking nurse in Argentina came right at the end of Keith Watkins' war.

"I joined the SS Empire Driver for the trip home on May 17, 1945, nine days after the end of the war in Europe.

"After the horrors of war sailing home was like a pleasure cruise."

On Saturday, Keith was one of the Merchant Navy veterans marching to exercise their right to the freedom of the city of Newport.

It is over 60 years since the Battle of the Atlantic was at its height.

Cheerful and resourceful then, Keith still remembers that the horror of war at sea was leavened by humour. "People ask me why I did it. I reply that at £5 a week when I finished it wasn't the money so I suppose it must have been patriotism," he chuckles.