Posted on 10/28/2005 5:14:15 PM PDT by pau1f0rd
At the height of the war in the Atlantic, Lt-Cdr Keith Morrison wrote a last letter to his wife and went to face a heroic death. Sixty-five years later, the newly discovered document sheds fresh light on a remarkable man caught up in extraordinary circumstances. Nigel Blundell pieces his story together, while we reprint the long-lost letter
The 37 freighters and tankers of Convoy HX84 were seven days out of Halifax, Nova Scotia - halfway home but still in mid-Atlantic - when the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer was sighted on the horizon. The convoy's sole escort, an ancient converted cargo ship armed with obsolete guns, turned to meet her.
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What followed was one of the most heroic actions of the Second World War, as the crew of HMS Jervis Bay prepared for a battle that could have only one outcome. Outgunned, and with no hope of survival, they sailed head-on for the German ship, feebly returning the broadsides of her 11-inch guns.
Crippled and sinking, the Jervis Bay held the Admiral Scheer at bay, allowing the convoy to disperse into a winter storm. All but nine ships escaped. More than 190 of the 256 Jervis Bay crew died.
A footnote to the story has since come to light, during the writing of a book about the battle, that tells a little more about the sort of men who gave their lives in that cold, cruel, unequal struggle.
It is a letter written by the officer who commanded the Jervis Bay in her dying moments. Lieutenant- Commander Keith Morrison wrote it on September 20, 1940, and marked it: "To be placed with my will and in the event of my death to be given to my wife."
Cdr Morrison was last seen, wounded but standing perfectly straight, on the foredeck of his ship as, having launched her last lifeboat, the Jervis Bay sank into the icy Atlantic on the evening of November 5, 1940. And, from the letter he left, we know of whom he was thinking during the final moments of his life... "It will be very hard if I have to die without holding you in my arms again and telling you of that great love I have for you."
Keith Morrison and Margaret Chisholm had married in Sydney in 1935, he a 32-year-old merchant navy First Officer with the Orient Line and she a 24-year-old Australian from a New South Wales farming family. They settled in Dorking and had two sons. Michael, born in 1937, has only a brief memory of being held aloft by his father on one of his shore leaves. Tony, born in July 1940, never saw his father. After the war, Margaret took the children to back Australia. She died in 1957.
"It was only after her death that we saw all her letters," says her son, Mike, now 68, a retired lieutenant-colonel with the Australian Army. "It was humbling to realise how enormously devoted they were to each other and to us boys."
One of the letters, written by Margaret to her family in New South Wales on November 19, reads: "I just can't believe that I will never see Keith again, but I have nothing but happiness and his two lovely children to remember him by, and no two people ever had a greater love and understanding between them as he and I did.
"I know too how much he longed for action and that he had his dearest wish fulfilled by taking part in such a glorious battle. Nothing has been more gallant in the history of the Navy and his two sons have a wonderful example to follow and I pray they may always be worthy of it."
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Margaret learnt from survivors of the Jervis Bay that her husband had taken over command of the ship after the captain (Captain Fogarty Fegen, awarded a posthumous VC) and two other senior officers had been killed. Despite being twice wounded, Cdr Morrison organised the defence of his ship as, ablaze from bow to stern, she was raked with gunfire from the Admiral Scheer. Finally, with all but one of her lifeboats burnt, he ordered "abandon ship".
Margaret later wrote: "They say he was as cheerful as a cricket and cheering them all up. There was only one boat left, and there wasn't room for everyone; and it was his duty to see it safely away, so he stayed behind.
"He was standing on the foredeck still perfectly erect with the surgeon and another officer when she went down. The surgeon was badly wounded, but he could stand up and was Keith's greatest friend on board. And so, if it had to be, it's rather wonderful knowing he went like that, in command of his gallant ship and with his greatest friend."
After receiving the letter that her husband had left with his will, Margaret again wrote to her family in Australia: "Keith was so gallant - as indeed were all those men - and his last thoughts, I know, would have been for me, Michael and Anthony and for his mother." Margaret's sons read all of her letters - and the final letter from Keith - only after her death.
Her son Michael says: "She handled my father's death with great resolve, courage and love. Perhaps hers was a loyalty bordering on obsession; but for sure it was love in the extreme. It must have been a sublime relationship and, for my mother, one that never did - nor did she ever want it to - come again."
His brother Tony, 65, who farms near Goulburn, New South Wales, has never taken Australian citizenship.
"That's out of a respect for my father," he says. "I have always been enormously proud that my Dad died for his country, and, although I grew up a real Aussie kid, I have always been patriotically English. I keep my British passport because that part of me is precious, sacred almost. It's how I can keep part of my father. I have always loved him, though I never saw him. But his letter to my mother tells me everything I would wish to know about him. He is an unsung hero."
That letter bring tears to my eyes...
BTTT
Perfect.
Here's the German Battleship:
...and the "armed" freighter.
...later, in April 1945, the German battleship "got hers".
Here is a GREAT site about the Jervis Bay, HERE.
Apparently, many of the survivors from the Jervis Bay were taken aboard the Swedish freighter, Stureholm, which herself, after this convoy was converted to an armed freighter for convoy escort duties. A number of survivors from the Jervis Bay then signed on with the Stureholm.
On her first patrol, in December of 1940, the Stureholm was attacked by a U-boat (U-96) and sunk with all hands.
God bless them all...
Michael was a younger brother who weighed 85 pounds.
There is indeed an excellent book on the Mis-X *secret writing* methods used by those held in enemy PW camps. And there's an excellent story of one enterprising effort by one shot-down flier who wasn't quite out of the war: He addressed his letters back home to his *Uncle Sam, C/O F.B Eyers, 9th & Pennsylvania ST, Washington, D.C.*
When it arrived at the FBI Headquarters then located in the Justice Department Building, they figured it out pretty quickly... and sent his material along to the CU group data collectors.
A Pearl Harbor Day-thinking-about-the-great-ones-we've-lost BUMP :) This story just breaks my heart on so many levels but it reminds me to make sure those I love know how I feel about them :-)
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