- Contributed by听
- Angela & Dianna
- Article ID:听
- A1127620
- Contributed on:听
- 30 July 2003
This story is about Dianna's father, Donald Sabin:
My father was born in Lady's Lane, Northampton, where his parents kept an off-licence. The family moved to Kettering, where they became licensees of The Swan, in Montague Street, living over the pub and in a house in Bath Road. The family was living there at the time of his death, but his mother moved after this to Eastbourne.
My parents were forbidden to marry, as Mother was considered too young. My father joined the Royal Navy Signals School in Portsmouth and trained as a telegraphist. In July 1939 he sailed from Southampton on HMS Dilwara, and in August joined HMS Eagle in Hong Kong.
I have his diaries from 1938 until he left HMS Eagle when she returned to England for a refit at the end of October 1941. He wrote every day. He tells of his classmates at the signal school and gives an assessment of each. It is chilling to see his later note under several of these entries: 'Perished with his ship Royal Oak 14/10/39 Pro Patria.'
He draws diagrams of the position of ships in convoy and tells of dramatic events, like an explosion on board that killed several comrades.
Despite extensive research, I lose track of him from October 1941 until late 1943, though I believe from his medals that he was involved in the Torch Landings and an obituary in his local paper states that he took charge of a commando unit, sending signals from the desert to ships offshore. I know that he returned to England for additional training in February 1943, when I must have been conceived.
At the end of 1943, the leading telegraphist on board a Flower Class Corvette, HMS Vetch, went on a binge with the coxswain and was found dead in his bunk. 'Our Hero' joined the ship in Alexandria, as a replacement.
Towards the end of January 1944, he became ill, but there was no room for a doctor on board such a compact ship and the medical orderly didn't recognise the symptoms. Eventually, the captain radioed ashore and my father was taken to Gibraltar. The doctor from the Naval Hospital examined him in the ambulance at around midnight and diagnosed haemorrhagic smallpox. He died, what must have been an agonising death, on 4 February 1944 and is buried in North Front Cemetery.
Nearly a week later, an RAMC private who had been discharged on 8 February from the infectious wing after recovering from mild diphtheria, reported sick and was admitted by the Orderly Officer to a medical ward. His only symptom was a slight headache and his temperature was 100掳F. Two days later he developed a slight rash and he was sent to the Zymotic hospital as a case of mild smallpox. Within the next four days, two other diphtheria patients in the infectious wing developed smallpox. They both subsequently died.
The RAMC private eventually admitted that he had broken bounds on seeing his opportunity during the momentary absence of the orderly on duty, and had made contact with my father. While this man was convalescent, he was allowed to give a hand in the kitchen of the infectious wing. He must have carried the smallpox infection, caught from his illicit contact with my father, directly to the two bed patients who died.
The virus was extremely virulent - a total of 21 cases of smallpox were treated, of which seven proved fatal.
The outbreak was contained by swift and decisive action at the highest international level. Had it not been, the consequences during wartime would have been unthinkable. The Governor of Gibraltar at this time was Lt Gen Sir Noel Mason-Macfarlane, ('Mason-Mac'), a complex and charismatic character.
All possible contacts that might have already passed through Gibraltar had to be traced by MI5. The entire military population of Gibraltar was re-vaccinated and 15,000 civilians were vaccinated. The problems of movement were extremely complex. The movement of troops within the garrison, all persons leaving or entering by sea or air, and the movements of the ships that used the harbour all had to be considered.
My father's obituary states that he 'was buried with full naval honours as a result of an illness contracted in the Middle East' - unlikely, since the most elaborate precautions were taken in respect of burials; no public whatsoever were told or admitted and the MOH or a civil sanitary inspector personally supervised each funeral and burial.
There is nothing remarkable about a daughter wanting to find out more about the father she never knew, but this story doesn't end with the usual visit to put flowers on a well-kept military grave. There are men still alive who were on the last ship with him, who recall how he longed to get home to England to see his baby daughter and remember him crying out as he was lowered into the small boat on his final, short sea journey to his ghastly death on the Rock.
It seems a sad way to end a life, far away from home and of such a terrible disease, for someone who had been facing death daily on HM ships as part of the fighting Royal Navy, and had been proud to do so. How lucky that the company of the Vetch had been vaccinated so recently. But why was my father left unprotected?
I should dearly love to find out where he was in the two years from October 1941 to December 1943. Perhaps there is also someone who recalls the smallpox outbreak on Gibraltar?
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