NAVY NEWS, FEBRUARY 2011
31
New home opened in Weymouth
A NEW home for homeless and vulnerable ex-Servicemen and women has opened in Weymouth. Alabaré’s Weymouth Home for
Veterans, situated in the Lodmoor area, is backed by the Royal British Legion.
Support will be provided in areas such as education, employment and housing, and veterans will be encouraged to access specialist help for issues such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, other mental health conditions or drug and alcohol addiction. Veterans will also be able to
develop life skills such as budgeting and maintaining a home, skills they may never have needed whilst serving in the Forces.
It offers a combination of accommodation and support to ex-Service personnel who are struggling to adjust to civilian life, providing a safe environment in which veterans can rebuild their confidence and develop essential skills whilst working towards being able to live independently again.
Corvette memorial is restored
A MEMORIAL plaque to a wartime corvette has been rededicated after it was destroyed by vandals on Armistice Day. The plaque to Flower-class
branch,
escort HMS Dahlia was part of the street name sign at the entrance to Dahlia Close in Cheshunt. It was originally unveiled in 1997 as a reminder of the ship and her company – the corvette, which survived the war and was scrapped in 1948, had been adopted by Cheshunt and Waltham Cross during World War 2. Members of Cheshunt local residents and
police officers watched as the Mayor of Broxbourne, Cllr Mark Mills-Bishop,
conducted the
Figures from the RBL highlight the need that exists in Dorset for veterans’ support; last year their records showed that in the county the number of veterans sleeping rough or in emergency temporary accommodation increased by almost 50 per cent. The RBL’s Director of Welfare, Sue Freeth,
to homeless veterans has been a priority for us for some time and this marks another step in increasing vital services in local hot spots.” The Legion awarded a grant of £180,000 over three years to the home, which is based on the model of the charity’s Plymouth Home for Veterans, opened in partnership with the RBL in 2009.
Within its first week of opening the Plymouth project was full and demand for places has remained extremely high.
Alabaré also opened a Bristol Home for Veterans last November, and is hoping to open further similar projects across the South and South West.
said: “Support
● No gold at the end of this rainbow, according to S/M Eric Dempster of the HMS Ocean Association. S/M Eric headed across from Stirling to Glenmallan on Loch Long when he heard HMS Ark Royal was unloading ammunition at the facility. “The weather was foul, with wind, rain and mist on the hills, but coming down the hill from above the base there was an unexpected break in the cloud and the sun came out for approximately 15 minutes,” said S/M Eric. “As it was still raining this produced an intense rainbow over the ship. There didn’t seem to be anyone else taking shots and presumably on the ship they couldn’t see the backdrop unfolding.”
Taiwan POWs not forgotten
LAST year may have marked 65 years since the end of World War 2, but the pace is
not slackening for one man. S/M Michael Hurst heads the
Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society, which aims to keep alive the memory of those held in Japanese camps on the island, and to continue to search for survivors from the period 1942-45.
£50 PRIZE PUZZLE
The group also helps organise the memorial service at Jinguashi every November, and seeks to educate the people of the Republic of China over this little-known part of their history. The society was approached last
year by a film production company in Singapore to ask if S/M Hurst could help with a programme they were making on Taiwan for the History Channel, acting as consultant and film subject on the section on POWs. S/M Hurst’s contribution was
to show the presenter, Anthony Morse, around the Heito Camp at PingTung, including the sugar factory and plantation where POWs were forced to clear the land for crops.
Taiwan in November saw a group of 13 overseas guests travel to the Far East, most from the UK along with one from the USA and one from Australia – though
THE mystery submarine in our December edition (right) was
HMS Porpoise. The winner of our £50 prize was
Mr M Green of Wallsend, Tyne and Wear, and the winner of the bottle of Wood’s Old Navy Rum was Mr G Drake, of Castleford, West Yorkshire. This month we have the name ship of her class (pictured above) which played a key role in the evacuation of a remote community in the South Atlantic following a volcanic eruption in the early 1960s.
What was her name, and what was the name of the island she helped? We have removed her name and pennant number from the picture. Complete the coupon and send it to Mystery Picture, Navy News, HMS Nelson, Portsmouth PO1 3HH.
The remembrance week visit to
sadly there were no former POWs among them, age being something of a barrier to many. Among the places visited were the site of the former Kinkaseki POW camp at Jinguashi and the mine in which the prisoners suffered at the hands of Japanese guards, as well as the port of Keelung, where POWs were landed and from where liberated men were evacuated at the end of the war. Looking ahead, new monuments
● Robert Treadwell’s medal and memorabilia concerning the rescue attempt on Chesil Beach
and features are planned at the Taiwan POW Memorial Park in Jinguashi, which S/M Hurst has been asked to help design. These could include a polished
black granite wall, similar to the Vietnam Wall in Washington DC, containing the names of all 4,365 Taiwan POWs, and a bronze statue of two POWs helping each other, entitled ‘Mates’.
It is hoped the monuments will be ready for the remembrance visit in November this year.
Former sailor’s gallantry medal goes to museum
A RARE sea gallantry medal awarded posthumously in 1944 to a heroic coastguard was due to be presented to the National Museum of the Royal Navy as Navy News went to press. The Silver Sea Gallantry Medal
Coupons giving the correct answers will go into a prize draw to establish a winner. Closing date for entries is March 14 2011. More than one entry can be submitted but photocopies cannot be accepted. Do not include anything else in your envelope: no correspondence can be entered into and no entry returned.
The winner will be announced in our April edition. The competition is not open to Navy News employees or their families.
MYSTERY PICTURE 192 Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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● Essex FAAA branch chairman S/M Harry Bass is presented with a framed picture of a Merlin helicopter of 814 NAS by LAET Dan Macedo (left) and LAET Roy Ogonda
Taranto gathering
THE TOP man may have been missing, but there was still a strong team from the Navy’s aviation arm at the Taranto Lunch staged by the Essex branch of the Fleet Air Arm Association. Chief of Staff (Aviation and Carriers) Rear
Cunningham was called away on Service business at short notice. But there was still Cdr Geoff
Bowker, who recently joined the Military Aviation Authority, and LAETs Roy Ogonda and Daniel Mecedo, representing 814 Naval Air Squadron, which is affiliated to the Essex branch.
Branch chairman S/M Harry Bass gave a resumé of that famous battle where four Naval Air Squadrons flying from HMS Illustrious sank or crippled half of the Italian fleet in Taranto. It is hoped that a framed picture
Admiral Tom
of one of 814 Squadron’s Merlins, presented by the LAETs, can be displayed in the RAF Association Club in Chelmsford, where Essex branch members meet. Shipmates are now looking
forward to events such as the annual Memorial Observation, at Eastchurch on Friday May 6 2011.
awarded to Coastguardsman Robert Treadwell in late 1944, along with extensive research notes, photographs and original documents, has been offered to the museum by Robert Treadwell’s stepson Raymond Morris. On October 13 1944 HMLCT(A) 2454 – a landing craft tank (armoured) – was battered by a Force 9 gale whilst en route from Dartmouth to Portland. Her engine failed, and as she dragged her anchor and rescue teams prepared to help, she was dashed onto the shingle bank at Chesil Beach in Dorset, where she broke her back.
The local Coastguard Rocket
Lifesaving Company, based at Wyke Regis, were already on the scene and managed to get lines across, but according to the official Board of Trade citation at the time ten of the crew of 12 were washed overboard, together with the lines, by 30ft waves crashing onto the beach and stricken landing craft. Two of the sailors were plucked from the sea by the shore party, but the other eight drowned. Two Coastguard officers, Cdr
John Legh, Coastguard Inspector of the Southern Division, and Coastguardsman Treadwell, aged 35 – both former Royal Navy men – ran into the seething waves in an attempt to pass the lines by hand to the two sailors still on board the vessel, but both were dragged
from the beach by the surf and drowned.
Three of their colleagues tried
again, but were beaten back. In an amazing feat of stamina and Auxiliary Coastguard
fortitude,
George Brown endured the surf for more than 30 minutes and managed to get aboard the landing craft and pass lines to the two remaining crewmen. Brown and one of the crew were hauled to safety, but the other line parted. Albert Oldfield,
another
Auxiliary Coastguard, managed to get a line to the last crewman, who was also rescued. Robert Treadwell’s body was
washed ashore in Chesil Cove the following day, and he was buried in the RN cemetery in Portland. The Coastguardsman had
served as a Signalman since 1925, and his service had ended on his 30th birthday – a few months before the outbreak of war, when he transferred to the Coastguard. He and Cdr Legh were posthumously awarded the silver medal, as was George Brown, who was also awarded the Royal Humane Society Silver Medal and the Stanhope Gold Medal for the bravest rescue of 1944. The Silver Sea Gallantry Medal is extremely rare – only seven were awarded between 1937 and 1947, and none have been awarded since at least 1974, though the bronze version was last awarded in 1989. Former Second Sea Lord Vice Admiral Sir Alan Massey, now Chief Executive of the Maritime and Coastguard
Agency, was
scheduled to attend the ceremony in Portsmouth.
dedication ceremony, though the two remaining crew members, S/Ms Bengy Benjamin and Neville Doyle, who were at the 1997 event, were unable to make it this time. Cheshunt branch padre Rev ‘Mother Jane’ Dicker led the consecration service and blessed the plaque with holy water. The Last Post and Reveille were sounded, and branch president S/M Peter Trigg made the remembrance address.
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