Post by Administrator on Dec 16, 2020 17:14:55 GMT
UK AND RUSSIA REMEMBER THE ARCTIC CONVOYS’ ‘TRUE BROTHERHOOD IN ARMS’
15 December 2020
Wreaths have been laid at memorials around the UK to honour the men who sailed in the Arctic Convoys to Russia.
Royal Navy and Russian military representatives have taken part in 75th anniversary commemorations of the end of a bitter four-year struggle to deliver vital aid to the Soviet Union and defeat Nazism.
The global pandemic scuppered plans for a major commemoration of the end of the convoys, which ran from the summer of 1941 until the defeat of the Third Reich in the spring of 1945.
Instead a ‘virtual commemoration’ was last month, when veterans joined senior political and diplomatic figures from Britain and Russia for an online discussion to underline the importance of the convoys – and to thank the dwindling number of men who endured what Churchill called ‘the worst journey in the world’.
That event sparked the idea of low-key physical commemorations at some of the key monuments to the convoys.
Commander James Buck, Harbour Master in Orkney, saluted the fallen commemorated by the monument on Hoy; adjacent Scapa Flow was home to many of the warships which escorted the convoys.
Liverpool was a key staging post for both Atlantic and Arctic Convoys. The Royal Navy’s Deputy Regional Commander Lieutenant Colonel Guy Balmer Royal Marines joined the Rector of Liverpool Canon Dr Crispin Pailing for a service at the Arctic Campaign memorial in Liverpool Parish Church of Our Lady and St Nicholas.
And on HMS Belfast on the Thames Rear Admiral Iain Lower, the Royal Navy’s Assistant Chief of Naval Staff (Policy), and the Russian Defence Attaché to the UK, Colonel Maxim Elovik, met on the quarterdeck of Belfast in London for a 15-minute service of remembrance and thanksgiving.
LINK
15 December 2020
Wreaths have been laid at memorials around the UK to honour the men who sailed in the Arctic Convoys to Russia.
Royal Navy and Russian military representatives have taken part in 75th anniversary commemorations of the end of a bitter four-year struggle to deliver vital aid to the Soviet Union and defeat Nazism.
The global pandemic scuppered plans for a major commemoration of the end of the convoys, which ran from the summer of 1941 until the defeat of the Third Reich in the spring of 1945.
Instead a ‘virtual commemoration’ was last month, when veterans joined senior political and diplomatic figures from Britain and Russia for an online discussion to underline the importance of the convoys – and to thank the dwindling number of men who endured what Churchill called ‘the worst journey in the world’.
That event sparked the idea of low-key physical commemorations at some of the key monuments to the convoys.
Commander James Buck, Harbour Master in Orkney, saluted the fallen commemorated by the monument on Hoy; adjacent Scapa Flow was home to many of the warships which escorted the convoys.
Liverpool was a key staging post for both Atlantic and Arctic Convoys. The Royal Navy’s Deputy Regional Commander Lieutenant Colonel Guy Balmer Royal Marines joined the Rector of Liverpool Canon Dr Crispin Pailing for a service at the Arctic Campaign memorial in Liverpool Parish Church of Our Lady and St Nicholas.
And on HMS Belfast on the Thames Rear Admiral Iain Lower, the Royal Navy’s Assistant Chief of Naval Staff (Policy), and the Russian Defence Attaché to the UK, Colonel Maxim Elovik, met on the quarterdeck of Belfast in London for a 15-minute service of remembrance and thanksgiving.
LINK