My father was RPO on the Alynbank 1940 - 1943. Before he died he used to give talks about his navy life to local pensioner clubs in Portsmouth, where he lived. After he died I found his 'lecture notes", I typed them out and Imperial War Museum were happy to receive them. The following are his notes relating to Alynbank. Interestingly, he was later at Arromanches on the Despatch - on dead body duty!

"At the end of this exercise I returned to Barracks and then got a draft to Belfast to commission HMS Alynbank, a merchant ship being converted to an anti-aircraft ship. I lived ashore in Belfast for some time and eventually the ship was commissioned and we sailed to Scapa Flow. It was a queer sort of a ship, the engine room staff were what was known as T124 ratings and the engine room officers were the same. Other officers were Royal Navy, plus a few RNVRs. It was difficult to deal with the T124s, they knew nothing of Royal Navy ways, but they eventually got used to us and they proved to be very brave men.
We spent months doing convoy duties, South Wales to Scotland, and then more up and down the east coast. I recall that after a convoy down the coast we anchored off Rosyth and the captain was going ashore to report. As he got half way down the gangway he yelled out for a torch and then discovered we had a large hole in our side. We had been bombed a lot and had felt a big bang, thought it was a near miss; we didn’t know we had an unexploded bomb inside us. I had slept in my office, right over it, the night before.
We were ordered to sail away from Rosyth and to anchor some way off, and soldiers eventually got the bomb out. ..............
By then Alynbank was convoying again. I went to Rosyth, she was on her way back to Scapa, I went to Scapa and missed. We did this two or three times but I eventually joined here.
After rejoining the Alynbank there was news we didn’t fancy at all – Russian convoys!
We would sail from Milford Haven to Loch Ewe with part of the convoy and then gather together more ships and sail to Iceland.
Apparently at that time there were German spies in Southern Ireland; they knew just how many ships passed them and what escorts there were and that knowledge was to passed to Germany.
We left Iceland with a very big convoy, all quiet the first day, but next morning there would be a bit German aircraft high above or flying round and round, reporting every move the convoy made. At the beginning of the trip we’d only have a few high level bombing attacks but as the days passed we would expect everything, high level, low level, torpedo bombers and mine laying aircraft. We lost a lot of merchant ships, some survivors were picked up by a naval trawler in the rear, but many ships just exploded and vanished completely.
We took them as far as Murmansk and then picked up a convoy returning to the UK and had to protect those ships. You can imagine how tired everyone was, you just dozed off if you could at your defence station. I can’t recall how many trips I did to Russia, but I do remember the one right to Archangel, it was grim.
I do recall being told that as we got near to the White Sea we would have an umbrella of Russian fighter planes to cover us – all we saw was one ancient seaplane!
We got through to Archangel – I think the actual port was called Bakaritsa and tied up alongside a jetty; it was so old and primitive that the first tank put ashore went right through the jetty and into the drink! Nearly all the men were away fighting so all labour was provided by Estonian women prisoners. At the end of the day they had to strip off their clothes, jump into the sea and get clean – no soap – but our sailors decided to help. They bought a lot of tablets of soap from the NAAFI and threw them among the women – what a sight to see – some 200 bare behinds as they dived to get the soap. But the Russians pointed their rifles at our ship and stopped the fun.
I went ashore there sometimes but there was nothing to see. We passed the body of an old woman just lying in the road; it was there four days to our knowledge. There was nothing to buy, no food in the shops, we could buy vodka but only if we were eating at the same time. There was a sort of a canteen where we got cakes occasionally. Everywhere we went we were escorted by a Russian girl (from the army?) and we couldn’t stray away. There was another warship with us, forget which it was, but two young sailors got hold of a bottle of vodka somewhere, drunk it all and died.
We were told it was as good as petrol in your lighter and also that Russian aircraft were running on it.
The ship stopped there for about ten days. We were short of ammunition and had to send a destroyer to Scotland to get enough for us to return. We were short of everything, no razor blades, no chocolate, NAAFI almost bare.
Just before we sailed for the UK we were loaded with millions of pounds worth of gold bars and that just about did it for us. The two previous ships carrying gold had been sunk. Anyhow we sailed into Liverpool safely. We tried to ‘win’ a gold bar but it was too heavy.
While still in Alynbank we did the North African landings, so I didn’t miss much.
I finally left Alynbank in March 1943."

Rena (née Salmon)