Post by KG on Jun 5, 2008 20:19:05 GMT
Her Name Was “Empire Morn”.
BRITAIN’S youngest war hero died aged just 14
Galley boy Raymond Steed was blown up when his ship hit a German mine off the African coast in 1943. The Welsh lad was 14 and 207 days – the youngest Briton to die in his country’s service.
Raymond and 20 crew mates were killed, five months after he joined the Merchant Navy, when munitions on board the 6,000-tonne Empire Morn exploded after it hit the mine.
Blond-haired Raymond’s body was recovered after the ship was towed into Casablanca in Morocco. He was buried in a military cemetery four miles outside Casablanca and he lies next to the grave of legendary British Army General Claude Auchinleck.
His younger brother Kenneth told how Raymond, from Newport, Gwent, loved adventure and one day just vanished to go to war.
Kenneth, now 75, said, “He loved going to the Scouts and was always coming home proudly saying he had won another badge.
“He was full of life and full of adventure. He had a part-time job delivering groceries on a bike and was always out and about.
“But then one day he was gone. He had told my mam and dad what he was doing and they couldn’t stop him. He didn’t say goodbye but just went.
“He first went across the Atlantic on a hospital ship. He brought me back these comic books from America. I’d never seen anything like that before and it all seemed very exciting.
“But then he went off on this next mission with us never knowing we’d never see him again.
“Then I remember one day there was a knock on the door and my mother just screamed. There was a telegram boy there on a red bike with the news.
“My mam didn’t open the telegram for three days. It just sat there because she knew what was in it. It was terrible.”
His mother Alice and father Wilfred – a power station worker who saw action in the trenches in the 1914-18 war – never visited their son’s grave in Casablanca.
Kenneth said, “The ship’s captain visited us to say how brave my brother was. But they never got the chance to get to his grave – it was a different world then.
“But it would be fantastic if they could build a memorial for him. He was so young to die like that and it would be marvellous for the family for him to be marked.
“It would be good for today’s generation of teenagers to realise what other youngsters had been through for their country and the fight for their freedom.”
Now Merchant Navy Association officials are campaigning for a statue in Raymond’s honour in his home city.
Merchant Navy Association vice-president Bertram Bale said, “A memorial to Raymond would honour not only him but all the seamen who were killed in the war.”
Former seaman Mr Bale, 75, is trying to raise funds for the memorial which could cost up to £15,000.
The youngster is officially recognised by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission as the youngest recorded fatality of the British service war dead.
He joined up in December, 1942, two months after his 14th birthday and served on the hospital ship Atlantis.
He was awarded the Africa Star with clasp for his work on the ship during Operation Torch when Allied troops were landed on the beaches of North Africa.
He was then transferred to the freighter Empire Morn which was loaded with military equipment and munitions as it set off in convoy from Milford Haven for Gibraltar and Casablanca.
It looked to have completed its 1,500-mile voyage safely when it struck the mine a couple of miles off the North African city. The explosion was followed by a second tremendous blast as the ship’s magazine blew up.
The crew who survived abandoned ship but later reboarded when it was clear it was not going to sink.
It was then towed into port by a US naval tug but the bodies of only two crew members, including Raymond’s, were found.
Three days later the two bodies were laid to rest at the Ben M’Sik cemetery with the ship’s captain, officers and remaining crew mourning their loss.
N/B: Merchant Navy Association vice-president Bertram Bale said, “A memorial to Raymond would honour not only him but all the seamen who were killed in the war.”