Photos by Ewen Weatherspoon
A visitor to the 2012 Olympic
yachting events in Weymouth
who strays into the Nothe Fort museum might be surprised to see a Soviet
sailor’s hat. It’s a gift to the Dorset museum from Eric Alley, a local
resident who was presented with it in Armenia in 1989, when he was
working there for a United Nations disaster relief team after an earthquake.
At a dinner on Mr Alley’s last night in the country, his host asked him if he
had ever been to the Soviet Union before.
“Yes, in 1941,”
he replied. After a brief pause, the host said: “But that was in the Great
Patriotic War. Where were you?” Mr Alley grins
at this
point in his story and says: “Murmansk.” “Ahh,” said
his host as the penny dropped. “The Arctic convoys.” From that moment, Mr Alley
was a firm friend. He was given the hat and made an honorary member of the
Soviet navy. Arctic convoys don’t figure on the school curriculum in Britain’s
classrooms, but the story of the British and Allied sailors who braved what Sir
Winston Churchill described as “the worst journey in the world” has been taught
in Russian schools since the war ended.
It was Churchill who proposed the convoys, following Operation Barbarossa, Germany’s invasion of Russia. He promised to supply
Stalin “at all costs”, knowing that, had Russia fallen, the full weight of
the Nazi machinery would have been directed at the West. War Cabinet documents
now available in the National Archives called for sending “the maximum this
country could afford… We must supply her with munitions to the limit of our
ability. To do less would increase the dangers of Russia’s making a separate peace.”
The first convoys
Mr Alley, originally from Preston in Lancashire, was on the first Arctic convoy, code-named Operation Dervish, which left Hvalfiourdur in Iceland on 21 August, 1941. By then, Norway and the Baltic states had been overrun by Germany, and the only way that supplies could reach Russia was through the ports of Murmansk and Archangel, which are both inside the Arctic Circle.
Every 10 years since 1985, Russia has struck a commemorative medal to give to the British Arctic convoy veterans in formal recognition of the critical role they played in carrying vital supplies to Russia. In Ocober 2006, the British Government issued veterans with the Arctic Emblem to show its gratitude for the heroism they displayed in the face of terrible hardship. The emblem can be worn on the lapel but cannot officially be worn alongside campaign medals.
He had twice tried to join the navy since war broke out but it wasn’t until his
18th birthday that he could be accepted. He volunteered for the first active
role that came along, which was for a radar operator, and after three weeks’
training he joined the destroyer HMS Inglefield. Between August 1941 and March
1943, Mr Alley would make 15 convoy journeys to Russia
in his ship from its base in Iceland.
On that first journey to Archangel, HMS
Inglefield was deployed as part of the screen for the convoy. “Most of the
merchant ships were very ancient,” says Mr Alley. Their cargo included 10,000
tons of rubber, 3,800 depth charges and magnetic mines and 15 Hurricane fighter
planes. That summer, the weather was kind, and they reached Archangel
on August 31.
“Operation Dervish was dead simple,” Mr Alley recalls as he sifts through his
boxes of memorabilia in the study of his Weymouth
flat. “There were no rough seas or any action, and there was virtually 24 hours
of daylight. The Germans didn’t wake up to what we were doing. We all thought
that this was going to be easy.”
“But after Dervish, the Germans did wake up to what was happening. The
Luftwaffe and U-boats moved
to northern Norway, so the
convoys had to keep as far north as
possible.”
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Extremes of weather
Over the coming months,
conditions grew increasingly grim. Convoys in winter sailed through almost
complete darkness in temperatures so low that skin was flayed from bare fingers
if they touched any part of the exterior of the ship – something that happened
to
Mr Alley when he grabbed a ladder rail.
78 The number of convoys that made the grueling journey to Russia.
101 Number of convoy ships lost between August 1941 and May 1945.
200 Number of Arctic convoy veterans alive today, from a total of 17,000.
He recalls the high seas, with waves as high as cliffs, that would set the
ships on great roller coasters. Waves landed on decks as solid ice, which had
to be picked off at every spare moment, no matter the weather, as it was
capable of capsizing a ship – and no one lasted long in the water. Four
merchant ships sank purely through bad weather. Tales of fires, of terrible
deaths and miraculous survivals were legion, some involving sailors as young as
14.
Even when there was no action, with hatches and portholes closed, life was far
from cosy. “We were warm in our radar cabin, but the mess decks were terrible,”
says Mr Alley. “From leaving Iceland
to the Russian ports, we kept our hammocks up, and food and clothes were
stacked in the hammock nettings under the mess table, in the officers’ cabins,
even in the engine room. The mess decks smelled and they were awash with water
filled with dried peas and flour and other things. And practically everybody on
board smoked.”
Disaster strikes
Working in the radar room,
Mr Alley didn’t actually see much action, though he could hear events on the
radio. Most appalling was the fate of Convoy PQ17, the largest that had ever
sailed. In July 1942, while HMS Inglefield was searching for the German
battleship Tirpitz, PQ17 was ordered to scatter because of reports that German
warships were being refuelled so they could intercept the convoy. Unprotected,
the ships were picked off one by one in the worst setback of the campaign: 24
of 35 cargo ships were sunk. “We heard ships call for help and could do nothing
about it,” Mr Alley recalls sadly. “We had our own job to get on with.”
In March 1943, after a year and a half of constant convoy work, HMS Inglefield
was sent to the Mediterranean, where she was sunk by a German glider bomb off Anzio in Italy.
Mr Alley was rescued, but 33 of his comrades died: their bodies remain in the
hulk of the
heroic Arctic convoy ship, which
still lies at the bottom of the Mediterranean.
Death toll
Britain’s Arctic convoys, based in Iceland and at Loch Ewe in Scotland, continued their journeys until May 1945. A total of 78 convoys delivered more than four million tons of cargo, including 7,000 planes, 5,000 tanks and other vehicles, as well as medicine, fuel and raw materials. In all, 101 ships were sunk, and some 3,000 Merchant Navy and Royal Navy seamen were killed by explosions, fires and freezing water. The death toll among merchant ships was lower because their crews were far smaller. They were lightly armed and their guns were manned by the Royal Artillery. The RAF provided them with fighter pilots and planes that were catapulted from the decks, but with no way of returning.
“We hated to see a Royal Navy ship go down, because there would be so many on
board,” says convoy veteran Jock Dempster, who managed to enlist in the
Merchant Navy at the age of 16. Although he was young then, he says: “We
appreciated the great dangers.”
Mutual gratitude
Mr Dempster, who is now chairman of the Russian Convoy Association (Scotland), enjoyed his contact with Russians. “One time in Murmansk we gave away everything we had – we ended up without a stitch. We weren’t asked to, we just wanted to help.”
There is a continuing mutual feeling of gratitude, and a team of 11 specialists
from St Petersburg recently came to London to repair the masts of HMS Belfast, the surviving
Arctic convoy ship which is now part of the Imperial War
Museum. The £250,000
project was a donation from the Russians in appreciation of the convoys, though
Britain had benefited from
them just as much as Russia.
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Celebrating the memory
There were no official
ceremonies in England to
mark the 70th anniversary of the first Arctic convoy, but in Scotland a dozen veterans celebrated the event
with a service at the Loch Ewe memorial, organised by Mr Dempster and attended
by Prince Michael of Kent and the Russian consul from Edinburgh. This was followed by a meal in the
handsome Pool House Hotel at Poolewe, the former headquarters of the Loch Ewe
naval base, where guest rooms are named after navy ships. In Aultbea, on the
east side of the loch, a museum dedicated to the convoys is soon to be built by
the village hall.
Year by year the number of Arctic convoy
veterans decreases, from a height of 17,000 to around 200 today. Like many of
his comrades, Mr Alley couldn’t attend the Loch Ewe memorial. Long retired from
his career as an emergency planning officer, for which he was appointed OBE, he
is in good spirits, but is recovering from a hip operation, making long
journeys difficult. Plus, his wife Peggy, who was a Wren when they met during
the war, has Parkinson’s disease.
Steeped in memories of his Arctic experiences, though, he is writing a book
about them. Fewer Christmas cards are exchanged with the Russians he met, but
he has warm memories of his visits, and maintains an interest in contemporary Russia. He can
find information about the convoys on the internet, including videos of HMS
Inglefield that have begun to appear on YouTube.
“The children and grandchildren of many of the veterans have become interested
in what we did, and they’ve kept the memories going,” he says. “It’s gratifying
to think that the Arctic convoys will still be talked about in the years to
come.”
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