Page 293 - Il Mediterraneo quale elemento del Potere Marittimo - Atti 16-18 settembre 1996

SOUTH AFRICA'S NAVAL ROLE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR 279

South Africans were also in the thick of the fighting in Greece and Crete. Two
Royal Navy anti-submarine whalers were commanded by South Africans, HMS Kos
21 (Lt Cdr I.F .H. Wilson) an d HMS Syvern (Lt A.R.J. Tilston who took over com-
mand when the CO was wounded). HMS Syvern survived an attack by enemy air-
craft on 21 May 1941, in which her ammunition locker was ignited and another
on 23 May 1941, in which she was apparently hit by fourteen bombs. On 27 May
1941 the Syvern and Kos 21 were discovered, lying beneath some cliffs in Crete,
by enemy aircraft and the Syvern were bombed and sunk. Survivors from the Syvern
then trekked overland to Sphakia and were in "a terrible state, thin and haggard"
when they arrived thereC 12 0. The Kos 21, managed to escape and was one of the
three little ships from Crete which succeeded in reaching Alexandria. En route she
survived heavy air attacks, which twice disabled her engines, wrecked her compass
and wireless but she managed to shoot down three enemy aircraft. Lt Cdr Wilson
was later mentioned in despatches "for outstanding gallantry, fortitude and resolu-
tion during the Battle of Crete" 0 >.
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One of the South Africans who was kept very busy during the evacuations
of Greece and Crete, was SLt Vietar P. de C. de Kock who commanded a Motori-
.sed Landing Craft. In Greece, his MLC was overloaded with up to eighty soldiers,
although it was only designed to carry forty five men. In Crete he ferried between
1500 and 2000 men to the ships and was mentioned in despatches for his achieve-
ments. In his diary, he wrote that the three MLCs at Sphakia beach could bave
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evacuated another 3000 men if the organisation on the beach had been better 0 3>.
De Kock and another seconded South African officer, Lt A.H. Crossley, later pre-
sumably lost their lives on a combined operations pilotage party beach reconnais-
sance mission. They were ordered to obtain vita! information needed for the invasion
of Sicily, but went missing and no record of their fate has been traced.
During November 1941, the Queen Elizabeth class battleship HMS Barham
was sunk by the U-547 off Sollum. The ship went down with a terrific explosion
and disappeared in just over three minutes after being hit by three torpedo's. Alto-
gether 55 officers and 806 men lost their lives (eight South Africans amongst them),
while 450 men were rescued. Two of the South African survivors, H.T. Bailey and
A. Duffel-Canham ha ve written gripping accounts of the last moments of the ship
12
and their narrow escape. Both of these accounts were published < 4>.
Another eighteen South Africans were lost when the Leander class cruiser HMS
Neptune hit a mine off the Libyan coast on 19 December 1941. Details of some
of them have been included inJack Harker's (1991) published history of the ship.
Fifteen seconded South Africans also served o n board another cruiser, the HMS
·Birmingham, which joined the Mediterranean Fleet in 1942. Dr B.M. Stacey, who
was then a seconded able seaman gunner, describes in his unpublished memoirs, the
ship's ordeal as a Malta convoy escort inJune 1942. This short extract gives some
idea of what it was like: l l Apart from some very short breaks the action lasted four
hours. Our guns were white hot. W e were dressed in overalls, antiflash masks and
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tin hats and were almost as hot as the guns. Birmingham had 38 near misses" 0 5>.