“We kept our faith with ourselves
and with one another: we kept faith and unity with our great allies. That faith
and unity have carried us to victory…”
His Majesty, King George VI, May 8th,
1945
May 8th, 2020. Britain’s two minutes silence has
just Fallen. My VE Day is a very personal affair. My extended family served in
a variety of capacities during World War Two, but let me focus on two of them,
my paternal grandfather Clifford, who survived the war, just, and my
great-uncle Walter, who did not. My thanks also to my father who helped me
prepare this piece.
My grandfather finished his long and original service in
either 1937 or 1938 serving aboard the destroyer HMS Mallard. However, as he
was on the Naval Reserve he was recalled, probably in May 1939 as hostilities
became likely after the Nazi occupation of Prague. He served mainly on
destroyers doing escort duties in the Channel and during the war he was sunk
twice, each time by mines. He was invalided off active service in 1943 due to
health problems caused by swallowing fuel oil whilst fighting for his life in
the sea. For the rest of the war he was confined to shore duties where he did
spells at the Signal Station on Plymouth Sound Breakwater, then at Mount Wise
Signal Station overlooking the entrance to the Dockyard.
Interestingly, during a visit to the Royal Marines a couple
of years ago I was just below where he ended his many years of RN service. He left
the ‘RN’ just before the end of the war in 1944 and we went to live in
Dulverton, Somerset, from where my great grand-parents hailed. My father thinks he may have been at Dunkirk.
The only occasion my father was taken to see him depart was at Millbay dock in
Plymouth and at the time he was seconded to a merchant ship that was
transporting Canadian troops to France to relieve the troops there. When he got
back my grandfather looked absolutely shattered, after having picked up as many
survivors as he could.
My great-uncle Walter was killed on HMS Quail, which he had joined when she
was newly commissioned in Glasgow in January 1943. He had previously served on HMS Kandahar, a K class destroyer that
was part of a squadron commanded by Lord Louis Mountbatten aboard HMS Kelly, which was sunk in the
Channel. HMS Kandahar was mined in
December 1941 escorting a convoy to Malta and eventually scuttled. HMS Quail was mined outside Bari Harbour
(my family seemed to attract mines), and may have been involved in a
clandestine operation. Nineteen were killed, including Walter, who is buried in
a in a military cemetery near Bari.
There is a twist to this tale. During a
visit to Dulverton a few years ago an old gentleman kept looking at my father
and me because it seemed he saw the family resemblance. We eventually got
talking and he told us he had been one of Walter’s closest friends and had
spent the night before my great-uncle’s return to Devonport Dockyard in a
Dulverton pub. Walter never returned. Today, his name is on the Plymouth Naval
Memorial, which I have had the honour to visit on many occasions.
Faith and unity in Great Allies is as important today as it
was then. Belief in friends, once enemies.
In
Memoriam
Julian
Lindley-French
