大象传媒

This story has been contributed to the People鈥檚 War by the 大象传媒 Learning Centre on behalf of Harry Wright鈥檚 son John, with his permission.

My father Harry Wright died in 2001. He was a petty officer on HMS Kent, a county class cruiser in the Russian convoys. Kent joined the Fleet in Scapa in October 1943. From then until 1944 she patrolled the Northern approaches to the Atlantic and escorted more than 18 convoys to Russia.

He would never talk about if afterwards unless I pressed him about it so I only heard snippets about it over the years but he left a fantastic collection of photos.

He wouldn鈥檛 go to reunions or be drawn to talk about it in any detail, He said: 鈥淟iving it was bad enough without talking about it afterwards.鈥�

I tried to get him to apply for the medal that the Russians awarded. I don鈥檛 know why our Government didn鈥檛 give them a medal. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 want a medal鈥� he said but I thought he should have had it.

Once they shot down a German plane and took the pilot captive. They had to feed him of course and a couple of the crew objected wanted to do something to him. Dad said to me: 鈥淗itler put him in a plane and told him to go and bomb the British and he probably hasn鈥檛 got any idea why. 鈥� In the 1970s I got a job and went to work in Germany for a while and I asked Dad if he minded me going but he said: 鈥淭hat鈥檚 what we fought the war for, so that you could have the freedom to do that.鈥�

I heard a few stories. Before they sailed to the Arctic he was with a mate in Plymouth and they went to a hotel but they only had one vacancy and as they wanted to stay together they decided to go somewhere else. The first hotel was bombed in the night and the next day they were pulling out the bodies of their shipmates from the wreckage.

Another story was that the ship was up in Scapa Flow in the Orkneys one day, and a German battleship went across the top of Scotland to get to the Atlantic and they鈥檇 only loaded corned beef on the ship when it had to sail to give chase, and they had corned beef for every meal, fried for breakfast, stewed for lunch and for their tea, too. They couldn鈥檛 have outgunned it so the captain said 鈥淚f we fined it, we鈥檙e ramming it,鈥� so my Dad hoped to goodness they didn鈥檛 find it, and they didn鈥檛.

The ship had a mascot, a bull mastiff which looked like Churchill, and he was called Happy 鈥� it was an ironic name because he looked so miserable. He would lie on the deck and his ears would go up and he鈥檇 start whining and they were at action stations before the German aircraft came. He heard them before the crew knew anything.

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