THE EULOGY
Read out by the minister at Mavis' funeral, when
she died in March of 2017, just short of her 94th
birthday. Her long life was not matched with good
fortune, but beset with tragedy, and this is her
story.
THIS IS MAVIS' STORY
Mavis Wardle was a wife, a mum, a grandmother and
a very treasured aunt.
This lovely lady you all knew, by one of those
titles. We pay tribute to her now, and as we give
thanks for the almost 94 years of her life, I
think we also give thanks for the privilege of
just knowing her. For we have all benefited at
some time in our lives from her kindness, love and
generosity. It is hard to recall now how hard her
life has truly been, for although Mavis did find a
great deal of happiness and contentment in family
life, she would also know more than anyone's fair
share of tragedy. Brought up in a Methodist chapel
family, she had a reassuring belief and faith that
would sustain her during her darkest hours.
And there were many of those.
Mavis was born on May 1st, a Mayday baby, in 1923.
The third of four daughters, to Harry and Violetta
Holt of Coalville, the four Holt girls were
affectionately known by their father as his "four
GEMS", from their initials - her sisters being
Gladys, Edna, then Mavis herself, and the youngest
Sylvia. Little jewels they were too. The Holt
family were well-known in Highfield Street, and
their early years were marked by regular
attendance at chapel and Sunday School.
In the dark days of the middle of the Second World
War, aged 19, Mavis met and married naval rating,
Jack Hill, in the late winter of 1942, and this
just a year or so after the four daughters had
lost their mum to cancer. Harry, a veteran of the
First World War and now a widower, had struggled
tirelessly along with Violetta bringing up his
four girls during those endless hard years of the
20s and 30s.
But tragedy was to strike the family again, within
weeks of Mavis' marriage. Her new husband would be
lost at sea in mid-Atlantic when his ship was
torpedoed and sunk. Mavis would receive the
dreaded telegram to learn that Jack was posted
missing, and then, only weeks later, would
discover that she was expecting Jack's son. Now a
widow, with a child on the way, life must have
seemed more than harsh. The war's end, and victory
when it came - as it would have been for all war
widows - must surely have been so bitter-sweet.
It was in the years from the mid-forties to
the mid-fifties that Mavis became particularly
close to sister Edna. With older sister Gladys
married and without children, and younger sister
Sylvia still a young girl, it was natural that she
would be drawn towards Edna, and her two sons,
Alan and Rodney, who were to become natural pals
and playmates to cousin Michael.
They became inseperable during these years, and
Alan remembers some of the times spent together:-
walking to Bardon Hill for a picnic, so that the
three boys could scramble around together. Or on
many occasions catching the bus from Coalville to
Whitwick, and walking up to Spring Hill, and
sitting on the hillside amongst the bilberry
bushes picking bilberrys for pie and jam making.
The three cousins were supposed to be helping with
the picking but tended to consume more than they
contributed - ending up with purple fingers and
lips. Then it was down to Spring Hill Farm for a
bottle of Vimto and perhaps an ice-cream whilst
Mavis and Edna would have a cup of tea.
Whilst all three sisters were very close to Mavis,
it was Edna that spent the most time with her
because of the boys naturally wanting to be
together.
So apart from the welcome help within the family,
Mavis spent several years alone, bringing up
Michael, but always hoping against hope that Jack
may well turn up one day - he was after all, just
'missing', as he was never found, and it was not
unknown for such things to happen. But slowly,
acceptance took hold. When Michael was still a
little boy, in the early 1950s after some ten
years of widowhood, Mavis did again find happiness
when she met Percy Wardle, our beloved grandad and
uncle of memory, and they had many happy years
together. In Percy, Michael found the loving
father that war and fate had robbed him of. But
Jack was never forgotten, and frequently talked of
in the family, all the cousins being always aware
of the sacrifice Michael's father had made, as
well as of Mavis' loss.
Percy worked, for a short time, on the Midland Red
as a conductor. At that time, Mavis and sister
Edna worked at Chad's café on Coalville Clock
Tower, a favourite tea stop beloved of Coalville
bus crews. So both sisters were destined to meet
their husbands there. Mavis and Percy eventually
settled in Newbold Verdon, which would be Mavis'
home village for the next 50 or more years, and
they went on to have a son of their own, Phillip.
Sadly, years later, when working at Desford Tubes,
Percy was to suffer a terrible accident at work
which so badly injured a foot that it did in
effect cut short his life, and he died in the
mid-1970s leaving Mavis a widow once more, and for
this past 40 years or so.
It is hard to credit how tragedy can strike one
wife and mother so many times, but in the years
that followed, Mavis would also lose both of her
sons; both at a similar age in their forties, and
both through heart disease. The death of first
Michael, and then 15 years later, Phillip, added
to her ever increasing burden of loss.
Michael's widow, Val, was a great comfort and
constant companion for many years after, on many
frequent and enjoyable shopping trips and days
out.
Nonetheless, Mavis meeting with her friends in the
village, usually at the weekly Monday Lunch Club,
and throughout retained a faith that is a lesson
to us all, displaying a quiet strength, love and
fortitude that we can only marvel at now, given
all that befell her.
In those later times, Mavis' found great
consolation in the company and love of her
grandchildren. Anna-Marie, John and Ross were a
great joy to her over the years, as were her
several nephews - as well as continued contact and
regular meeting with her three sisters, all of
which would themselves die long before her. Mavis
always said she didn't want to be 'the last one
left,' but time and events would prove it to be
so.
Later years would see the increased infirmity that
led to her reluctantly giving up the Newbold home
she had shared with Percy and her two boys, to
move into the bungalow at Barwell. By this time,
grandson John, along with Clare, now very much
taking on the mantle of his late father, made it
their job to care for their grandma's best
interests and to be sure she had all she needed in
her new home. It must have seemed that she was
leaving some very deep roots, and then again, even
more so to move yet further into Barwell where she
found sanctuary and friends in Saffron House
retirement home for her more peaceful last years.
So today, we not only remember Mavis, and thank
providence that she was our grandmother and aunty,
we remember all those that she so dearly loved,
all those that have gone before, in war and peace,
by accident and ill-health or, like Mavis herself,
through that toll which age and time exerts on
each and every one of us.
Mavis, that lady so quietly spoken, so
kind-hearted, the last of her generation, who
showed us that tragedy and adversity really could
make us stronger, but above all else, showed us
all, such unconditional love and affection.
We give thanks that we knew, and loved you. We
miss you.
THIS IS JACK'S STORY
Many boys of the 1950s generation grew up knowing
of brothers and cousins, fathers and uncles, that
didn't come back from the war. Many a lad was
influenced by the stories attached to those family
tragedies. So it was for me.
I heard all about how Uncle Jack was a gunner, who
had died at sea, was reported missing, serving in
the Royal Navy. There were a few unusual facts in
the story that perhaps even my mother didn't quite
understand herself, and she would have been
astonished at what we have found out since. But
for me as a 10-year-old lad, they were over my
head and only became something of a mystery in
later years. Suffice to say that Jack, though long
dead, instilled in me a life-long interest in the
Royal Navy, enough for me to start reading stories
of naval history at quite a young age.
Aged about 10, the real interest sparked when I
picked up a tattered copy of a paperback book at a
Scout bazaar - costing about 6d if I recall
rightly and a week's pocket money - about the
famous 'Battle of the River Plate'. This sea
battle had been the first significent naval action
of the war, one that had literally occurred only
twenty years before I was actually reading about
it. Memories of those dark days for folks older
than me were still very fresh, raw even, and all
very much still in the recent past. I learnt of
how our naval gunners had beaten off a much larger
German warship and ultimately won the day. That
famous action would prove to be our only real
victory for quite some considerable time.
I often wondered if the stories of that battle, as
they had filtered down through news just before
that first Christmas of the war, had also
influenced the 18-year-old Jack in some similar
way. The fact that I never succeeded in joining
the navy myself was not for want of trying, but
that is by the by. But that deep interest did help
greatly, over 50 years later, to uncover some
remarkable facts about Jack's service, if only in
having some inkling as to where I might find them.
Jack was lost at sea just eight years before I
came into this world. Still very much a presence
in the family, the grief still deeply felt, I
recall my mum telling myself and my brothers in
the 1950s the story of how her sister, our Aunt
Mavis, had met and married a sailor. How within
six months of their marriage, she had lost him to
a German U-boat. Of how she had waited years for
his return, for she never gave him up as dead.
Somehow, Mavis always believed, always felt, that
Jack had actually survived the sinking of his ship
and one day would return.
So Jack was really my uncle by marriage and
therefore my mum's brother-in-law. In many ways,
because of Jack's influence on all of the Holt
family, the Holt family story is paradoxically
also Jack's story. One paradox was that his real
name was not Jack. He was christened John William
Hill when he was born in Donington le Heath in
1921, and like a lot of boys called John, he
assumed this obvious nickname as a lad, and kept
it. I do also wonder if 'Jack' being the
traditional affectionate name for a naval rating
had some bearing on Jack himself joining the navy.
Mavis was 19, and her younger sister just 12, when
she met this dashing young naval rating on “The
Monkey Walk” in Coalville. Along the north side of
Marlborough Square there was, and still is, a wide
footpath that was colloquially known by that
somewhat disparaging term. This tongue-in-cheek
name has become so much embedded in local folklore
that a pub, on the site of a former bank, is known
by exactly that name today. It appears the
tradition lives on.
It had long been the practice, almost from when
Coalville as a town was first founded, for local
lads and lasses to 'promenade' in that area on
fine weekend evenings as a way of finding boy and
girlfriends, and perhaps ultimately a marriage
partner. Dances and cinema trips would then be the
usual routine as couples got to know each other
better, or not, as the case may be.
So it was exactly in that way that Mavis met Jack.
Mavis, and her three sisters, had not long lost
their mum, the year before in 1941. Violetta Holt
had succumbed to cancer aged only 41, in the
second full year of the war, leaving husband Harry
a widower and four daughters bereft of their mum.
Harry was a miner, a veteran of the Great War,
whose own wartime experiences had left him with
ongoing issues of depression and nervous anxiety.
It was a common problem for tens of thousands of
men coming back from that monumental conflict, and
one that we would today almost certainly call
post-traumatic stress disorder. Harry had a couple
of periods of 'convalesance' in the 1920s and
1930s, periods of quiet away from the family to
recover from nervous exhaustion. Life for any
miner in the Coalville in that era was an ongoing
financial struggle to make ends meet.
Nonetheless, Harry and Violetta had brought up
four daughters, Gladys, Edna, Mavis and Sylvia,
affectionately termed by their father as his four
'GEMS', after their initials. The family were
well-known in Highfield Street, and their weekly
routine was governed by their father's shifts at
South Leicester Colliery, the girls' schooling at
the village school in Hugglescote, and chapel.
Attendance at chapel was required twice on Sunday,
once to Sunday School for bible instruction, as
well as either the morning or evening service.
Harry and Violetta were strong Methodists, as were
many folk in the area. Violetta's own father was a
lay preacher in Shepshed, and the christian faith
ran very deep on both sides of the whole family.
In 1941, at the time of their mother's death, the
youngest girl, my mum Sylvia, was then 11. The
loss of their mum hit all of the girls very hard,
as can be well imagined. The eldest at 26 years
was Gladys, by then grown and already left home to
work in service to a Loughborough family in the
bakery business.
The next eldest sister, Edna at 23, was already
married with a young son. Then came Mavis, 18, and
lastly Sylvia, her baby sister. Mavis had been 7
when Sylvia was born. They were a typical miner's
family, in a town and street of similar mining
families.
If not employed at mining or other work at the
pit, most local men were 'on the railway' or on
the post, on the buses, or worked for the local
council. The rest were in various light and heavy
engineering or electrical workshops and trades,
many of which were connected to or supported the
mining industry. And a great many of the men over
the age of 45 were war veterans, just like Harry.
That early naval victory mentioned above was a
rare victory indeed, for there were no more to be
had for a very long time indeed. Once the war
really got going, in the spring of the following
year in 1940, it was a seemingly never-ending
story of defeat and disaster, withdrawal and
retreat. Things just went from bad to worse, the
only slight relief perhaps being the Battle of
Britain, which at the time was not even regarded
as the great victory it is today, but merely as a
relief from the immediate threat of invasion and a
certain and comprehensive defeat. By 1941, when
Mavis' mother took seriously ill and cancer was
diagnosed, her passing in late summer was
relatively swift by today's standards. Certainly,
by the Christmas of that disastrous year, things
were very bleak indeed, and not just for the
Holts.
It might have been true that immediate invasion
had been staved off, but the war news just went
from bad to worse, all down the line. Shipping
losses at sea mounted, defeats in North Africa and
the Mediterranean came one after another. For a
generation like Harry's, who thought they'd fought
'the war to end all wars', the world must have
seemed to be coming to an end. Indeed, for Harry
and his four daughters, it already had.
Thousands of British and Empire servicemen and
women had already lost their lives to the German
onslaught, and on top of that, the war was also
now being fought at home. Bombing of cities and
towns had started soon after the Battle of Britian
had ended, and from then on they just increased in
number and intensity. Sylvia herself recalled
standing with her mum and sister at the bottom of
their father's garden, looking over the fields of
Standard Hill and seeing the glow in the southern
sky as the centre of Coventry burned to the ground
some thirty miles away.
Coalville itself, small town though it was, was
not immune to air raids, with some nearby
factories already targets of the Luftwaffe by
reason of their manufacture of all sorts of
materials for the military. For the Holts, as bad
as the First War had been, notably in the
unprecedented number of men's lives lost, this war
now seemed far, far, worse. And late in 1941,
there seemed to be no end to it all. Victory, even
if it could be achieved, was a long, long, way
off, at the end of the darkest of tunnels, down
which there was no visible light. The sheer
disappointment amongst the older generation that,
despite all those sacrifices of the First War, and
all those promises made thereafter, that it had
all been for nothing, must have been very
palpable.
From a naval point of view, late May of 1941, saw
the worst naval disaster so far during the episode
of the sinking of the 'Bismarck'. But even that
victory had been at a very great cost, of more
than 1,400 men killed in the unbelievably tragic
loss of the pride of our fleet, “HMS Hood”.
Other European countries were going down before
the German jackboot like flies, Crete had been
lost with enormous casualties, and then in the
summer, the apparently unstoppable German war
machine had invaded Russia. Surely, things could
not get any worse.
But they did. The attack on Pearl Harbour, closely
followed by the naval disaster of the loss of
another two of our best and biggest battleships,
along with most of their crews with nearly another
1,000 men lost and as many again taken into
captivity, all must have surely sent a shiver down
the spines of even the most stout-hearted. Now
there was war with Japan too; folks must have
asked, how on earth were we going to even manage
that, let alone win it. The only bright spot was
that the Americans were now involved and we were
not alone any more. It was their involvement that,
in the most curious of ways, brings us back to
Jack's story.
Exactly when Jack joined the Royal Navy, on which
date, we don't know. Whether he volunteered and
chose his service, or was conscripted and assigned
his naval role, we don't know that either. He may
even have joined right at the start of the war,
aged 18, and so perhaps had already been an old
hand and seen some service. If for some reason he
had deferrment from 'call-up', he might not have
received his papers until he was 20. My guess is
that the latest he could have joined would be
towards the end of 1941 for his basic training,
then having been selected for training as a
gunner, would have almost certainly gone to the
naval gunnery school on Whale Island, 'HMS Excellent,'
to learn his job. His wedding photo with Mavis, in
the late winter of 1942, shows him proudly in his
Number Ones, the term for a naval rating's very
'best blues'.
Whatever the answer to how he came to be in the
navy, he was proud enough of his job to make sure
the sleeve of his arm was pulled round just a
little bit to show off his shining new gold,
gunner's badge. The gun, with one star above, and
the letter 'Q' below, denotes that Jack was a
'Quarters gunner – 3rd class', so very junior and
literally just out of training.
In effect he was a gun layer, and would sit in the
gun layer's seat, a bit like an old fashioned farm
tractor seat. He would raise or lower the angle of
the gun, and train it to the left or right for
firing, by quickly turning the adjustment wheels
whilst also looking through the long telescopic
lens at his target. Another rating loaded the gun
manually by lifting the shell and sliding it into
breech itself. Yet another would slam the breech
door shut and possibly press the button to fire
the gun when ordered by the gun captain.
Jack was one of a team of four or five men to each
gun, and his job was to ensure the gun was on
target, both for direction and elavation.
To understand more of what Jack did, what he
trained for, and the circumstances of his loss, we
need to delve a little into the background of
those aspects of the naval war at sea that would
ultimately determine his story.
Much of this is well known to the wartime
generation and those such as myself who came
shortly after, growing up steeped in the stories,
terminology and folklore of that huge conflict,
but as time passes, it is less well-known amongst
younger generations. Even lads of my post-war
generation knew the difference between a
battleship and a destroyer, or the effective
ranges of a 15-inch gun compared to a 4.5-inch,
from when they were at junior school. Perhaps some
filling in of basic information may be helpful
here, as well as placing events on a timeline that
puts things into context for Jack and Mavis and
their families.
By that Christmas of 1941, we were not only
building more warships of every size, but also
'borrowing' extra ones from America, those being
the 50 redundant, leaky, First War destroyers that
we gained on 'lend-lease'. All these, as well as
the ones we were frantically building for
ourselves, from aircraft carriers down to tiny
corvettes and minesweepers, had to have crews, and
all needed gunners. In fact, along with all the
other trades and skills, we needed lots of
gunners, and very quickly.
By the time Jack was doing his gunnery training,
German submarine attacks on our merchant shipping
were already taking their terrible toll. The main
answer to this type of attack was to organise
shipping into convoys, hopefully escorted by
enough warships to deter U-boat attack, and if not
deterred, then at least to attack the submarines
themselves.
The Admiralty's plan was simply to revert to what
had been done in the First War. Huge convoys with
armed escorts was the larger answer, but with
merchant ships also being given some form of
armament to defend themselves as best they could.
Shortage of warships of all types meant that some
convoys were not escorted at all. Defence also now
meant against air attack as well as submarine or
surface attack, and therein was a big problem for
the British government.
Just as in the First War, there was great
political unease about what to do about unarmed
merchant ships. This worry came about out of
British nervousness about not being seen to play
by the rules – the rules of war. Those rules are
governed by the Geneva Convention, a rulebook
still observed by most democratic countries of the
free world. Following the horrors, and some would
say unethical German practices of the First War,
such as sinking merchant ships without any prior
warning, previous conventions of warfare were
updated in 1929 at a huge world-wide convention
held in the Swiss city of Geneva. These strict
rules covered how non-combatants and civilians
would be treated, as well as the treatment of
prisoners-of-war. They covered how war could be
waged at sea, what actually defined a warship and
what didn't, and indeed, what was a civilian and
what wasn't.
The German argument, used to justify torpedoing
merchant ships without any warning in that First
War, deemed that any ship that carried arms or
munitions of any sort made it a warship, and
therefore liable for attack and to be sunk –
without warning! They applied this warped logic
even to passenger liners with women and children
aboard.
In the end, for our government and the admiralty,
it all came down to a name. Having decided that
merchant ships would now most certainly have to
have arms to defend themselves from all sorts of
attack, it was simply a matter of what they were
called, the terminology, but without being seen to
break the rules. Therefore, they were designated
'Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships.' Otherwise
known as 'DEMS'. It was a feeble effort to make
the point that they were, after all, just merchant
ships. Not that any amount of messing with words
bothered the Germans one bit, not in that war or
the First.
Merchant ships would be fitted with large calibre
naval guns for seaborne defence, and fixed or
mounted machine guns for air defence. Merchant
seamen, are and always were, civilians, and the
rules of war were that they should be treated as
such.
So although it was not at first deemed appropriate
for a ship's own crew to man these newly mounted
guns, on many ships, they did just that. It was
always intended that the job of maintaining and
firing the guns would have to be done by Royal
Navy personnel, but it wasn't always so, and not
always possible. In fact, on a few British
merchant ships, guns were manned by army personnel
of the Royal Artillery. But from the point of view
of the rules of war, if a merchant ship was
captured, the civilian crew should be treated as
civilians and ultimately returned to their home
country, and naval ratings were properly
prisoners-of-war and could be detained as such. It
was natural enough that the naval gunners destined
to man these guns would be called DEMS gunners,
which is how we know them today.
Naval ratings, also known by the slang term of
'matelots' (pron: matt-lows), as well as 'Jacks',
who passed their course at gunnery school would be
assigned their ship according to the size of guns
they trained on. A new gunnery rating couldn't
hope to be drafted to a huge battleship with the
biggest 15-inch guns; he would learn his trade on
smaller guns first.
The calibre of guns back then were designated in
inches, the number being the diameter of the
opening in the gun barrel across the centre from
one side to the other. The guns fitted to merchant
ships tended to be the old secondary armament from
redundant cruisers or destroyers, so were most
likely to be 3-inch or 5-inch naval guns. A 3-inch
gun, although regarded as small and something of a
pea-shooter in big gunnery terms, could still
punch a fair sized hole in the hull of a submarine
wallowing on the surface. Two hits would almost
certainly be fatal. Armed merchant ships, given
the chance of a fair fight, could give a very good
account of themselves.
It was on guns of such size that Jack would find
himself working. The circle of a 5-inch shell
placed standing up on its end would cover roughly
half the width of an A4 sheet of paper, and
perhaps be a little more than the length of a
computer keyboard in length. They were heavy,
though not too heavy for one man to carry.
Generally, they were loaded into the breech of the
gun by hand. Fate would determine that Jack would
volunteer to be a DEMS gunner, and so be posted to
a merchant ship - but as a Royal Navy rating.
Though this particular posting would be slightly
more unusual.
When the USA came into the war during that fateful
December of 1941, one thing quickly became very
apparent for their navy. They didn't have enough
gunners either, not even enough to man all their
own warships. They certainly didn't have enough to
man their massive fleet of US merchant vessels as
well. So an agreement was quickly reached with the
British government; we would 'loan' them some of
our naval gunners to cover their shortfall until
enough of their own naval ratings could be trained
up.
Unlike Britain, the Americans never had any qualms
over terminology or the need to use long, vague
acronyms to describe a gunner. Not for them the
worry of issues over whether defending a grain
carrier or oil tanker was an act of war or not,
nor the use of the word 'arms' or 'armed'. They
came out with it plain and simple; their naval
gunners on merchant ships were designated 'Armed
Guards'. Their ratings were in the United States
Navy and wore the badge 'AG' on their uniform
sleeves.
Jack would incredibly find himself one of a very
small number of RN men to be loaned to the
American navy, to work alongside their Armed
Guards to make their numbers up. I say
'incredible' because, he would not have expected
such a turn of events, and would have scarcely
believed it when first told where he was going. On
Jack's ship, a large oil tanker, the requirement
needed to man all the guns was for fourteen men.
This was made up of twelve armed guards, and two
Royal Navy DEMS gunners.
Thus Jack, having volunteered for 'DEMS' service
and undergone further training, would receive a
'draft chit' telling him he would be a gunner on
an American tanker, the 'SS Jack Carnes'. This
tanker moreover was brand-new, one of dozens being
built at the same time as the American war machine
revved up to maximum output, having only been
launched the year before and had just made it's
maiden voyage only in the February, 1942. Another
fact we cannot know is just where Jack joined his
namesake ship, but we have to presume it was from
a UK port.
A great deal of information we have now is by way
of the internet, and the massive host of websites
of the last 20-years or so that deal with wartime
naval matters, from lists of ships sunk, to crew
lists and naval veteran memories. There is a great
deal of detail out there now, much of which Jack's
family, and namely Mavis, when they first learnt
of his loss, could never have been aware of. All
they knew was what the Admiralty telegram told
them at the time, and perhaps a little more detail
later when it was revealed that Jack was in fact
serving on an American tanker, and they learnt of
its name and approximate place of its loss.
Indeed, as a lad learning about Jack first hand
from those that knew him, that is all I would know
too for the next fifty-something years.
One of the snippets of information we gain now is
that this new coal-fired steam tanker, owned by
the Sinclair Oil Company and built at Wilmington
on the Delaware River, was a very busy ship
indeed. Other information from another website is
that this new tanker did a run to Murmansk on the
perilous arctic convoys. But I am satisfied now
that this was a story put about by the relatives
of one of the American crew's survivors, perhaps
from misunderstood information, extracts of which
still appear online, but it is mistaken. Firstly,
the ship's name does not appear on any of the
arctic convoy lists available online, on any of
the outward or return runs to Russia.
Secondly, the ship's name does appear on the
excellent 'Arnold Hague Database' online, as part
of the website, ConvoyWeb. Therein is the 'SS Jack
Carnes' story, a full list of ports, arrival and
departure dates, from when she set out on her
maiden voyage on February 25th from New York. All
possible dates are accounted for even allowing for
minor errors. She spent the first few months of
her career between the oilfields of The Gulf of
Mexico and New York, then made one trip through
the Panama Canal and round to Brisbane, which now
turns out to have then been a little suburb of San
Francisco, with an oil terminal. The data records
her passing through the ports of Cristobal and
Balboa on the canal in both directions, thence
back to the Gulf to collect a cargo of oil for her
first trans-Atlantic trip, to Belfast.
But we can be confident that she made those
voyages without Jack. The earliest Jack could have
joined her would have been July 21st, when she
left Swansea for her first trip back across the
Atlantic, this time to Aruba, to collect another
cargo of much needed oil. She seems to have
brought oil from Texas City in the Gulf to Belfast
the first time in late June, then called at
Swansea to rebunker, before her first trip back
across the Atlantic to Aruba. She came back to
Belfast once more with that cargo, then once more
to Swansea to rebunker again. If he joined on 21st
July, that would fit with embarkation leave
following completion of his DEMS training, which
seems to have nicely coincided with his 21st
birthday at the end of June. In which case, Jack
had already been to Aruba once, and was on his way
back to that port again when he was lost.
After Jack and Mavis had married in Coalville, in
the spring of 1942, Jack would have had a very
short leave, possibly when straight out of his
first gunnery training, but prior to his further
DEMS training. It is also very likely that on the
day of his marriage, he had no idea where or to
what ship he would be going, or even that he would
become a DEMS gunner, though he may have already
volunteered for the role. The badge on his sleeve
does not denote that distinction, so it is also
likely that he went straight off to DEMS training
right after his wedding. It would then be after
that further training period that he would have
had one more period of leave, maybe a couple of
weeks or so, on what might be termed 'embarkation
leave'. This was routinely given to service
personnel about to serve a period of time abroad
and for whom 'Home Leave' would not be an option
for a couple of years or more.
The badge Jack would have
worn after his DEMS training
To the best of our knowledge, this leave would be
the last time Jack and Mavis would see each other,
sometime during June of 1942. Jack had his 21st
birthday towards the end of June, on the 26th, and
all forces personnel, if still in the UK, used to
move heaven and earth to get home for that special
day. It is not unreasonable to suppose Jack was
home with Mavis for that day, and maybe for a week
or so after. The coincidence of training courses,
imminent and indefinite sea service and his 21st
would have been just too much a temptation to not
to try and do something to get leave to go home.
When an oil tanker discharged a cargo of oil, it
was the practice to then re-load with thousands of
barrels of fresh water ballast. This prevented her
from riding too high in the water as an empty
vessel, for a rudder and propeller half out of the
water makes a very inefficient ship. Having
unloaded oil at Belfast Lough, she then loaded the
water ballast, and crossed the Irish Sea to make
her way to Swansea docks to rebunker with Welsh
coal. From there, she crossed the Atlantic to
Aruba, in the southern Carribean, in order to load
yet another cargo of much needed oil for Britain's
war effort.
The dates on the database quoted above tell us
that the 'Jack Carnes' had already made one trip
to Aruba, then back to Belfast, and then Swansea.
She arrived in Swansea again to rebunker with coal
on August 22nd, and sailed for Aruba on the 25th.
That is the very latest Jack could have joined his
namesake ship. The only certainty is that when the
'Jack Carnes' departed Wales once more, Jack was
aboard for that second run and about to fulfill
the role he had trained for. But, given the dates
we have, and surmising when Jack had leave and
when he would have finished training, give or take
a week or so, it is very possible he was on that
first run to Aruba too. In which case, he had
already crossed the Atlantic once, and was about
to do so again. Only his full service record will
tell us when he actually became one of the 'SS
Jack Carnes' ship's company, and indeed, when he
actually joined the navy.
Another snippet of information that comes out of
the research is that all DEMS gunners were
volunteers for that role. He must have asked, or
been suggested, for the role and then agreed to
the job, and as such, would then have been
appraised of the 'risks'. All volunteers would
have been told how dangerous it would be, in more
ways than one, and not just the danger of being
sunk.
Firstly, they would have been made aware of the
anomaly of being a British naval rating, in
uniform, aboard a foreign merchant vessel, where
it was obvious to the Admiralty and government
that we were breaking the spirit of the Geneva
Convention if not the actual code. And with that
would have been an awareness of how the Germans
viewed this and their refusal to accept any
British explanation of reasons for placing guns,
however defensive, aboard civilian ships.
Secondly, the implications in all this for Jack
were that, should he be taken prisoner, he may not
be treated very well, even treated very cruelly.
He may not be allowed the normal facilities that
prisoners-of-war under the rules of the Convention
were deemed to have a right to, such as access to
letters from home, Red Cross parcels and many
other things – including food.
Today, we can safely regard the German attitude of
that time as hypocritical in the extreme and just
a clever Teutonic bartering of words to justify
their own murderous intent and actions. Historians
now are very sure that both British and American
officials in government had already come to that
very same conclusion following German practices at
sea in the First War.
Jack's naval paybook would make no mention of “SS
Jack Carnes.” Officially, he was part of the
ship's company of 'HMS President III.” This was
partly to show, if captured, that he was a
bona-fide Royal Navy rating, on official business
for His Majesty's Navy, and his cap tally would
display HMS whatever ship he was on. But it was
also largely for pay purposes. There were hundreds
of DEMS gunners, serving on just as many different
ships, and for naval pay and accounting, it was
easier if all were considered to be part of the
same ship. This ship did actually exist, a former
WW1 corvette, converted essentially into a
floating office and moored in the Thames just
above Blackfriar's Bridge. She exists still,
albeit now decommissioned, and serves as a
historic-ship venue for wealthy businesses to host
conferences and corporate events. It is doubtful
if Jack ever stepped aboard her, or even knew
where she was. It's a sad fact that when scrolling
down the huge lists of naval ratings killed in
WW2, you will see 'DEMS' and 'HMS President III'
many, many times. There were hundreds like Jack -
volunteers all, heroes each and every one.
Just what would Jack have found when he first went
aboard the 'SS Jack Carnes'? From his own point of
view, to be drafted to an American ship, and a new
one at that, must have seemed to be some sort of
deliverance. Under training, he would have heard
endless tales of the hardships of new matelots
sent to serve on rustbucket smaller warships that
were tossed about like corks in rough seas, the
discomfort of crowded messdecks where hammocks
were close-slung by the dozen in rows, and the
hardships and filth endured by crews in the
regular task of coaling ship if one was
unfortunate enough not to get an oil-fired vessel.
Larger ships like battleships and cruisers may
have ridden rough seas better, but there was more
'bull', discipline, and a lot more observance of
strict rules of ancient naval etiquette. On this
American merchant ship, he would still be under
strict naval rules, but things would still be much
more relaxed than he could ever have hoped for.
Another point worth making is when we consider the
fact that he was just one of two Royal Navy
ratings aboard. Both would have come under the
jurisdiction of the senior American naval officer
aboard for his gunnery duties, and under that of
the vessel's captain for other matters. The senior
American gunner was a Petty Officer in the USN,
and it says a lot about both British men that
their service record to date, their bearing and
discipline, that they were trusted to be the only
Royal Navy ratings aboard and thus to represent
their service, and king, to the very highest
standards in all respects. Not something a lot of
folks would realise now.
We can be sure Jack would have marvelled at
conditions aboard this new American tanker. Not
that there would have been any luxury, for this
was a speedily built 'utility' vessel, the tanker
equivalent to the dozens of liberty ships American
shipyards were knocking out almost daily. Though
built to a basic wartime specification, there's no
doubt her American crew would have sought to make
her more than comfortable. Even her basic crew
accommodation would have been superior to their
equivalent pre-war British tanker of the same
size, and many times better than even the largest
British warships.
So no hammocks here, but proper bunks with
mattresses. As one of only two RN ratings aboard,
he may well have even had a cabin, shared with his
'oppo', unheard of even now for ordinary ratings
on British warships. A decent messdeck, with
plenty of tasty and homecooked food, is another
given. There were fridges in the smokerooms,
icewater machines in the messes and crewrooms.
Americans were not then, as now, known for liking
to live rough, willingly or otherwise. Extra
luxuries, like ice-cream, or the newly invented
fizzy, carbonated drinks that we now know as
Coca-Cola or Soda, would almost certainly have
also been available, though the USN was notably
strict on beer consumption aboard ships, and I
don't think there was a rum issue. Perhaps on this
merchant tanker, the rules were a little more
relaxed, but no master of Captain Merritt's
stature would permit any abuse of drink,
especially considering their cargo.
It is from the records that we know that Jack was
not alone. He had a British crewmate aboard, an
older man of 31 called Albert Farrow, who came
from Wellingborough in Northamptonshire. It is
likely they joined ship together, possibly even
from the same DEMS course. Their American Armed
Guard crewmates would have delighted in showing
off their more superior living conditions, on
every level, to these two 'Limey' sailors. For a
new and young British sailor, with visions in his
head of what he might have gone to, he must have
thought all his birthdays had come at once.
For younger folk reading this, who may be inspired
to learn a little more of what conditions were
normally like for RN ratings posted to serve on
smaller warships in both world wars, like
destroyers, frigates and corvettes, I heartily
recommend reading the most famous novel of the
time, “The Cruel Sea”, by Nicholas Montserratt. It
really is an eye-opener, and an unforgettable
picture of the hardships of Atlantic convoys in
foul weather.
Jack's new experience couldn't have been much
further from reality than that described in “The
Cruel Sea.” Not for Jack would days and days go by
without warm food, because small ships in stormy
weather had to have the galley fires extinguished,
nor being frozen with cold and perpetually soaking
wet, nor the ardous tasks of watchkeeping in
mountainous seas.
He would have been the envy of any of his
classmates when under training, or any of his
friends he was in touch with, had he happened to
mention what ship he was going to. But the
likelihood is that he would not have even
mentioned it to anyone, perhaps not even to Mavis,
though his excitement would no doubt have been
very great.
This American tanker was not built for speed
either. It is doubtful that she would have made
more than 15 knots on a calm sea ~ roughly
17-18mph. She had two steam turbine engines,
geared to one single screw. The wartime
requirement for new merchant ships was for two
speeds, those to be able to make 12kts for slow
convoys, and 20kts for what were laughingly called
fast convoys.
Displacing just a little under 11,000 tons, she
was for her time and type considered a large
vessel, albeit dwarfed by the massive leviathans
we see today, regularly now at over 100,000 tons.
Next to a battleship or aircraft carrier, a 10,000
ton tanker was the next prime target of any u-boat
commander, and top of the merchant shipping list
of targets along with ammunition ships.
She was of the slower speed, but at 15 knots, she
would be considered just about capable of
outrunning a u-boat on the surface, but could
certainly outrun any submerged. We know now that
in the event, she very nearly did. To successfully
hit a ship with a torpedo at 15kts, from perhaps a
mile or two away required, in essence, for a
submarine to lie in wait, take very careful aim,
and hope for the best.
The ship sailed from her Welsh port on the 25th of
August. It would take almost five days for the
'Jack Carnes' to make her way from south Wales out
into the north Atlantic, heading roughly south
west through the already heavily U-boat infested
waters of the Western Approaches to her last known
position, just north of the Azores. Running a bit
lighter, even with water ballast, she could have
been a little quicker too in covering the roughly
1,500 miles. She was also sailing independently,
not within an escorted convoy, and indeed, the
record shows she had never been in convoy, on
either side of the Atlantic.
Late August would have been reasonably nice,
weather-wise, and as they journeyed south west,
the sea would have got even more blue and the
temperature would have climbed even further. All
in all, as Jack took in his new surroundings and
role, he would have looked forward to the voyage
ahead and seeing foreign climes. We can well
imagine him lying on his bunk at night, after a
fulfilling American meal, which wouldn't have been
short on meat, hardly able to believe his luck,
and thinking, 'this is the life.'
There are numerous websites that detail the loss
of the 'SS Jack Carnes', some with a crew list, or
listing the casualties of the incident. Some
details vary in minor ways, but piecing them all
together, we now get some idea of what happened,
what took place, and also what can be discounted.
During the morning of the 30th August, the ship
was maintaining a zig-zag course, the appropriate
method to avoid being prey to a torpedo. The
accepted practice was not to keep to the same
course for more than ten minutes, then alter
course 10 degrees or so, to port or starboard
alternately, but at the same time maintaining a
general heading in the direction they wanted to go
on a gently weaving course. At 08:00hrs, they were
roughly 200 miles north of the Azores, and still
generally heading south-west.
What happened next is gleaned both from the
accounts of the American crew, and from German
records and reports they submitted later.
One u-boat, U-705, was indeed lying in wait. The
submarine fired a spread of four torpedoes, but it
appears that the tanker was not hit on this first
occasion. The submarine then surfaced, and from
about 5 miles away, started shelling the tanker
with her surface mounted deck gun. Around 10
rounds were fired, but none directly struck the
ship, though they were close, with shrapnel being
scattered over the deck.
By now, the crew would have been called to action
stations, and the master, Captain Merritt, would
be directing his crew's responses from the bridge.
Within three minutes, all gun crews would be
closed up, just as they would be on a warship. At
the same time, the radio operator would
immediately have started sending desperate mayday
signals to tell that they were under attack. The
captain would have rung down to the engine room
for the chief engineer to open up the engines and
make as much extra speed as he could muster to
open up the distance between them and their
attacker. But in truth, she was probably not far
off full speed anyway and couldn't have gone much
faster. Jack would have quickly turned to, helping
to man whichever gun was his action station.
There were two larger guns carried, one 4-inch and
one 3-inch, plus some smaller calibre machine
guns. I suspect Jack would be on the 3-inch gun,
which records say was mounted on the large
circular mounting on the ship's bow, along with
his RN messmate, working together. The Americans
would perhaps have took the slightly larger and
more powerful gun mounted on a similar large
mounting over the stern, behind the crew quarters
and aft superstructure. Other American guards
would have been ready at the machine guns for a
close-quarter fight if required.
The gunners between them fired eight rounds from
the forward gun, and 13 rounds from the after
4-inch gun. Either way, we can assume that Jack
did get to crew a gun that fired in anger and do
what he was trained for. Their gunnery was
obviously effective, for they forced the submarine
to submerge. With only one deck gun, the enemy sub
was effectively outgunned, and now in a very
dangerous position herself on the surface.
In essence, they had won their first battle. The
tanker's crew would have been both euphoric, and
at the same time, apprehensive. The sub was now an
unseen enemy below the waves, and all they could
hope for was to outrun her. This first battle may
have been won, raising hopes, but sadly, their
hopes were to prove misplaced.
Uknown to them all, the u-boat that they had
beaten off had signalled to another u-boat further
along the “Jack Carnes” zig-zag path. This u-boat,
the U-516, sighted them passing going at full
speed, and so a frantic chase ensued. The u-boat
chased after them for no less than 270 miles, over
a period of 18 hours. The 'Jack Carnes' with it's
American and British crew very nearly did get
away.
By later that evening, the whole crew must have
thought that they had successfully escaped
disaster, at least for now. But luck was not with
them. In the early hours of the 31st, just short
of 2am, the chasing u-boat caught them up
sufficiently enough to get sight of them in the
moonlight, take aim and stealthily fire two
torpedoes, one of which struck the 'Jack Carnes'
on the starboard side just forward of the bridge.
The chase was over.
Miraculously, although their ship was now
seriously damaged, no crew were killed or injured
at this point. Once again, the klaxons of 'action
stations' would have sounded. Considering what had
happened earlier, it is likely half of the gun
crews were already closed up, taking it in watches
to have at least one gun manned constantly. Within
a couple of minutes, all the other guns would be
fully manned too.
The master had ordered the helm to be swung to
starboard, to face any other oncoming torpedoes
and present less of a full-length profile, but the
watch below erroneously secured the undamaged
engines and the ship lost way. Four minutes after
the first hit, the u-boat fired a torpedo which
struck on the port side in the No4 tank, followed
by a coup-de-grâce which struck the starboard side
amidships.
The nine officers, 33 crewmen and 14 armed guards
then abandoned ship in two lifeboats. A fifth
torpedo was then fired by the U-boat, which struck
the starboard side aft of the midships house, a
sixth hit the starboard side bunker tanks and a
seventh struck amidships
The captain and officers would realise straight
away that those first few hits meant the game was
up, and that they would ultimately lose the ship.
Luck was with them again insomuch as there was no
fire, for even an empty tanker can be something of
a torch if oil fumes in the storage tanks were
ignited. What did happen was that the total of
five explosions in her hull weakened her structure
so severely that she 'broke her back', she
effectively broke in two, and started to sink. Her
last known position was at 41.35 N - 29.01 W.
Once the order was given to abandon ship, the two
large lifeboats were launched successfully, and
all the 58 crew got away fairly swiftly from their
stricken ship. Their job done, the u-boat
submerged, and simply slipped away. The crew were
only able to sit in their lifeboats at a distance,
and just as dawn was breaking, at about half-past
four in the morning, watch as the bows of the
remaining half of their vessel rose into the air
and quickly slipped beneath the waves.
The crew were divided evenly between the two
lifeboats, 28 men in each. Eight of the Armed
Guards, and the two DEMS gunners, Jack and Albert,
along with the master, Captain Theodore Roosevelt
Merritt, and three officers were all in one boat,
and the rest of the officers, four more Armed
Guards and civilian crew were in the other. The
sea was evidently fairly calm to start with, and
the crews roped both boats together.
What happened next was described by some of the
survivors, including the ship's chief engineer, a
Henry Billitz. He tells that during the night,
(maybe the same night or the next, we don't know),
a storm blew up, which brought 50 to 60 foot
waves, and the line between the boats parted, and
so they drifed apart. The chief says that he never
saw the other boat again.
The remaining lifeboat gradually drifted south, no
doubt assisted by some fervent rowing, and after
six days spent in an open boat at the mercy of the
weather, they thankfully made landfall on Terceira
Island in the Azores on September 6th. It was here
that they apparently learnt that, three days
earlier, a Royal Air Force flying boat had
attacked and sunk with depth charges the very same
u-boat that had torpedoed the “SS Jack Carnes.”
The survivors took some comfort from the
additional information that the u-boat was lost
with all hands.
Jack and Albert were never seen again, and nor
were any of the other 26 men that escaped the
initial sinking. Given the rough seas that came
later, we can only speculate and hope that their
end would have been mercifully quick, and that
their boat was swamped and overturned and all were
drowned.
It is unlikely that they drifted for several days,
as was the fate of many a ship's crew in wartime
when forced to take to the boats, to eke out ever
diminishing rations and water only to eventually
succumb to starvation, thirst, and the burning
heat of the sun.
The curious thing about Jack's loss is that Mavis
could not accept his loss at all, not for several
more years. She always harboured the hope that he
had somehow survived the sinking and would one day
return from the war. Such miraculous returns of
men long thought to be dead were not unknown, and
many a supposedly lost sailor did indeed fetch up
on foreign shores somewhere, often badly injured
and nursed back to health by locals, only to
return out of the blue some years later to the
surprise and delight of his grieving family. It
had been known to happen.
Finding out so much more detail now, over 70 years
after the war finished, tells us the tragic truth.
That Mavis' instinct, her long held belief that
Jack had survived the torpedoing, indeed, had also
survived the sinking, was correct all along. His
family at the time, his parents and all Mavis'
three sisters, now long dead themselves, would
have been astonished to learn all this today. She
was not wrong to hold out such hopes, for it very
nearly did happen. The fate of an unseasonal
mid-Atlantic storm ultimately robbed Jack of his
life, and both of them of what might have been.
By the time she received the dreaded telegram,
within a week or so of the sinking, initially just
posting Jack as 'missing', she had discovered
something else - Mavis was expecting Jack's son.
The tragedy was now compounded by, not just his
grieving widow and his own family, but also the
expectation of a fatherless child.
Michael was born early the following March, and
grew up always knowing of his dead father's
sacrifice,
 but also aware that he
was not unusual either. For many other boys had
also lost fathers in the war, and going through
his school years, he would have known of several
in a likewise position to himself. By the time the
lad was about eight years old, we think Mavis was
beginning to accept that Jack was indeed lost and
would never return. I think that Michael, who
himself died as a result of a heart attack aged
only 42, would have taken great succour and
comfort to know of the small role his father had
played in Britain's defence, had all this
information been available to him.
It was not until almost ten years after Jack's
death that Mavis would find renewed happiness when
she married Percy Wardle, a bus conductor, then
working for the Midland Red. They met whilst she
was working at a cafe in the centre of Coalville
much frequented by bus crews. Mavis' next eldest
sister, Edna, had also met her husband, Gordon
also on the buses, whilst working at Chad's Cafe,
just a year or so before the war.
Writing this now, I also wonder whether her
sister, or even brother-in-law, had some hand in
that meeting,
 a sort of guidance.
Perhaps there was some gentle encouragement from
Gordon advising Percy to bide his time. Both were
conductors working out of the same depot, so both
knew one another. Edna had met her husband at
Chad's Cafe, so why not Mavis?
They married in the summer of 1952.
Edna and Gordon already had a three year old son,
Alan, at the time of Jack's death, and then
Rodney, another cousin to Michael, would be born
later in 1942, just after Jack's loss and just a
few months before Michael himself the following
year. In later times, the three growing cousins
would become almost inseparable, as Mavis drew
particularly close to Edna, five years her senior,
and her two boys.
In Percy, the beloved uncle of my own memory,
Mavis found herself a real gem, and they married
in the summer of 1952. Percy became the loving
father that the fates of war had robbed Michael
of, and Mavis did then have several happy years as
a wife and mother, bringing a new brother to
Michael into the world when Phillip was born in
1954, giving Percy his own son.
Now the past could be better laid to rest, but
Jack was never forgotten, and never would be. It
is to Percy's credit, kind and gentle man that he
was, that he helped to keep Jack's memory alive
for Michael. The rest of his cousins, Sylvia's
boys, were always aware of 'Uncle Jack' and the
sacrifice he had made and what his loss had meant
to the family, and particularly to Aunt Mavis
herself.
Whenever we visited Coalville to see either set of
grandparents, or aunts and uncles, whether
returning to Leicester by bus or train, mum would
always drag us boys by the hand up the steps of
the Coalville Clock Tower War Memorial to see
Jack's name carved into one of the stone plaques
listing the dead of Coalville from both world
wars.
Mavis, in happier times, standing next to her
dad, alongside two of her sisters, Sylvia and
Edna, and young nephew Alan, c.1946. We think
her eldest sister, Gladys, took the photo.
Sylvia was only 12 when Jack was lost, and the
circumstances of not quite knowing what happened
to Jack, plus her sister's grief, indeed the grief
of the rest of the family, following on so closely
after their own mother's death, made a massive
impact on her and Mavis' other two sisters.
The tragedy for the family of this Second War loss
of Jack was that, in some ways, it cruelly
mirrored a similar family wartime loss on the
girls' mother's side during the First War. Their
own mum's brother, Uncle Lakin, had been in the
army, and ultimately died through being gassed.
Lakin Manderfield was also an uncle to all four of
the Holt girls, just as Jack was an uncle to all
the Holt grandsons, including myself.
Coincidentally, Lakin's own son was also killed in
the Second War, in 1943, serving with the Royal
Artillery in Liverpool. It was indeed a terrible
span of three years of successive tragedies
affecting the Holt family.
To all of the Holt family, the victory when it
came in 1945 must surely have been very
bitter-sweet indeed. As the nation celebrated,
widows all over the country and empire mused on
what that victory had cost, and Mavis, bless her,
still thought, prayed and hoped, that she may not
be a widow after all, and Jack may well just walk
through the door.
But it was not to be. By the war's end, Mavis
already had the second letter from the Admiralty
informing her that her husband, previously listed
as missing, was now officially, 'missing, presumed
dead', and now actually listing the name of the
ship he was actually serving on. So Michael always
knew his father had been serving on an American
ship, a tanker, which must have puzzled him all
those years ago just as it puzzled me.
Even then, for several more years, she still
harboured hopes of a miracle. But somehow, the
fates conspired against her again and again, and
gradually took all those she loved most dear, one
by one, her second husband, both sons, and all her
sisters before her.
For incredibly, after only some 25 years of
marriage, Mavis would be robbed of Percy also,
when an industrial accident at work caused him to
lose a foot, which then turned gangrenous and, in
1975, ultimately cost him his life too. Jack's
son, Michael, aged only 42, would himself die of a
heart attack in 1984. Even more incredibly, only
15 years later, Percy's son and Michael's younger
brother, Phillip, would also succumb to heart
disease when aged only 46, and leaving three
children.
Mavis, left, enjoying a cuppa with sister
Edna in later years
Much of this later information, the extra details
about the actual attacks and the sinking, how the
boats were separated, was only discovered by
virtue of the internet in the last 10 to 15 years
of Mavis' long life. It first all came to light by
discovering an Armed Guard veteran's site, written
by one of the survivors in the other boat. It
would have been cruel to tell her, then aged well
over 80, that her initial instinct, that Jack had
indeed survived the sinking, was correct after
all, and that cruel fate and a strong wind had
conspired to prevent his homecoming. So she never
knew.
Now, with her passing, and the last of the
generation of Holts and Hills that were affected
by these events, the full story can be told for
the benefit of the rest of the family who are
interested enough to read it. But moreover, to
keep alive the memory of two things.
Firstly, of one man's sacrifice amongst so many
others for their country in time of war, and
secondly, of one woman's undying love and belief,
her faith and fortitude, to carry unbelievable
burdens of grief as the loss of one family member
after another befell her, her two husbands and
then her two sons, losses that would sorely test
her faith and resolve over the years. Mavis always
said, in that last few years and particularly
after her last sister, Gladys, died in 2010, she
never wanted 'to be the last one left'. And after
so much loss, we can well understand that now. But
the fates once again conspired against her, and it
would turn out to be so. Despite everything, our
Aunt Mavis never gave in to self-pity, nor to any
bitterness. She really is a hard act to follow, in
every sense.
Jack's death is recorded in several places, of
which at least two are war memorials. The Clock
Tower War Memorial in Coalville, and the Royal
Navy memorial at Portsmouth, on Panel 64, Column
1. And of course, now online on various websites,
not least of which is the Commonwealth War Graves
site, none of which actually mention the 'SS Jack
Carnes' by name, only that Jack was 'aboard' HMS
President III, that psuedo-fictitious payship
moored in the Thames.
Hundreds of men are similarly listed as HMS
President, most were DEMS gunners and volunteers
all, and it's still true that many of their
families, even all these years later, know nothing
of the actual ship on which their relative was
lost, nor of any deeds in which their men may have
taken part. Though, for those curious enough to
enquire further, it is now possible to find out
most of what is to be found without even leaving
an armchair.
Almost a million men alone served in the Royal
Navy during the war, five times the number serving
when the war started. In total, 81,000 sailors of
both the Royal and Merchant Navy lost their lives
during their service, both at sea and ashore, or
as prisoners of war.
To be a naval rating on a warship was dangerous
enough, though it could have its rewards and
occasional periods of excitement. To be any sort
of rating on a merchant ship was highly hazardous
in the extreme, and was for the most part very
boring. When merchant ships were attacked by
warships, or aircraft, there was usually only one
outcome. Jack's role was to try to make that
outcome just a little less likely, and as we have
seen, most outcomes were not good.
Mavis with son Michael, c.1947
To the memory of Jack, and of Percy, and their
sons,
Michael and Phillip, and not least, Mavis
herself. R.I.P.
one of the memorial plaques on Coalville
Clock Tower,
'Our Jack' listed on the right as 'HILL J.W.'
a link to Jack's memorial page on
the
Commonwealth War Graves Commission Website
listing his details on the
Portsmouth Naval Memorial at Southsea.
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