HMS Valorous, known as "Lucky Loo" from her pennant number (L00), was part of the Rosyth Escort Force Note the 2 pdr single pom pom winged out abaft the funnels on Viceroy, the most effective close-quarter anti-aircraft defence on most V & Ws Photographed by Lt Cdr John E. Manners RN from HMS Viceroy in 1944
Click on the links within this brief outline for first hand accounts by
the men who served on HMS Valorous and for a more detailed chronolgy see www.naval-history.net
HMS Valorous was
intended to be named HMS Montrose but this was changed to Valorous
before launch in 1917. After service in the Baltic and in the
Mediterranean she was placed in Reserve. As part of the naval
re-armament Programme in 1938 Valorous
was selected for conversion to an Anti-Aircraft Escort (WAIR) by HM
Dockyard Chatham.
At the outbeak of war she became part of the Rosyth
Escort Force which escorted East Coast convoys from Methil on the Firth of Forth
to Sheerness on the Thames estuary. 95 year old Arthur Bulmer joined her as a 20 year old Able Seaman on 14 June 1941. A week later on the 21st June Valorous rescued the only three survivors from the tanker Vancouver mined off Sunk Head Buoy and set on fire. She was on passage to Shellhaven from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Forty five lives were lost, the highest casualties in any ship lost off Harwich.
Valorous was "adopted" by the civil community of Dewsbury, then in the West Riding of Yorkshire, as the result of a Warship Week National Savings campaign in October 1941.
In January 1942 HMS Vanity steamed to Scapa Flow to deploy with the Home Fleet for Operation Performance,
to cover the break-out of ten Norwegian merchant ships interned by
neutral Sweden at Gothenburg since the German occupation of Norway in
April 1940. For more details of Operation Performance see Kvarstad (Swedish, arrested) ships.
In May 1945 HMS Valorous and HMS Venomous were sent to Kristiansand South to accept the surrender of German naval forces, Operation Conan. Lt Cdr J.A.J. Dennis RN was the senior officer in Valorous and Lord Teynham, the designated Naval Officer in Command (NOIC) Kristiansand was in Valorous. The wartime memoir of Dennis is in the IWM but you can click on this link to read his description of events at Kristiansand. John Garforth, an AB on Valorous, gives his account below.
If
you have stories or photographs of HMS Valorous you would like to
contribute to the web site please contact Bill Forster
Find out how you can help us research this ship and build this web site
Former Full Members of the V & W Destroyer Assoociation Arthur Bulmer (Necastlt-on-Tyne), E. Clark (Bromley, Kent), C. Gare (Norwich), John Garforth (Whitehaven), W. Merry (Leicester),
L. Wadsworth (Menstrie, Clack.), W. Wills (Boothville, Northamptonshire) If you had a family member who served in HMS Valorous tell his story on this page
Lt. Cdr. William Hector Brereton RN
A chance discovery by a philatelist in Ireland uncovers the story told below
This letter was posted to Lt Brereton on 28 August 1941 when HMS Valerous was escorting East Coast convoys as described by Arthur Bulmer Why was it forwarded to an address in Belfast after being opened and resealed by the censor? Had Lt William Hector Brereton left Valorous and joined another ship based at Belfast? The scan of the envelope was sent to me by Greg Todd a collector and dealer in Cork, Ireland, and the photograph is from the"D Day Story"museum in Portsmouth
I was able to contact his
daughter in New Zealand, Penelope Shino, and was told the envelope was
"in the handwriting of his mother, Margaret Irene Brereton, who lived
in Nelson, New Zealand. He was possibly on leave in Ireland (hence the
forwarding address) as we have Brereton cousins there".
He was born was born at Motueka, near Nelson, in New Zealand in 1919,
the son of Col. Cyprian Bridge Brereton (1876-1962) and Margaret Irene
Guy. Penny Shino added:
"On
his father’s side he was a second-generation New Zealander. His
grandfather William Brereton and grandmother Anne (nee Bridge)
arrived in NZ from Ireland in the Pleiades
in 1876. I believe his mother’s side (Scottish and English) came to NZ
some time earlier. His father Cyprian Bridge Brereton published a book No Roll of Drums (1947)
with a lot of detail about his family’s early pioneer life in NZ with a
quite a lot of information about the family’s long military and
sea-faring tradition."
He joined the cadet training cruiser HMS Frobisher in September 1936, served in the Battleship HMS Royal Oak and joined HMS Valorous
after a promotion course at Portsmouth on 23 August 1939. She had
been brought out of Resereve and commissionmed for service with the
Rosdyth Escort Force on the Firth of Forth and spent most of the war
escorting East Coast convoys to the Thames estuary, a regular
routine disrupted by moments of extreme danger when attacked by e-boats
or dive bombers. Her twin 4-inch Dual Purpose guns provided a defence
against both.
The Twin 4-inch Guns in B position on HMS Valorous and HMS Vanity Note
the two "ready use lockers" for storing the 4-inch shells in their
brass cartridges inside the "breakwater" which protects the 14 man gun
crew in heavy seas
Find out more about the work of the Gun Crewson the website of HMS Vanity
This photograph of B-Guns was published in the Daily Mirror, 16th April 1940
Courtesy of the daughters of Cdr W.H. Brereton
The forward mounting of B-Guns on HMS Vanity
Courtesy of the Imperial War Museum
He was promoted to 1st Lt on the new O Class destroyer HMS Obdurate
two months before she was commissioned in September 1942. She was
mainly employed in escorting Arctic Convoys to Archangel and Murmansk.
In April 1944 he was an officer aboard HMS Prince Charles,
a former cross-channel ferry requisitioned by the Navy as a Landing
Ship Infantry (LSI) during the D-Day Landings. On 6 June, she landed 300 US
Rangers at Pointe du Hoc, at the Eastern end of Omaha Beach, and the same day was put in charge of
Gooseberry 4, the breakwater of sunken block ships off Juno Beach). He was part of Naval Party 1732 and reported to the naval officer in charge at Juno
Beach and described it as:
“a
convoy of old medium-sized freighters, sunk overlapped, head to stern
in a horseshoe off the beach. I was put in charge of this shelter, with
a small crew and soldiers to man the few guns provided. There was much
sea traffic and all kinds of freight and stores being landed by
freighters, working the tides, using amphibious trucks, etc. This was a
very busy three months, many surprises, some minor air attacks early
on. A German long-range gun exploded a shell overhead every five
minutes at night for several days. It took a while to work out a
routine to suit a 40-odd feet tidal rise and fall”.
"Safe and Sound" - inside the Razberry! This cartoon sketch of
Gooseberry 4 off Juno Beach by Ltd Cdr William H Brereton was presented
to the D-Day Museum at Portsmouth by his daughters Click on the image to view full size in a separate window
In January 1945 he joined the
Escort Carrier HMS Speaker with
the British Pacific Fleet. After the war he was lent to the the
RNZ but when he retired as Lt Cdr Brereton in July 1959 he was Staff
Movements Officer for the Commander-in-Chief, Plymouth. Click on the link to view a PDF of his service in the Royal Navy and the RNZN compiled by his daughter, Felicity Coggan.
He married Elaine Reynolds Hampton
at Malta in 1952, "returned to New Zealand in 1960 and settled in
Auckland, beginning a long career with the New Zealand Insurance
Company, Marine Insurance Division" (Penelope Shino, nee Brereton) and
was 90 when he died in 2009.
Lt Cdr M. G. MacLeod on the bridge of HMS Valorous Photographed by Lt Cdr John E Manners RN from HMS Viceroy in 1944
HMS Valorous at Kristiansand in May 1945 John Garforth
The Commanding Officer of HMS Valorous when she was sent to "liberate" Kristiansand in May 1945 was Lt Cdr J A J Dennis DSC RN who describes events at Kristiansand
from an altogether different perspective than that of John Garforth.
John Garforth was born on 28 May 1925, the son of a coal miner, in the
miner's village of Crookhall near the colliery of the same name not far
from the steel town of Consett in County Durham in the north east of
England. He left school at 14 as was normal in those days and was soon
working at the Consett Iron and Steel works which had lots of vacancies
caused by men being called up for service in the armed forces. They had
to work overtime to take up the slack and went on strike and John found
himself out of a job. They were easy to come by in wartime and he
wasn't out of work long but on his eighteenth birthday he was called up for service in the Royal Navy. After six weeks basic training at HMS Ganges at Shotley Gate across the river from Harwich he was sent to RNAS Grimsetter in Orkney. Within a few months he was back at Chatham and was drafted from there to HMS Valorous lying alongside at Rosyth near Edinburgh on the Firth of Forth.
************
When I joined Valorous I was
detailed "starboard watch" on "B-Gun", the twin 4-inch right for'ard
below the bridge and looking over the forecastle. I was in the forard
messdeck, right side next to the chain locker and when they dropped the
hook (anchor) it made such a noise! It was also next to the paint
locker so smelled of paint all the time. The mess deck was very small
with tables down each side with lockers as seats. Water drained from
the deck heads into the bilges and rushed across
the mess deck when the ship rolled, sometimes taking the "gash bucket" with it, the contents
spilling and slopping back and forth each time the ship rolled. The
mess deck was like a bathroom with condensation dripping from the deck
head all the time.
We had to sleep with an oilskin over our hammocks and since the
hammocks were so close together (we were only allowed 18 inches for
each
hammock) they touched each other when slung and when anyone stirred
water seeped from the oilskins into the hammocks which consequently
were always wet as there wasn't much chance of drying them in winter.
When we were at actions stations the hammocks never got slung. I
sometimes slept on the tables if they were free but I very rarely slung
my hammock as I was always seasick and did not feel like "lashing up
and stow". Once, when Valorous
was bouncing all over the place and the mess deck smelled horrible and
I was not feeling very well (as usual) I got hold of two duffel coats
and decided to sleep outside. I went midships near the aft smoke stack
and lay down with one duffel coat the right way round with the hood up
and the other back to front with the hood up. I was nicely settled down
on the lee side, cocooned in duffel coats when a huge wave came from
the weather side, over the smoke stack and right over me and almost
washed me overboard. Somebody above must have been looking after me as
I wasn't a bit wet but would have gone into the drink if it were not
for the hand rails which I clung onto desperately knowing that I could
not swim!
The war was coming to a close
and after a few skirmishes with E-boats and U-boats. The Skipper
informed us, that as we had been good boys, we had been given a special
assignment. We were in Rosyth dockyard when loads of trunks, cases etc;
began to land on board, some were stowed below, the large cases had to
stay on the upper deck. When we were ready to sail, all types of men
came aboard and were ushered to the wardroom. Norway was our
destination, preceded by mine sweepers, there were plenty of mine
bobbing about. I had the forenoon watch on lookout on the starboard
side of the bridge and had many a scare.
HMS Valorous, pennant number L00 ("Lucky Loo"), moored in the harbour at Kristiansand with White Ensign and Norwegian flag at the mast-head A Norwegian trawler crowded with visitors is coming alongside Courtesy of Alan Dennis
When we reached Kristiansand, the rocks and islands were amass with
people cheering and waving, boats with children shouting, chocolata,
sukker. Being off watch I was standing near the Mediterranean ladder
leaning over the handrails, when this large cabin cruiser came
alongside and an officer came aboard and went down to the wardroom,
leaving a pretty girl in the cabin having a drink. Somehow I attracted
her attention and gave her the sign that drink was no good. She smiled.
When Grego Gregson (this being his name) returned she must have told him what I had done. He waved me over on to his boat and plied myself
and another shipmate who had followed with drink out of a secret
compartment, where he kept butter, bacon, etc. We found out that Grego
was a leader in the 'Milorg', the underground resistance. He had only one hand. He always carried a revolver,
and would use it especially against the Germans. The girl Kari was his
secretary. Early in the war she had been at university and her parents
who owned merchant ships had left and gone to England, leaving Kari
behind. Later I found out that she was living in a flat with a nurse.
Before leaving in the cruiser Grego gave me an address to visit when
ashore.
"Greggo"
Gregson (left) and Lord Teynham going shore in "Greggo's" launch to
meet the "powers that be" on arrival at Kristiansand Courtesy of Alan Dennis
Little did I know that I was to follow him ashore with two other shipmates to take over a large building from the Stappo
(Norwegian police working for the Germans, we were told they were
worse than the Germans). The large building, was made up of several
flats, with telephone exchange, teleprinter, armoury, laundry, etc. in
the basement. The building was almost empty of inhabitants,
but there was plenty of crockery, utensils and other equipment, even
Luger pistols. Instead of taking a flat each, the three of us chose a
flat and moved in together, combing the other flats for the best
equipment. We settled in and took a watch each on the telephone
exchange which had been defunk for some time. We soon began to get
plenty of calls, not knowing if they were Norwegian, German or
whatever. After a day we were pleased to see three army lads of the
Welsh Regiment. Then came the S.A.S. with Paddy Maine and other
officers living in the upper flats. They were dropping empty beer
bottles down on to the jeeps parked below and down the central
staircase. The building also had a lift.
After a few days the army lads came in with bottles of German rum,
Schnapps and red wine which we made into a punch by putting a large
bowl on the stove filling it with red wine, well sugared, with rum and
schnapps then heated it up. We then invited girl friends who had
befriended us, some of whom I found out later had been Quislings. One
of the Welsh lads had a girl in his flat and kept her locked in, she
got out one day and went round the building looking for this guy
with a Luger in her hand. She was confronted by an officer. He was put
on a charge and was never seen again. Soon the people of
Kristiansand learned of the cache of booze and we were pestered into
selling them a bottle or two, only to be invited to a party to help
them drink it! I remember that at one party the Norge started play
acting, some of the plays were rather crude.
After a week or two of walking around the town, I somehow met a chap,
who, after talking about football, took me behind the counter of a
bank, where we organised the first football match to be played in
Norway since the war. It was HMS Valorous
versus the Milorg. It was England versus Norway. The captains exchanged
flowers and even though we won 2-1 we were all treated to what was
available, there was very little available in those days.
On May 17th which was the national day in Norway, I was sitting on
watch with steel safety doors and grid open to footpath level, it was a
nice night, when a beautiful girl put her head in and asked if she
could come in, no doubt she had been in before, for when a Milorg
sentry, who had been watching from across the street came across, she
ran off holding her head in her hands. They used to cut off their hair
if they fraternised.
The building across the road was the headquarters of the underground
movement, the address Grego had given me on that first
day. Finding a gramophone in the basement and borrowing records from
the ship, we organised the first dance in the Soldatenheim
(soldiers home) which was not more than forty yards away. I must say
that I was being well victualled from the ship and also by the army.
While sitting there having a meal, two of our army friends brought in a
German SS Captain dressed up as a corporal, he came in so humble, took
off his cap and put it on the table, which was instantly thrown to the
floor saying "You don't put caps on tables" then gave him the job of
scrubbing the tables and removing crumbs from the groves with a
toothbrush.
Sitting in the dining room playing records people began coming in and
started dancing, then in walked Grego with two women, one of them was
Kari the other his wife. I immediately asked Kari to dance and
asked if she remembered me, she did, we danced all night. When it was
all over, Grego took us to the back of the soldiers home where the big
launch was moored. We were soon under way going up the fjords taking it
in turns at the helm, drinking and firing very lights into the sky. I
do not recollect if I returned to my place of work that night!! Soon
after visiting Kari and her nurse friend at their flat and being plied
with Danish bacon, butter etc. it was time to leave Kristiansand and
come down to earth, or should I say water? Back to Valorous and back to England.
****************
His best friends during his eighteen months on Valorous were George Garwood from Eastbourne and Bill Willis from Northampton. John Garforth left Valorous at Rosyth and on return to barracks at Chatham was sent to Liverpool to join the MV Orion, a troopship bound for the Far East. The Orion
called in at Wellingon, New Zealand, and Sydney, Australia, to return
liberated POWs and then headed for Singapore where John joined HMS Glenearn. The war had ended by now and the Glenearn
was sent to Kure in Japan which had been heavily bombed. John's
adventures in the Far East are detailed in the book he wrote about his
life which he gave the name "Memories and Magic Moments" (self published).
John Garforth was demobbed at Chatham on the 1st November 1947 and was
soon working in the building trade as a glazer. He moved to Whitehaven
on the Cumberland coast where he met his wife Pauline Kirkbride and
lived there for the rest of his life. They had two daughters, Glenda
and Christine. Pauline died in 1989. In 1995, fifty years after Valorous and Venomous
were sent to Kristiansand, his daughter Glenda Lopez encouraged her
father to return to the place which made such a deep impression on him
as a young man. This was the first of several such trips during which
he met old friends and made new ones as described in his memoir which
comes to an abrupt end when John Garforth passed away on the 21st April
2010.
John Garforth This story was first published in Hard Lying, the magazine of the V & W Destroyer Association
and republished in 2005 in the book of the same name which is now out of print.
If
you want to find out more about the wartime service of a member of your
family who served on HMS Valorous
you should first obtain a copy of their service record To
find out how follow this link:
http://www.holywellhousepublishing.co.uk/servicerecords.html
If
you have stories or photographs of HMS Valorous you would like to
contribute to the web site please contact Bill Forster
Find out how you can help us research this ship and build this web site
Return
to the Home
Page of the V & W Destroyer Association Return to the Index Page for the 69 V
& W Class Destroyers
When I joined Valorous I was
detailed "starboard watch" on "B-Gun", the twin 4-inch right for'ard
below the bridge and looking over the forecastle. I was in the forard
messdeck, right side next to the chain locker and when they dropped the
hook (anchor) it made such a noise! It was also next to the paint
locker so smelled of paint all the time. The mess deck was very small
with tables down each side with lockers as seats. Water drained from
the deck heads into the bilges and rushed across
the mess deck when the ship rolled, sometimes taking the "gash bucket" with it, the contents
spilling and slopping back and forth each time the ship rolled. The
mess deck was like a bathroom with condensation dripping from the deck
head all the time.
