Royal British Legion (Henley branch)

THIS is the abridged story of Patrick Milner-Barry and his brother Walter in the Second World War, presented by Henley branch vice-chairman, Tim Came.

Patrick was the youngest son of Professor Milner-Barry and was born in 1908. He had joined the Royal Navy straight from Dartmouth in 1922 and by the onset of war had served all over the world in a variety of ships.

In August 1940 he transferred from HMS Kent to HMS Gloucester, a town class cruiser.

Patrick’s diary talks of “Club runs” and “various dashes” into Malta on Gloucester from August 1940.

These were lively convoy runs from our naval bases at Gibraltar or Alexandria bringing supplies to the besieged island of Malta and in addition at this early stage in the war, support to the Allied forces in Greece.

Club runs is a misnomer. Most convoys were heavily attacked by Axis forces.

Patrick’s first significant operation was off Cape Passero in October that year. This was a naval skirmish the Royal Navy convincingly won. The engagement marked the first effective use of radar in naval night combat.

On April 6, 1941, the Germans finally invaded Greece, the Italians having been forced to withdraw to Bulgaria after their disastrous earlier offensive.

HMS Gloucester, alongside other ships like HMS Fiji, had been initially operating north of Crete to intercept German convoys and protect Allied positions.

The ships had already expended much of their anti-aircraft ammunition after days of constant action but despite warnings about low ammunition, they were ordered to assist the destroyer HMS Greyhound before she was sunk.

Eventually Gloucester was recalled but within half an hour of attempting to leave to rearm and steaming all full speed, Gloucester and Fiji were both relentlessly exposed to German Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers. Gloucester eventually sank, after becoming a stationary sitting target and being bombed again and again for more than 30 minutes.

She had no means of defence having run out of anti-aircraft ammunition and with the RAF air support having been completely eliminated.

Miraculously, Patrick was a survivor, but not because he was rescued from the sinking.

When Gloucester was sunk both the Admiralty and our family thought he was still part of the ship’s company. He was not. He had left Gloucester perhaps two weeks before her last fateful journey.

Somehow, in all this war around him, Grandpa then managed to get to Durban, South Africa, a few weeks later, in late June 1941, to marry my grandmother. We do wonder if this was the reason he was not on Gloucester at the time she was sunk? We will never know.

After a brief honeymoon, it was back to Blighty.

Grandpa’s next ship was HMS Dasher, a convoy escort carrier, in February 1942.

Operation Torch, the Allied Invasion of Morocco and Algeria, was Dasher’s first major outing in November. This was a key moment in the war, as we opened a new front in North Africa. It took pressure off the Russians, helped to finally exit the Germans more rapidly from North Africa securing much of the Med and prepared us for the Invasion of Italy.

On November 8, after a massive naval bombardment, Dasher launched six Sea Hurricanes before dawn to escort and defend an Albacore strike on Oran’s la Senia airfield.

Unable to find their return because of the haze, four of planes from Dasher made a forced landing on a salt pan but the other two planes were lost at sea with their pilots.

Dasher returned home to Liverpool and began working up for her next area of operations, Russian Convoys.

On February 15, 1943, Dasher had sailed for Murmansk. Two days into the convoy they encountered a violent storm in the North Atlantic so severe as a storm that it registered gale force 11. The winds were more than 70mph and the wave height was 55ft.

Of the 28 freighters in the convoy, six had to turn back. The hangar was a complete shambles due to the violent rolling and pitching of the ship and eventually all the security lashings had worked loose and every aircraft was smashed beyond repair.

Dasher sailed to Dundee for three weeks of permanent welding. She left Dundee again in late March preparing for a Russian convoy in what was to be her last voyage.

There was a violent explosion and she sank by the stern in five minutes, in sight of Ardrossan. Half the officers and two-thirds of the men were lost. Many were trapped below. Some had miraculous escapes.

Local craft and coasters showed remarkable bravery in rescuing men from the vicinity of burning petrol.

After a period of leave, Grandpa was posted to the office of the Staff Commander Western Approaches until late 1943 when he was sent to the Caribbean and the RNAS in Piarco, Trinidad and Tobago. Patrick finished the war in the Caribbean. On reflection, he was extremely lucky.

Walter, the second son of Professor Edward Milner-Barry, was born in 1906. He joined the special forces in 1942. He was clearly a bit of a maverick and a rogue.

Before the war he had worked in the Middle East for Shell Oil and was both an Arabic and a Greek speaker as well as a British diplomat, skills that were to be very useful to his regiment as the war progressed.

From Walter’s diaries, there were often long periods of training, standing down from operations at the last minute and loafing around. The officers certainly enjoyed Cairo life.

One diary entry reads: “When I got back to Athlit, I discovered there was no news of immediate operations. So it was a question of spending the time waiting, by getting fit in various ways, such as practising demolition. Other training included swimming under water, carrying adhesive bricks called limpet mines intended for clamping on to ships’ bottoms to blow them up. I only had one alarming moment when my oxygen gave out and I couldn’t find the reserve bottle….there was never a dull moment!”

Next up was the Dodecanese Campaign. Churchill was obsessed with small side campaigns. A few worked but many, like Dieppe, were notable failures.

The Dodecanese Islands campaign was one such operation. Churchill believed for strategic reasons the
15 islands, close to Turkey and including Rhodes, with the Italian capitulation in September 1943, needed to be secured before the Germans could replace the Italians.

The Special Boat Service role quickly changed, from direct fighting to extracting troops and here Walter took considerable risks.

He organised the final evacuations, returning to Kos to try and delay the Germans, even as the island was surrendering.

Walter must have saved at least 200 Allied soldiers from becoming prisoners of war. Not surprisingly, he was soon hospitalised suffering from exhaustion.

The Germans continued to occupy the Dodecanese Islands they had captured until the end of the war in 1945, when they surrendered to British forces.

The SBS fought on after the liberation — up the Greek peninsula to Bulgaria. The Germans did not easily leave and it was a long hard slog.

After the war, Patrick continued to serve until the late Fifties and was based in Northern Ireland for the late Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation Tour in 1953.

His last command was HMS Warrior, where the carrier launched dozens of successful sorties against Communist terrorists in Malaya in 1954-1955.

After leaving the Navy, Patrick worked for Cadbury Schweppes but he never really settled into civilian life. Patrick and Granny (Elizabeth Milner-Barry) finally retired to Chalkpit Cottage, Stoke Row.

Walter never married, returned to Shell in Saudi Arabia, spending time in Persia.

He was famous in our family for arriving with minimal notice on a Friday, to spend a long weekend, often well-armed with impossible to source Russian vodka and caviar and full of stories of his latest adventures.

Walter finally retired to a village in the Itchen Valley outside Winchester.