History books come in many shapes and sizes, and some start as a contemporary account on events, and only later assume a historical and personal dimension.
And so, it is with The Mediterranean Fleet Greece to Tripoli, which was the official Admiralty Account of Naval Operations: April 1941 to January 1943.
It was published in 1944, cost 1/6d and carried the request “THERE ARE MANY MEN AND WOMEN IN THE FORCES WHO WOULD WELCOME A CHANCE OF READING THIS BOOK, IF YOU HAND IT INTO THE NEAREST POST OFFICE IT WILL GET TO THEM”.
Now, my uncle might well have been one of those “in the Forces who would have welcomed a chance to read it”, given that he was part of that account, having been in Greece when it fell to the Axis Powers in 1941, and along with thousands of other “Empire” troops was evacuated from Crete and the mainland by the Royal Navy.
The book was one of a “job lot” I bought from Bryan the Book in the mid-1980s and made its way from the front room by degree to the cellar where the collection were carefully stored away, unread and then forgotten.
But what is forgotten, is rediscovered and that collection have come back out into the daylight.
Of the half dozen I have this, one caught my eye, because I knew that Uncle Roger had been in Greece.
Indeed as a young RAF aircraft fitter, he travelled from Britain in the January of 1941, down the coast of Africa, through the Suez Canal, and onto Greece, and then back to Egypt, Basra, and finally the Far East where he was captured by the Japanese and died aged just 21 in a POW camp in 1943.
All of this we know, because we have a 23 page letter, written in pencil with accompanying photographs detailing his journey from Britain to the Middle East, with descriptions of Durban, Greece, Egypt and Basra, and including a short account of the Manchester Blitz which he observed from Wilmslow.
The letter was smuggled out of Basra and brought back by a friend to his hometown of Derby and my grandmother.
His time in Greece matches that official account and the photographs from the book showing burning Allied supply ships in Suda Bay are replicated by his own.
The Admiralty account is dense, and I suspect suffers a little from being an official wartime account, but it remains a very personal link to my uncle and in its way is as much a memorial as any tall public monument to those who participated I that campaign.
Location; the Mediterranean, 1941-43
Pictures; cover and the Return from Greece, from The Mediterranean Fleet Greece to Tripoli, The Ministry of Information, 1944, and “After the Raiders had passed”, Greek HQ, Langam, 1941, Roger Hall, from the collection of Andrew Simpson
* The Mediterranean Fleet Greece to Tripoli, The Admiralty Account of Naval Operations: April 1941 to January 1943, Ministry of Information, 1944
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| The Mediterranean Fleet, 1944 |
It was published in 1944, cost 1/6d and carried the request “THERE ARE MANY MEN AND WOMEN IN THE FORCES WHO WOULD WELCOME A CHANCE OF READING THIS BOOK, IF YOU HAND IT INTO THE NEAREST POST OFFICE IT WILL GET TO THEM”.
Now, my uncle might well have been one of those “in the Forces who would have welcomed a chance to read it”, given that he was part of that account, having been in Greece when it fell to the Axis Powers in 1941, and along with thousands of other “Empire” troops was evacuated from Crete and the mainland by the Royal Navy.
The book was one of a “job lot” I bought from Bryan the Book in the mid-1980s and made its way from the front room by degree to the cellar where the collection were carefully stored away, unread and then forgotten.
 |
| The Return from Greece, 1941 |
Of the half dozen I have this, one caught my eye, because I knew that Uncle Roger had been in Greece.
Indeed as a young RAF aircraft fitter, he travelled from Britain in the January of 1941, down the coast of Africa, through the Suez Canal, and onto Greece, and then back to Egypt, Basra, and finally the Far East where he was captured by the Japanese and died aged just 21 in a POW camp in 1943.
All of this we know, because we have a 23 page letter, written in pencil with accompanying photographs detailing his journey from Britain to the Middle East, with descriptions of Durban, Greece, Egypt and Basra, and including a short account of the Manchester Blitz which he observed from Wilmslow.
The letter was smuggled out of Basra and brought back by a friend to his hometown of Derby and my grandmother.
 |
| "After the Raiders had passed", 1941 |
The Admiralty account is dense, and I suspect suffers a little from being an official wartime account, but it remains a very personal link to my uncle and in its way is as much a memorial as any tall public monument to those who participated I that campaign.
Location; the Mediterranean, 1941-43
Pictures; cover and the Return from Greece, from The Mediterranean Fleet Greece to Tripoli, The Ministry of Information, 1944, and “After the Raiders had passed”, Greek HQ, Langam, 1941, Roger Hall, from the collection of Andrew Simpson
* The Mediterranean Fleet Greece to Tripoli, The Admiralty Account of Naval Operations: April 1941 to January 1943, Ministry of Information, 1944
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