HMS Verdun was launched
on 21 August 1917 at the Hawthorn Leslie shipyard in Hebburn on the south bank of the Tyne down river from Newcastle and completed in November of the same year. When the German
High Seas Fleet surrendered in the Firth of Forth on 20 November 1918 it
was escorted by sixty allied battleships (Operation ZZ) and King George V, Queen Mary and the Prince of Wales
embarked in HMS Oak and, preceded by the Verdun, steamed through the fleet.
Verdun was selected to carry
the Unknown Warrior across the English Channel as a tribute to the
French people and berthed at the Quai Carnot at Boulogne-sur-Mer on 10 November 1920.
Marshal Foch made a speech on the dockside before the White Ensign was
lowered to half mast while the coffin was carried up the gangplank and
piped aboard with an admiral's salute. An escort of six battleships
accompanied Verdun through
the mist to Dover where six high-ranking officers from the three Armed
Services bore the coffin ashore. The Unknown Warrior was taken by train
to London for burial the following day at Westminster Abbey.
HMS Verdun went into reserve
at Rosyth as part of the 9th Destroyer Flotilla until September 1939,
when she was converted into an anti-aircraft escort (WAIR) at Chatham
Dockyard and operated as a member of the Rosyth Escort Force. On 1
November 1940 she was bombed with 11 dead including her captain,
Lt.Cdr. Francis Jack Cartwright, RN. She was repaired at Harwich and
spent the rest of the war escorting convoys along the east coast. In
November 1941 an attack by German E-boats sunk three British merchant
ships in her convoy.
She formed part of the escort screen for heavy units of the Home Fleet supporting the Arctic convoys from February to April 1942.
Cdr Geoffrey Corlett, October, RN (1917 – 17 October, 1917)
Cdr Evelyn C. O. Thomson, RN (16 Oct. 1917 – 30 April 1919)
Lt Cdr James R. C. Cavendish, RN (26 July – September, 1918)
Lt Cdr Colin S. Thomson, RN (30 April, 1919 – 20 Nov. 1921)
Lt Cdr Valentine M. Wyndham-Quin, RN (20 Nov. 1921 – 22 Aug. 1922)
Lt Cdr Franklin Ratsey, RN (25 Aug. 1922 – 16 Jan. 1923)
Lt Cdr John M. Porter, RN (16 Jan. 1923 – 12 Dec. 1923)
Lt Cdr Hamilton E. Snepp, RN (12 Dec. 1923 – 2 Dec. 1924)
Lt Cdr Herbert Owen, RN (3 Dec. 1924 – 23 Nov. 1925)
Lt.Cdr. Francis Jack Cartwright, RN (20 May - Nov 1940)
Cdr. Alfred Charles Behague, RN (Nov 1940 - 12 Jul 1941) Lt.Cdr. William Spooner Donald, DSC, RN (12 Jul 1941 - 4 May 1943)
Lt.Cdr. Derry Parsons, RD, RNR (4 May 1943 - Mar 1945)
Lt. Ronald Cameron Henley, RN (Mar 1945 - mid 1945)
Officers
Temp Lt F J E I Allen RNVR (Apr 1941 - 1942)
Lt John W. Edwards DSC RN (3 May 1942 - 13 March 1943)
Sub Lt B C Hutchinson RN (2 Apr 41 -1943)
Former full members of the V & W Destroyer Association who served in HMS Verdun J.
Ainsworth (Birmingham), A. Beer (Maidenhead, Berks), Lt Cdr R. Bush
(Chelmsford, Essex), R. Charles (Derby), Cdr William S. Donald RN
(Keswick, Cumb). C. Gare (Norwich), D. Lynch (London),
S. Morley (Cuffley, Herts), D. Peddie (Woking, Surrey), L. Wadsworth (Menstrie, Clackmananshire, Scotland)
Please get in touch if you knew these men or had a family member who served in HMS Verdun
John Frederick Eggers (1910-2002) joined the Voluntary Reserve
of the Royal New Zealand Navy on 18 December 1940 and left for England
where he spent three months under training at HMS Ganges before joining
HMS Verdun as Ordinary Seaman. After nine months he was selected for officer training and commissioned. He served as Lt J.F. Eggers RNZNVR on minesweepers in New Zealand. The brass tampions were removed from two of Verdun's
4-inch guns in 1941 and he retained them as a souvenir of his wartime
service. The portrait is a frame from a 16 mm film taken aboard the
ship which took him to Britain in 1940 at the start of his naval
service - the officer's cap is a puzzle!
"On Ne Passe Pas" "They shall not pass"
A tribute by an anonymous Telegraphist to Lt.Cdr. William Spooner Donald, DSC, RN
This aricle from Hard Lying
by an anonymous telegraphist is a fine tribute to the human qualities
of their skipper, Lt.Cdr. William Spooner Donald, DSC, RN. Donald was
born at Keswick in Cumberland in 1910 and spent his early years in the
Navy in small warships mainly on the China Station. In 1939 he joined
the sloop HMS Black Swan as
First Lt under Captain A.L. Poland DSC as part of the Rosyth Escort
Force protecting the east convoys between Methil and the Thames. Donald
won his first DSC during the campaign in Norway when when Black Swan provided anti-aircraft
defence to the troops landed at Andalsnes, on Romdals fjord, which led
to Trondheim. Black Swan returned to escorting East Coast convoys and
Donald was promoted to Lt Cdr and given command of HMS Guillemomot, a Bird Class corvette, and was made CO of Verdun
on 12 July 1941. He spent most of his war escorting convoys along the
east coast, a dull repetitive task but one which required constant
vigilance to guard against attacks by e-boats and Ju 87 bombers.
*********
My
association with my first V&W commenced in January 1941 when I
returned to Chatham Barracks soon after Christmas 1940 from a spell of
survivors leave following the sinking in the North Atlantic of HMS Forfar,
an armed merchant cruiser. The night before my leave ended, I had
witnessed the awesome sight of one of the heaviest raids on the city of
London from high ground near my parents’ home in Charlton SE7. I was
somewhat relieved when told that my next draft was to a destroyer of
the Rosyth Escort Force although some of the old 'barrack stanchions'
did their best to cheer me up with pointed remarks about the perils of
'E-boat Alley', as part of the convoy route was known. At least a
destroyer has speed and 'teeth'.
HMS Verdun was to be my home
for almost the next three years. She had been named after the French
town of that name, the scene of much desperate fighting in 1916. The
ship's motto 'Ils ne Passeront Pas'
which means 'They shall not pass' was the battle cry of the French
defenders which they upheld until the bitter end. It was most
appropriate therefore that she should be chosen to carry the body of
'The Unknown Soldier' across the channel on the afternoon of 10th
November 1920. A brass plaque was fixed aft to commemorate the
occasion. Thus begun one of the most momentous and best-remembered
periods of my life. This comradeship was something the like of which I
have not experienced before or since. My immediate boss was a regular
Navy Petty Officer Telegraphist, an expert in all aspects of his job
with a never failing sense of humour and the ability to get the best
out of people by example and encouragement.
The
Captain was a regular Navy
Lieutenant Commander, slightly built and quietly spoken, he
instinctively inspired confidence and loyalty and was greatly respected
and admired by all of us, so much so that when he was ‘drafted’, the
ships company presented his wife (gifts to officers were forbidden
under KR's and AI's (Kings Regulations and Admiralty Instructions),
with an inscribed silver salver, something which our hard bitten and
long serving Coxswain had never known happen before. [Lt.Cdr. William
Spooner Donald, DSC, RN (on right) wrote a popular autobiography
of his wartime service, Stand by for Action (1956), reissued by Seaforth as a print and Kindle edition in 2009.]
Life on East Coast convoys was
roughly 10 per cent action and 90 per cent suspense and boredom. The
suspense came from the ever-present threat of mines (contact, magnetic
and finally acoustic) which were liberally distributed by German
aircraft and E-boats in the narrow shallow shipping lanes, especially
from the Humber southwards. Despite all the efforts of our minesweeping
colleagues, they still claimed their victims. Skirmishes with enemy
aircraft and E-boats were infrequent but could be quite hair-raising
while they lasted. In between, we passed the time in less dangerous
stretches of water listening to record requests on the ships Tannoy
(including, naturally, Vera Lynn and more surprisingly movements from
Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto and Beethoven, 5th symphony), the
occasional quiz programme and the Brains Trust. I can even recall
organising a scrum practice on the quarter deck for the ship's rugby
team - without a ball of course! A few of us endeavoured to keep fit by
pacing up and down the length of the iron deck when the sea was not too
rough.
Living conditions were cramped and
uncomfortable but good humour somehow managed to prevail most of the
time. I handled hundreds of signals, including a number not
addressed to the ship, such as news of the sinking of HMS Hood and the subsequent chase and sinking of the Bismark. But those I find easiest to recall are the humorous ones.
Except in an emergency we were
under strict orders not to break W/T silence, but we did have to make
one signal on every trip towards the Northern end of the convoy run
from Sheerness; this was our expected time of arrival (ETA) off
Methill. To confuse the enemy code breakers we were instructed to vary
the wording of our routine signals as much as possible. Ships vied with
one another in the search for originality with quotations from the
Bible, Shakespeare, etc. and as a result signals grew longer and
longer. Eventually Captain 'D' of the Rosyth Escort Force felt
compelled to intervene. A plain language signal was sent to all the
ships in his force when they were next in harbour which went like this:
"Fun is fun and I don't mind a bit Your rhymes and ETA's to fit But don't o'er do the signal chit For brevity is the soul of wit."
On another occasion our arrival
back at Rosyth was delayed and since half the ship's company were due
for an eagerly awaited four days boiler cleaning leave it was obvious
that if we proceeded into the destroyer pens there was no chance of the
liberty men catching the day train from Edinburgh to the South where
most of us lived. So without as much as a by your leave the Captain
hove to under the Forth Bridge and the lucky lads were landed at South
Queens Ferry, using the ships motor-boat and whaler, in time to catch
the train. This provoked the following from Captain 'D' -"Your
manoeuvre under the Forth Bridge this morning very well executed. Do
NOT repeat Not repeat".
Finally as a variation from our
normal convoy duty, we were detailed to act as part of the
anti-submarine screen for a brand new battleship undergoing speed
trials. It was soon evident that we lacked the legs of the
new ship and we began to fall behind which caused the battleship to
tersely signal, "You are losing station" to which our Captain literally
flashed back "I am 25 years old". Nevertheless there was life in the
old ship yet as she proved right up to the end of the war.
********
On the 4th May 1943 Donald handed over command of HMS Verdun to Lt.Cdr. Derry Parsons, RD, RNR and was given command of a new destroyer, HMS Ulster,
and earned a bar to his DSC in a fierce engagement with three German
destroyers in the Western Channel. He served in the Mediterranean at
the Anzio landings but was under great strain, suffered from battle fatigue and asked to be relieved
of his command prior to the D-Day landings in Normandy. He was later
appointed second in command of HMS Glengyle a fast passenger liner
converted to an infantry assault vessel for landings on the coast of
Japan. The dropping of the atomic bomds did away for the need for that
and Glengyle repatriated internees from Hong Kong where he had served
in the 1930s. He was invalided out of the Navy in 1948 as a result of
deafness brought on by gunfire and retired to run an angling business
in his native Cumbria.
And from the Lower Deck
Our secret weapon was a radio receiver
and two German linguists
Deryk
Waykam, the author of this article, may also be "anonymous
Telegraphist" who wrote the tribute to Lt Cdr William S. Donald. Both
were published by "Stormy" Fairweather, the Chairman of the
Association, in the magazine Hard Lying
and in an anthology with the same name which is now out of print.
The presence of fluent German speakers in the Wireless Room of V &
Ws escorting East Coast convoys who could listen in on the "chatter" of
their opposite numbers in the German Eboats attacking the convoys was
confirmed to me by Mick Barron who served in HMS Westminster. To find out more about the use of telegraphy in V & W Class destroyers read "Sparkers" and "bunting tossers" - Wireless Telegraphy Operators and Visual Signalmen, in HMS Venomous.
***********************
In 1943 I joined HMS Verdun,
a member of the Rosyth Escort Force, engaged upon escorting East Coast
convoys from Methil in the Firth of Forth down to Sheerness and the
Thames Estuary.
Amongst the mass of warlike
equipment carried on board, from four, four inch guns, sundry Oerlikon
20mm guns, almost a hundred depth charges and two radar sets, we
carried a sophisticated radio receiver. This was dedicated to picking
up intercom communications between E-boats. These German torpedo boats
were much larger than our MTB's, almost a hundred feet long. Their main
aim was to sink merchant ships in the convoy. They operated from a base
in Holland at Ijmuiden. Twelve or fifteen E-boats made up each
attacking force. We had two destroyers as escorts and a trawler to pick
up survivors from torpedoed merchant ships.
From the spring onwards the
attacking E-boats would set out from Holland in daylight. The RAF
therefore could often relay the information to us. We could then know
that we would be attacked around midnight. E-boat Alley being the
channel around the 'Bulge' of East Anglia. This was swept free from
mines at frequent intervals because both E-boats and German aircraft
were known to sow new mines in the channels. The sweepers came out both
the Humber Estuary and Harwich.
One 'secret weapon' that we
possessed was a radio receiver that was dedicated to picking up the
E-boat fleet's intercom conversations. For several years the E-boats
were evidently unaware that their transmissions were being picked up -
and acted upon. We carried two ratings on board who were
German Linguists. One was a 'real' German. Aged about twenty three, he
was an Aryan and a former Berliner. His 'oppo' was a small, rotund,
pear shaped Polish Jew aged in his late thirties. He looked exactly
like Doberman used to look in the Sgt, Bilko programmes in later years.
At 'Stand to' at dawn and dusk and
at 'action stations it was their job to don the headphones and listen
in. When they received German transmissions they noted them down,
translated them and passed the information to the bridge. To help them
they had a very useful booklet in which all the German intercom codes
were printed. There was also an accompanying book with the names and
ranks of all the E-boat commanders, and their call sign code names. The
code was very simple, akin to our RAF intercom talk. 'Roger', 'Wilco'
etc. The great usefulness of knowing what the opposition was saying lay
in the fact that, with twelve or fifteen E-boats dashing around in the
dark at close on fifty miles an hour. It was possible momentarily to
lose a group, say, of three. These would then creep round to the other
side of the column of merchant ships and then be among them with
torpedoes.
Our two linguists had interesting
histories, as previously mentioned the young, blond, 'real' German had
been a member of the Hitler Youth. "Just like boy scouts" he told me.
How he had arrived in the U.K. And convinced the navy that he was
'safe' I never liked to ask him. His 'Oppo', the Polish Jew, of course
had found it easier to establish his bona fides. Both had naval pay
books made out in their new names. Their service documents and records,
likewise told the same story. They had 'families' ashore who wrote to
them and they wrote back. The idea being that, if captured they would
hopefully avoid serious interrogation by the Germans and no reprisals
would be taken against them. At that time, of course, we were still
unaware of the likely end of a captured Polish Jew.
They were both afforded Petty
Officer status which gave them extra pay amongst other comforts. The
navy rule stated that no rating could be promoted while suffering from
venereal disease. The Pole, despite his uncharming exterior, was always
either visiting a hospital when we were at home in Rosyth, undergoing a
course of injections for V.D. Or else he had just been discharged and
was about to travel over to Edinburgh, presumably to see the same girl,
and be reinfected yet again. For the nine months we were together he
seemed to spend most of the time being injected.
Every evening, at duck and then
again at dawn, we all 'stood to' at our appointed action stations. The
two linguists donned their headphones and move around the dial. I and
another P.O. plotted the information on a large scale chart. I also
made a written record of everything that was said over the ship's
intercom. This information was used later to compile a written account
of the action. The linguist began to pick up the gossip amongst the
boats. The long range radar then began to pick up echo's. Finally the
Gunnery Radar would receive accurate ranges of individual craft.
Ultimately with the aid of star shells and illuminating rockets, we
could get sixteen parachute flares in the air at once. Whole sea areas
were brighter than day. The E-boats with their light coloured
camouflage stood out clear in detail. Anyone on their decks also stood
out as black figures as contrast. Like on the boat discovered moored to
a navigation buoy having a pee over the side.
Action would then ensue with the
E-boats travelling in groups of three at some forty knots at times.
They manoeuvred into a position where they could launch their torpedoes
at the two lines of merchant ships. By now action had been joined by
two Hunt Class destroyer escorts, not forgetting the tug at the rear,
waiting to pick up survivors. The moment the torpedoes were launched
the Linguists would pick up the triumphant German report. This would
soon be confirmed by the Asdic operator who could hear torpedoes
clearly through his hydroplane beneath our hull. Sadistically he would
amplify the sound over the ship's intercom so that we could all enjoy
the eldritch noise of an approaching missile. In the main however,
torpedoes were set to run deeper than our shallow draft. The heavily
laden merchant ship's and tankers were the prime targets.
In the spring of 1944 two things
happened. The Germans after five years, started to maintain radio
silence throughout their journey over from Holland. No talk was allowed
until it was obvious that we had spotted them. Then the noise over the
air was chaotic. The second thing that happened was that both 'Headache
Operator's' were drafted away to serve in larger, fleet destroyers in
the Channel for the 'D' day landings. We never saw them again. Their
radio set they left behind and, as it was beside me when in action. I
used to switch it on and wait for the E-boat traffic once they were
detected.
So it was that one night we saw and
heard a huge explosion as several hundred gallons of aircraft quality
petrol exploded and blew an E-boat into small, blackened shards of
timber. The agonising call signs to the disappeared boat gave the game
away as to which craft we had destroyed. Who scored the vital hit was
never known, however at least three destroyers were firing at
it. I saw one Hunt Class destroyer with a bow mounted
Bofors gun firing downwards at a boat close under its bow. We however
were still firing 2" illuminating rockets and star shell to light the
scene.
The next morning we steamed slowly
over the area but there was little evidence. One of the Hunt Class was
reputed to have managed to salvage a Nazi naval ensign, a very
prestigious souvenir if true. We saw nothing of value, or even
recognisable. E-boats, mines, glider bombs and German
midget submarines were still sinking East Coast escorts right up until
the last months of the war in Europe.
Deryk Wakem
The Pyjama Game Cdr W. S. Donald DSC
One evening in March 1943 I berthed Verdun alongside Wolsey
at Rosyth. We had spent the previous night anchored at Molhill on A/A
duty. As usual I had slept in my sea cabin below the bridge in pyjama
comfort, with full sea rig at hand in case of emergencies. After a 'Red
Alert' I pulled this over my pyjamas and remained thus clad all day.
On reaching Wolsey
my croney, Tim Taylor called me over from his bridge to join him for a
drink in his cabin. We had conversed for some time when his First
Lieutenant knocked on the door.
"We have some guest in the wardroom
sir, will you two join us?" I said to Tim "You carry on, I can't go
down in this sea rig".
Tim said "Nobody will mind, I will explain that you have just come in from sea. Come on".
In a wardroom full of wives and
Wrens I kept as still as I could, but a bit of pyjama trouser slipped
into view on one leg. This was seen by one of the girls who
squealed. "Look everyone Bill's got his pyjama's on!!
I never lived this down, at all subsequent parties I was always asked.
"Got you pyjama's on again, Bill?"
Verdun’s officers with “Tishy”, 26 November 1944
Foreground, left to right: Lt P P R Dane, RN (Weymouth); Cdr Derry Parsons, RD, RNR (Dollar, Clack) CO of Verdun; Sub Lt Le Croisette, RNVR (London); Lt (E) G A Kerr (Perth Aus); Sub Lt E L Hartley, RNVR (Oxford) Back row, left to right: Lt
R H W Carter, RNVR (Parkstone, Dorset); Surg Lt A M MacArthur
(Salisbury, Rhodesia); Sub Lt (E) D McTaggart (Edinburgh); Sub Lt R B
Dunford, RNVR (Brighton); and Lt J L Ommaney, RN (Chatham) Crown Copyright (IWM Doc 26638)
If
you want to find out more about the wartime service of a member of your
family who served on HMS Verdun
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 Verdun you would like to
contribute to the web site please contact Bill Forster
Return
to the Home
Page of the V & W Destroyer Association Return to the Index Page for the 69 V
& W Class Destroyers
The
Captain was a regular Navy
Lieutenant Commander, slightly built and quietly spoken, he
instinctively inspired confidence and loyalty and was greatly respected
and admired by all of us, so much so that when he was ‘drafted’, the
ships company presented his wife (gifts to officers were forbidden
under KR's and AI's (Kings Regulations and Admiralty Instructions),
with an inscribed silver salver, something which our hard bitten and
long serving Coxswain had never known happen before. [Lt.Cdr. William
Spooner Donald, DSC, RN (on right) wrote a popular autobiography
of his wartime service, Stand by for Action (1956), reissued by Seaforth as a print and Kindle edition in 2009.]