World War: Recognition

• Share

In recognition of fishermen's and trawlers' services to the nation (and in part confirmation of Germany's contention that they are combatants), George VI last week reviewed a contingent of them, salt-caked in their sea boots and ragged overcoats, on the docks at Devonport Torpedo School. He bestowed no medals because, said the Admiralty: "You'd have to give medals to nearly every one of them—and what do they want with medals anyway?" The King boarded a trawler, dirtied his gloves fingering depth-charge apparatus and trawling gear. Later he helped receive a delegation of fishermen and trawler owners at the Ministry of Agriculture & Fisheries. Said the mariners' spokesman, 6-ft.-3-in. Dan Hillman: "Sir, the fishermen are having a hell of a time."

The King also visited the Portsmouth naval base, there bestowed honors on a "suicide squad" of five from H. M. S. Vernon (as the combined Portsmouth barracks and naval laboratory are still called, after an old training ship long since rotted away). They were the men who, "with undaunted courage and a spanner," sloshed out between tides on a windy foreshore to where, half buried in mud, lay a magnetic mine—first specimen obtained by the Royal Navy's explosion experts. Unbolting the case, ignoring ominous hisses and tickings, Lieut. Commander, Roger Lewis at last thrust his arm inside the mine, unscrewed the detonator, slipped it in his pocket.