NAVY NEWS, FEBRUARY 2011


25


● HMSDML 3516 at Sheerness


Keys to Locksmith


YOUR article Murdered Sailors Honoured in Berlin (January, page 31) states that there are 17 servicemen honoured on the Sachsenhausen Memorial. This is not correct, there are


20. I did some research on


Operation Checkmate and found a photo of the memorial with 20 names, 14 from Operations Checkmate and Musketoon, with seven men in each op. As a former RN/RAN


submariner, RN and Special Forces research is right up my alley and I had heard of Musketoon as it started from the F/French submarine Junon. On Checkmate there were six RN personnel, S/Lt John Goodwin RNVR, POs Harold Hiscock and Alfred Roe, with OS Neville Burgess, Keith Mayor and Andrew West (they were all attached to No 14 (Arctic Commando) and Sgt Jack Cox (on loan from No 12 Commando).


Major Francis Suttil and Capt


W Grover-Williams were both SOE agents captured in France. There is a mention of Lt Cdr Claud Cumberledge in the article, and it says he remained behind in Greece in 1941 to conduct sabotage operations.


Gunnery practice on the Gorgon


READING about HMS Medusa’s refit and re-emergence (December, page 38) brought back vivid


memories. I served on her in 1958-60 when she was HMSDML 3516, attached to the East Coast of England Survey Unit which was based at Sheerness, though she only spent the winters there, most of the time we were in Harwich, Ramsgate, Lowestoft etc. It was a very interesting time


for me, as I joined her as an Able Seaman Gunner, replacing an AB Survey Recorder (SR). The skipper, a lieutenant whose name I have forgotten, said as soon as I stepped aboard with a full kitbag: “I did not ask for a


gunner, I wanted a SR!” Just then the Coxswain appeared and said: “I will look after him, sir” and the skipper’s passing shot was “The only gun we have is a Very pistol so you are in charge of that.”


My 18 months on her, though,


turned out to be much more involved with the survey side, as when I left I was recommended to change to the SR branch, though once back in the clutches of the ‘other navy’ I was soon off to Whale Island for a gunnery course and the rest is history, as I ended up as a Chief Gunnery Instructor.


So much for career development!


– Ken Satterthwaite, King’s Langley, Herts


He sounds very much like Lt Cdr Mike Cumberledge, who is mentioned in Antony Beevor’s book Crete, the Battle and Resistance where he was the skipper of a Greek caique that transported SOE agents to and from Crete as part of the Levant Schooner Flotilla, based in Palestine. It also says: “...in late 1942, early 1943, Mike Cumberledge was captured in an attempt to sabotage the Corinth Canal and shot at Flossenburg Concentration camp in the last days of the war, two days before they surrendered.”


Lt Cdr Cumberledge and his team of three men were all captured and taken initially to Vienna, before arriving at Sachsenhausen. I have positively linked Sgt Thomas Handley and Czech Corporal Jan Kotbra (who used his wife’s maiden name) to this operation and I believe that the fourth man could have been CSM James Steele (these four men make up the 20 names on the memorial). If anyone can uncover any more information on Operation Locksmith, which was probably an SOE Op, I would be most interested.


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Given the volume of letters, we cannot publish all of your correspondence in Navy News. We do, however, publish many on our website, www.navynews.co.uk, accompanied by images. We look particularly for correspondence which stimulates debate, makes us laugh or raises important issues. The editor reserves the right to edit your submissions.


– John Keating, Rockingham, Western Australia


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