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- Norman Coulson – far right
Kate Armstrong has been in touch with the following remarkable story of survival. Her grandfather Norman Coulson was re-fuelling a naval launch moored at North Shields Fish Quay when things went badly wrong…
Norman Coulson is the chap on the right with his hands in his pockets.
He was working for Shell and had an interesting war, as wherever he was refuelling he was in danger – once in Sunderland he remembers a German pilot flying so close to him, the pilot smiled at him and waved. However, in 1941 he really did nearly lose his life and from what he said it was a terrible accident. He always referred to his work that day as refuelling a Free French cruiser. I assume it was a naval launch manned by Frenchmen. His tanker was alongside the jetty looked after by his 16 yr old tanker boy Davy. He recalled about 6 french sailors crossing the deck, all smoking. He shouted at them to extinguish their lights but they didn’t understand him. ( I know for a fact one of them must have been Algerian as he was put in the bed next to him in hospital, very badly injured. His daughters always referred to him as Solomon but I now think from their description of him he must have been called Suleiman ).
Norman was at some height so could see the accident unfurl. As the vapour trail ignited, he shouted at Davy to move the tanker and fast, as far as he could. Davy couldn’t drive but he certainly managed to shift it. Depth charges ignited and Norman was blown sky high. He remembers hitting the bottom of the Tyne. His mother who had died six weeks previously came to him and said ” Roll over son. Put your hands above your head”. Norman was not superstitious or believed in such things at all. But he always said his mother came to save him.
He was found unconscious, with all his clothes blown off apart from part of his overcoat,which helped identify who he was, as it was part of his working uniform. He was under a jetty. ( it was the photos on this site that made me realise how lucky he was – until I found them on line, I had no idea anyone even knew about this event any more.) He was taken to what my grandmother referred to as the Naval hospital at Shields where he was operated on and took quite some time to regain consciousness.
Kitty was a remarkable woman. She realised she was about to become a widow and from her sisters’ experience of this in the First War decided she wasn’t going to let this happen. She knew he wasn’t getting the standard of care she wanted, as when there was an air raid, he and Suleiman couldn’t be moved to a shelter, they were just slid under their beds. He was still in danger. Plus, travelling from Newburn with two small girls and no one having a car and trying to keep her girls stable was too much. (Kathleen, my mother, took it really badly. When taken to hospital, she started screaming as she was terrified at the visual effects of the blast. She upset the ward by screaming” that’s not my daddy, that’s not my daddy”) when I asked her why, she said his eyes had been blown to “the back of his head”. She is still deeply troubled by the image today.
Kitty enlisted the help of the family doctor who came to see Norman and said he would be safer at home nursed by her and with his help. He was transferred back home to 48 Boyd Street where she had set up a bed etc in the kitchen, so it was easy to attend to him, keep everything clean etc and keep him warm by the fire ( I think he had suffered from being in the water some length of time in December). One night he left his bed delirious. He was shouting and trying to put out the fire. Kitty knew what to do. She manoeuvred him onto the kitchen table where he lost consciousness. She examined his wounds and found the large stomach wound hot, red and bulging. She knew she had to do something quickly so got Margaret out of bed (the elder child) and told her to boil her sewing kit in a pan on the fire. She opened his wound, extracted a piece of overcoat, along with its button and several pieces of shrapnel, put them in a jam jar and then proceeded to sew him up. Also liberal use of iodine. She sat with him until the doctor arrived in the morning when he could help her put him back to bed. The jar and contents were kept until the 60s when they disappeared in a spring clean. I wish I had been old enough to realise their worth, especially as a history teacher, I realise that kids really only like the sex, death and toilets bit of history.
He survived, did really well with Shell, was promoted and with moved to Durham City in the 50’s. His tanker boy also made it through, although his heart was moved an inch by the blast. He turned up for Norman’s funeral in the early 80’s – another life saved. I’m not sure if I am of the same mettle as Kitty. I’d like to think if I had to, I would. Both of them were a testament to a different generation who just got on with things . Looking back now, I realise he must have suffered from PTS as there were incidents and he’d just black out. However these were managed efficiently by my grandmother and practically. They had learned to handle the long term effects of blasts from caring for returning brothers from the Great War, they were handled with the same pragmatism and watchfulness as Norman was. I have shown his daughters the pictures and taken Kathleen back to Shields to have a look, she still finds it all rather upsetting. I have used the pictures in a lesson and told their story. Open mouths and a sombre silence was broken when I told them of hours I spent with tweezers looking for bits of shrapnel. I didn’t understand how lucky I was to have a grandad and it could have been so different.