Thomas Payn was born in June 1925 in Boston, Massachusetts, the only child of his Canadian parents. The family moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where Payn's father had a government job with the Unemployment Insurance Commission; his mother was a housewife. Payn went through school at The Halifax Academy and Queen Elizabeth High School in Halifax, graduating in 1943. In September 1939, Canada declared war [Annotator's Note: on Germany and Italy] immediately after Great Britain entered the conflict. With only a small Navy at its disposal, Canada began convoying right away, and "had a very hard time" in the beginning, according to Payn. He had attempted to join the Navy when he was 16 years old, but his parents would not consent. His father was a veteran of World War 1. Payn was 18 when he signed up for the all volunteer Royal Canadian Navy in October 1943. He took basic training in Quebec City, and advanced training at a large naval base at Cornwallis, Nova Scotia. In February 1944 he shipped out on the destroyer HMCS Annapolis (DDH-265), an old American four stacker. Payn called it a "miserable sea boat" that rolled wildly in deep seas and "leaked like a basket."

After a couple of months on the HMCS Annapolis (DDH-265), Thomas Payn was reassigned to the base in Halifax [Annotator's Note: Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada], unloading flour trucks and preparing bread in the bakery. Unhappy with shore duty, he put in for a sea draft and was assigned to the minesweeper HMCS Clayoquot (J 174). While he was getting his gear together to go on board, another sailor asked if he would swap assignments, and Payn took the transfer to the HMCS Camrose (K 154) and went overseas. Unfortunately, although fortuitous for Payn, the Clayoquot was torpedoed just off the coast of Halifax shorty thereafter, and many lives were lost. The Camrose went to Bermuda for workups, where Payn participated in gunnery practice and anti-submarine drills. From there he crossed the Atlantic, stopping at Faial in the Azores for fuel, and on to Plymouth, England with typical rough weather all the way. Once there, the Camrose joined the Convoy C-3 escort group that worked the Western Approaches, the Bay of Biscay, the Irish Sea, the English Channel, and the North Sea, meeting convoys mid-ocean and bringing them to Europe or England. Convoys varied in size from 35 to 60 ships with six to eight escort vessels. The Canadian ships were mostly Corvettes, although there were a few destroyers, and they saw a lot of action. They fought in what was called the Channel War right after D-Day [Annotator's Note: Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944], when the Germans put in what Payn called a "big push" at sea, and from then, through the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945], and even into the spring, they were constantly in attack mode.

According to Thomas Payn, the Atlantic convoys were under attack from E-boats [Annotator's Note: German Schnellboot or S-boot fast attack torpedo boat; known to the Allies as the E-boat], u-boats [Annotator's Note: German submarine] and destroyers as well as aircraft. One experience he remembered involved a nest of E-boats off Calais, France, which wasn't captured until the end of the war, and the Germans harassed traffic in the English Channel from there. The British decided to send a decoy to draw out the German E-boats, while keeping two destroyers in wait just below the horizon to charge and get rid of them. Payn's ship [Annotator's Note: HMCS Camrose (K 154)], which had a top speed of 16 knots and couldn't run from anything, got the job of decoy. When six E-boats came out after them, there were no destroyers to be seen; fortunately a thick fog closed in and saved them. The U-boat threat, on the other hand, was constant. The Battle of the Atlantic started on the first day of the war and didn't end until the last day of the war. Payn said one of the worst things his ship had to contend with was the weather. In the winter, the problem was ice, but there were heavy seas nearly all the time, with high waves and gales that could go on for days. Payn's ship was rather small for such conditions; often the sailors couldn't get hot food because the galley fire could not be lit, and there was always water sloshing in the mess deck. The sailors' clothes turned green from mildew. They slept in hammocks with their clothes on, because any minute they might be called to their stations; there wasn't much rest. The good thing about bad weather was that the U-boats couldn't attack and Payn thinks that even with the misery of the volatile Atlantic, the sailors had it better than the Army soldiers. His job on the ship was quartermaster so he steered the ship. He was also a gunner on a four inch, breech loading gun when there was any threat of attack. Payn also mentioned that the ship carried hedgehogs, anti-submarine Torpex bombs, as well as heavy and light depth charges, noting that the "hunting equipment" for submarines was pretty primitive at the time, and that supplies on board were limited. The ship would have to either meet up with a supply ship at sea or go back to Plymouth, England for replenishment of fuel and ammunition.

The English Navy provisioned the Canadian sailors' mess and Thomas Payn said they ate a lot of strong smelling mutton. The joke among them was that the Germans could smell them coming. Much of it was old, and the edges of the meat were green and had to be carved away at meal times. Each watch designated one man who went to the galley and came back with a large pan of food for everyone in the group; in the middle was the meat and gravy, on the sides were "mucky" rehydrated potatoes and canned carrots. Occasionally, they had fresh eggs and fatback bacon and every Friday they had kippers. There was bread and jam, sugar and canned milk for tea or bad coffee, but the sailors had to buy their own ketchup if they wanted it. When weather prevented a hot meal, they ate corned beef, bully beef and hard tack. They were always thrilled when they got packages of goodies from home. The British Navy always served a rum ration, and the Canadian Navy did likewise. Payn remembers getting two ounces a day; at 11:30 every morning the bosun's mate would "pipe up spirits" and the whole crew would line up with their cups. On large ships the crewmembers with ratings below petty officer had to take grog which was a mixture of water and rum, but because the HMCS Camrose (K 154) was a small ship, all hands got pure rum. Typically they would drink one ounce, and save an ounce in a bottle to sell when they got back into port. The ship's cat and dog also got a ration of rum and Payn laughed when he said they both became alcoholics.

When in port, Thomas Payn said the Canadians interacted with American troops. He recalled one incident at a barroom in Plymouth, England, when the shore patrol, being English, locked some Canadian sailors up in a paddy wagon and went off for other miscreants. Some American sailors, on learning that the prisoners were Canadians, set the prisoners free, and they all went off together for a "great time." Another recollection Payn recounted happened in February 1945 when the HMCS Camrose (K 154) was in for repairs after having been rammed in the Irish Sea. The ship was progressing toward a convoy a little after midnight, and Payn had just come off watch. He was standing in the "fiddley", a catwalk going across the boilers, to warm up when he heard and felt a terrific crash, and Payn thought they had been torpedoed. All hands were ordered to emergency stations, and by the moonlight it was apparent that while executing a zig-zag [Annotator's Note: a naval anti-submarine maneuver] pattern, "somebody zigged and the other one zagged," and two ships collided. The crew got a collision mat over the hole, stopped some of the leakage, got the pumps working and headed back to port. They tied up next to an American sea-going tug, and the Canadians entertained the Americans with rum and the tall tale of their damaged ship. To get more rum, the Americans traded foul weather gear, steaks, chicken and ice cream, and everybody was happy. The Americans took good care of their sea going soldiers, Payn said, and the Americans were restocked before long.

All through his service, Thomas Payn corresponded with his family, but he couldn't say too much about his activities. When the war in Europe was coming to a close, the HMCS Camrose (K 154) was taking a small convoy "up the channel" from the Bay of Biscay and the sailors didn't expect anything to happen. But on 30 April [Annotator's Note: 30 April 1945], in broad daylight, they were attacked by three enemy submarines; three of the Allied tankers were torpedoed, two of which were carrying high-test gasoline. Only 14 survivors could be rescued from those ships. The Camrose peeled off and, with other escorts in the group, managed to sink two of the enemy submarines. Although they swept the area thoroughly, they couldn't locate the third. The next morning, as the convoy continued up the channel, one of the merchant ships radioed that they had rammed a heavy underwater object, presumably a submarine. It was later confirmed that the U-boat [Annotator's Note: German submarine] was traveling underneath the convoy waiting for a chance to breakaway toward German waters. The submarine went down with all hands. It was the last attack Payn experienced in the war.

Thomas Payn discussed how the allied ships detected U-boats [Annotator's Note: German submarines], and what happened when an attack occurred. He said air cover really turned the tide on the war against the "wolf packs." Payn was involved in rescues of both Allied and German survivors, and commented that the German prisoners "were just like us." On V-E Day [Annotator's Note: Victory in Europe Day, 8 May 1945], his ship [Annotator's Note: HMCS Camrose (K 154)] was at anchor in Portland Bill, England, waiting for a small convoy to arrive. While all the other ships in his group got 24 hour leaves, the HMCS Camrose (K 154) was working, and all the crew got in the way of celebration was a "double tot of rum." For a month after the war was over, the Camrose was out hunting down U-boats. The crew never got to shore in Europe again, because when that month was done, they were sent home to Canada. The Camrose went to the scrapyard, and most of her crew, including Payn, volunteered for duty in the Pacific. His homecoming was an intentional surprise for his parents, and they were happy to see him. After a lengthy leave, Payn reported to the naval base at Cornwallis Island in Canada, and went through training for hand-to-hand combat, but without having been deployed to the Pacific he was discharged in November 1945. His rank at discharge was Naval Seaman, the equivalent of Petty Officer Third Class in the American Navy. The harsh memory of the Atlantic Ocean in the wintertime convinced Payn to move south to the United States, which he did, and he went into the Merchant Marines.