大象传媒

Lawrence Hazell of Pitman Road, although born in Sussex, came to Cheltenham when his family was evacuated in 1940. He spent all subsequent leaves in Cheltenham, met his future wife here, who he married in 1943. Lawrence had volunteered for the Navy in 1938, and after finishing his training he went to Portsmouth with a crew to HMS Hawkins - a cruiser, and then to the Iron Duke, and old battleship named in memory of Wellington.
From there he was drafted to the Mediterranean fleet, based at Alexandria, Egypt. When war broke out he was on war footing on the destroyer, HMS Afridi in the Red Sea, shadowing enemy ships. Able Seaman Lawrence Hazell was part of a boarding party carrying out the arrest of a German freighter. He concealed himself on the bridge from where he could observe the charthouse. He noticed that the captain was drawing elaborate sketches of sections of the Afridi. Despite his youth (Able Seaman Hazell was 19), he realised that these were for the benefit of German High Command. He smashed the door open and butted the captain in the stomach with his rifle and locked him in there. The Admiralty interrogated the captain and it subsequently transpired that he had been engaged in espionage. The outcome of the boarding was that the ship's Lieutenant was given a Distinguished Service Cross for Able Seaman Hazell's quickness of thought.
After this Seaman Gunner Hazell served on destroyers including HMS Mohawk in the Norwegian Campaign and in the North Sea around the Low Counties in the Hook of Holland. From here it was back to the Mediterranean to tackle the Italians who had just entered the war. The Mohawk was involved in a number of skirmishes with Italian ships in the Mediterranean. Off the Straits of Messina, along with 15 other destroyers she engaged units of the Italian Fleet, backed by the Italian Air Force, forcing them to flee back to port.
Seaman Gunner Hazell was by way of being quite an artist and used to paint pictures of the various ships he had served on. One day when serving on the Queen Elizabeth battleship, in the mess he met one of only three seaman survivors of HMS Hood (in all 1413 men perished on The Hood when it was sunk by the Bismarck in the Atlantic). This chap watched him painting and produced a postcard of his old ship and asked if Lawrence would paint a picture of it. He was only too glad to oblige this brave man, who he named as Bill Tilburn. After many offers by officers to buy the finished painting, Bill felt that Lawrence himself should keep it. This he did until the late 1970s when on holiday in St. Agnes, Cornwall, he called in at The Railway Inn, where he found it run by a retired Lieutenant Commander who had a display of wartime memorabilia. They compared accounts of what had happened to the Hood and despite its demise, the part it had played in the crippling of the Bismarck which had gone down a couple of days later. Lawrence decided that The Railway Inn was a suitable place for his painting.
Seaman Gunner Hazell served on HMS Laconia escorting Atlantic convoys between Canada and Britain and also on Arctic Patrols. While many of our vessels were not so lucky, his ship Laconia survived 18 months of escorting convoys, emerging unscathed. On similar manoeuvres, HMS Jervis Bay, HMS Rawalpindi, and HMS Scotstown, armed merchant cruisers (AMCs) were all sunk by submarines or surface raiders while carrying out the same escort duties. Lawrence has a wealth of stories about his escapades in the Atlantic, including a graphic account of being on lookout duty and sighting a distant object, which on sailing closer turned out to be a ring of merchant sailors tied together by rope. The rise and fall of the Atlantic swell made it appear as if the men were dancing with one another.
After the Atlantic duties, he found himself aboard HMS Cottesmore hunting U-boats, and the E-Boats, which would lie in wait for unsuspecting convoys in the North Sea and the English Channel. Able Seaman Hazell ended his war aboard a depot ship in Scapa Flow, where he accepted the surrender of German U-boats. His long war service saw him decorated with Defence Medal, War Medal 1939-1945, Naval General Service Medal, 39-45 Star, Atlantic Star, North Africa Star, Italian Star and Maltese Commemorative Medal. He left the navy in 1947 and moved permanently to Cheltenham.
Since the war, Lawrence Hazell has run a tireless campaign to raise awareness for all those people like the ARP, Fire Service, Land Army, and Home Guard, who all contributed to the War Effort and had not been officially recognised and receive the 1945 Peace Medal. Despite his best efforts, this campaign has so far been in vain.

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