The excellent Second World War Distinguished Service Cross and Mentioned in Despatches and later Korea service group awarded to Lieutenant Commander A.S. Pomeroy, Royal Navy who would be Mentioned in Despatches for his part in the sinking of the U-Boat U-587 when he commanded the British Destroyer HMS Volunteer in action alongside HMS Leamington and the escort destroyer HMS Grove and would later be awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in the London Gazette of 25th August 1942 for his service in the convoy PQ16. He would see an action packed war including an encounter with the Scharnhorst and Gniesenau immediately after the sinking of the Rawalpindi, the evacuation from Dunkirk, capture of French warships in British Harbours after the surrender of France, action on the Russian Convoys and would also take part in the Normandy Landings where he would survive the sinking of LCH285. He would later serve as Liaison Officer to American Admiral Joy, the Commanding Officer of all United Nations Naval Forces in the Korean War. A ‘Botha Boy’ from the South African Training Ship General Botha, the ship’s yearbook from 1962 gives a detailed account of Pomeroy’s career including the action that he saw during the Second World War.
Group of 6: Distinguished Service Cross, GRI cypher, the reverse engraved 1942; 1939-1945 Star; Atlantic Star bar France and Germany; Pacific Star; War Medal with Mention in Despatches oak leaf; United Nations Medal for Korea.
Condition: mounted loose for wear with the UN medal affixed unconventionally on the end of the group, Good Very Fine
Along with:
29 loose photographs many showing Pomeroy in Naval uniform
Book – 1962 yearbook of the South African Training Ship ‘General Botha’
An excellent self-written summary of Pomeroy’s career appears in the yearbook:
‘When S.A.T.S. ‘General Botha’ started he career as a training ship she was moored at a berth just about as close as she could get under the window of the study of the Pastorie at Simonstown, where Ds. De Villiers was at the time composing the music of our National Anthe. She flew the British Blue Ensign then, and the Dominie would have rejoiced when, six years later, our then brand-new National Flag was broken at our main truck for the first time, by myself. I have vivid recollections of the occasion; but it was more than thirty years before I was to serve under that flag again. There was no South African Navy or Merchant Service in those days.
Life at sea, even in wartime, is a routine bound affair, though one would need to wrote a book to recount thirty years of it. To explain my absence, I give here some episodes which mark the way I have been, like buoys in a channel, but most of the time has been spent on passage from one buoy to the next, and this not told of here.
On leaving the Botha in 1929 I joined in Cape Town, the ‘Berrima’ of the P and O. Company, then on her last voyage. On arrival in London I was transferred to the Mongolia for a year’s voyaging to Australia during which time I got to know the seaman’ s way of life. It was the practice in this ship for the cadet of the watch o keep look-out duties in the crows nest from 0400-0600. It was my turn one day during a thunder storm in the Australian Bight, when the foremast was struck by lightning. Fortunately the mast had been painted the day before and as the paint was still wet I was keeping my look-out trick on the forecastle head, or this report would have ended here.
After six months Royal Naval Reserve training I joined the ‘Kashgir’ voyaging to China and Japan. I was cadet of the watch on the first day our last voyage, when the ‘Hans Maersk’ collided with us in the thick fog after we had dropped the pilot off Dungeness. Two years later the ‘Hans Maersk’ entered Leith where she was ‘arrested’, the warrant being nailed to her mast, and soon after I was involved in the only court case of my thirty years at sea. For three quarters of an hour I had to vie evidence and be cross-examined before Lord Merrivale in Edinburgh, the opposing advocate trying to get me to refute my captain. Fortunately I had a very clear recollection of the event and was able to acquit myself to the entire satisfaction of our advocate and my own officers. Later I was to sit on a Court of Enquiry myself and found that it had been a useful experience.
Old Botha Boys Jeffreys, lost in the ‘Ceramic’ during the war, shared digs with me in London when we were up for our Second Mates together. This was the time of the Great Depression. Present day second mates must find it difficult to believe that in so bad straits was the shipping industry, and jobs so scarce, that there were ships at sea in which every man on deck held a Masters Ticket, and the Bosun was an Extra-Master. Nearly all those of my Botha term had to quit the sea in order to earn a living. Some joined the Royal Air Force: ‘Pavlova’ Thompson, since killed. Air Vice Marshall H. Graham, still in England, and Group Captain C.R. Taylor, now back in Durban, were among them. The excellent Company I had joined, however, created a job for me in their office to tide me over this time, though quite unobliged to do so. After two years of this and some more R.N.R. drill I was appointed Fourth of the mailship ‘Chitral’. Seven years after joining the Bortha I had got my first job as a certified officer. That was the lot of the fortunate ones, the others never got there at all. In due course came promotion to Third of the same ship, which job carried the duties of Mail Officer. I regret to report that I once failed to land at Aden a bag of mail addressed to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales who was then touring Kenya (there was no airmail then). At Bombay I explained my dilemma to an official at Government House and he, good soul, fixed things so that I head no more about it.
Mussolini now gave my affairs a good push in a different direction. He ordered his troops to invade Abysinnia (now Ethiopia). Britain was apparently very angry and called up some Reserves to commission part of the Reserve Fleet. I was among them. At Malta I joined the minesweeper ‘Huntley’ afterwards lost in the war. There is no space to write of my time there but I must tell you of Rupert Lonsdale, our First Lieutenant, who subsequently spent nearly the whole of World War II as a prisoner of war, and on release had to go through the ordeal of being court-martialled for surrendering his ship (the submarine 'Seal’) to the enemy, the first R.N. officer to do so since Nelson’s time. An account of fortitude and great leadership in adversity came to light and he was acquitted with honour to the great happiness of the whole Navy. He is now a Minister in the Church of England.
After a year of this I returned to the P & O Company for a short while serving in the ‘Kidderpore’ between India and Japan and while there, like many others, was re-called to England given a permanent commission in the Royal Navy. Nine months courses at Chatham and Portsmouth followed and then an appointment to the new cruiser’ Newcastle’ World War II broke out while I was there. We were ordered to Scapa Flow and one of our first duties was to support the Northern Patrol, comprising Armed Merchant Cruisers in case they got into trouble, they soon did.
One afternoon when we were patrolling South of Iceland, we received a signal from the ‘Rawalpindi’ a few miles to the south east of us, saying that she was being attacked by the German pocket battleship ‘Scheer’ our frantic engineers soon got ‘Newcastle’ up to thirty knots and running before a cold front we could see approaching from the west, we were very soon on the scene. It was night now and dark, pitch dark, the darkest night I can remember, but the blazing ‘Rawalpindi’ provided a beacon in the centre of the circle we steamed round until we saw the enemy silhouette, and what a surprise! There were two of them ‘Scharnhorst’ and ‘Gniesnau’ much more powerful than the ‘Scheer’ and each separately capable of blowing us out of the water. I will never forget the voice calling out ranges getting closer and closer. Then the front arrived with its rain and wind and blotted out the whole scene. By the time the first squalls had passed the ‘Rawalpindi’ had sunk and the two enemy battleships were heaven knows where. We carried out a ‘Curve of search’ at thirty knots to regain touch for the information of our heavy ships, but to no avail. There was no radar then.
Next we provided cover for the small shops withdrawing the British Army from Dunkirk and were then ordered to Plymouth, our home port, but not for leave. The Germans had started to bomb the city which had no anti-aircraft defences. We anchored off the Hoe to provide them and soon became the main target – bombs bursting all about, but they did us no damage. Although I had now been made the ship’s Air Defence Officer. I must honestly say that I do not think that we did much damage to them either.
Our next job was an unpleasant one. France had surrendered to Germany and there were many French ships in British harbours. The Admiralty decided that they must be captured. Newcastle’s objective was the Contre-Torpilleur La Triomphant, lying in Plymouth Sound. I had no part in the actual capture of this ship which was carried out at night, but was officer of the watch on deck and it can be imagined that I had a pretty busy time. Most of the captures at Plymouth were carried out with as little hurt as possible in the circumstances. In the case of the French Submarine ‘Surcouf’ which the British Submarine 'Thames’ (I think) had been ordered to capture, the ‘Thames’ crew managed complete surprise and their captain was able to get to the ‘Surcouf’ captain’s cabin where the C.O. was asleep. Wakin him at the pistol’s point, the British captain told the Frenchman to surrender as his ship had already been captured. The Frenchman pulled out a loaded revolver from under his pillow and each shot the other dead (or so I was told).
To sea again to bombard Cherbourg by night with the ‘Resolution’. Our part was to act as a red herring and draw off enemy forces sent to intercept, in the even we were unmolested and returned to harbour as from a practice shoot, and there was my relief waiting.
An now followed an appointment as First Lieutenant of the destroyer ‘Boadicea’ lying at Portsmouth being repaired after damage received at Dunkirk. A bomb had passed right through the engine room and out through the bottom without exploding but cutting the main steam pipe and killing everybody there. Our new Chief, who was soon to lose his life in the ‘Curacoa’ and I had a tremendous time getting her ready for sea again due to the continual bombing of Portsmouth Dockyard, but we got away eventually to Scapa Flow to join the Home Fleet. After some time there, screening the heavy ships on operations, we were transferred to the Western Approaches as leader of the Fourth Escort Group based on the Clyde. Our enemy were the U-Boats except for an occasional long-range Focke-Wolfe reconnisance-bomber. It was a world of asdics and depth-charges. Life in the Western Approaches is described very well in Nichols Montserrat’s book, ‘The Cruel Sea’ and I will only tell you of a silly incident which happened during my two years there.
As leader our station was always immediately ahead of the centre column of a convoy and in fog we had to be careful not to be rammed by the leading ship. One morning when doing this, a thick fog came down. Then suddenly a German U-Boat, lying stopped on the surface, loomed up almost alongside. We were so close we could have shot each other with revolvers, let alone blowing him to pieces with our guns, and he us with his torpedoes. Both sides were so astonished that nobody did anything. We ourselves could not stop without being rammed and when he disappeared in the fog astern we listened for sounds of a crash and rending stell. Nothing happened, and when the fog lifted a couple of hours later the convoy was still intact and nothing untoward was reported. We felt a bit foolish about the whole affair, and said nothing about it when we returned to harbour. I dare say he did not either.
‘Boadicea’ was sunk later but long before that I had left to take up my first command, the old ‘V’ and ‘W’ class destroyer ‘Volunteer’, also of the Western Approaches. Within a month my ship’s company had sunk a U-Boat in such a distinguished manner that my report of the operations was received at Western Approaches Headquarters with much scepticism. Some time after the war had ended I received a letter from a friend congratulating me on being mentioned in dispatches for distinguished service against submarines. Surprised, I enquired further and found that the German Admiralty records had been captured intact after Germany’s surrender and the ‘Volunteer’s’ beautiful work had been confirmed. Although my part had only been to give the right orders at the right time, without which my chaps could not act, I was thus honoured on their behalf. I wonder who else has been mentioned in the enemy’s dispatches.
We were now sent to Iceland, with orders to join the escort of a convoy (PQ16) to Murmansk, a Russian port in the Kola Inlet. We did not fare as badly as the following convoy, PQ17, which was just about annihilated, but still had a very strenuous time, though we arrived with three quarters of our ships still afloat. In mid-summer there is no darkness in those latitudes and we were bombed from Norway continuously for days and nights on end, not to mention the u-Boats.
On the Roll of Honour Board in the ‘General Botha’ is the name A.J. Hay, D.F.C. Let me tell you how I met him in the Arctic. Our station was on the port bow of the leading ship of the port column, the ‘Empire Lawrence’, which was fully loaded with explosives and ammunition. Mounted on her forecastle was a catapult with a Hurricane fighter aircraft piloted by Alastair Hay. On the first day of intense bombing he was shot off into the air to engage single-handed the squadrons of Heinkel III and Junker 88s. Eventually, wounded, he had to bale out as there was no carrier to land on. I lowered a boat to pick him up, and just as the boat’s falls were hooked on again for hoisting, two torpedo-bombers came at us low down from the North. With the boat still only a few inches out of the water and my hair standing on end, I ordered Full Ahead and Hard-a-Starboard to steady course on a course to comb the tracks of the torpedoes which we could see, one on each quarter. This took us on an exact collision course with the ‘Empire Lawrence’ There was just time to alter to port ahead of the port torpedo, and then both of them struck her and she disintegrated in an immense explosion; just a grating and a few bits of wood left floating. The gallant Alastair was killed later, but I had him safe on board this time. Vice-Admiral Campbell, in his book ‘The Kola Run’ says simply ‘Pilot Officer Hay, though wounded, successfully baled out of his aircraft and was picked up by ‘Volunteer’. He goes on ‘Empire Lawrence was sunk by five direct hits from Junkers 88s’ But I think I know better, though possibly it was the second ship in the line which was struck by torpedoes, and ‘Empire Lawrence’ struck simultaneously by bombs
