Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day are annual national moments of reflection, during which those who gave their lives while serving in the United Kingdom’s Armed Forces are honoured. Virtually every family has a ‘war story’. My maternal family has at least two, one of which I knew nothing about.
Granddad had survived the Second World War, but I only knew three things about his involvement:
- He had been a Sargeant-Major in the Army (I’ve never verified this, but Granddad was very strict, most of the time, so I never questioned it)
- He had been shot in the head during an engagement with the Italian Army in North Africa and saved by the Americans (this suggests he served during Operation Torch)
- He had given his medals away to the children of a neighbour before having children of his own. (My Uncle wasn’t born until 1953, so this is totally plausible)
Attempts to glean further information were swiftly shut down; Granddad didn’t like talking about the War, which was understandable on a superficial level but made even more sense when I began to properly research our family tree during the 2020 lockdowns. Immersing myself in the various records stored within Ancestry and other online resources, I made a discovery. Granddad had a brother he had never mentioned.
Once I’d learned this, knowing what to do next was tricky. My Uncle still lives in Woking, as his parents and grandparents did, while I live over 200 miles away, so it was difficult to ask what, if anything, he knew about Richard. I then got embroiled in a Master’s in Creative Writing which pushed genealogy out of focus. I recently completed the course and, without football to act as a ‘focal point’ for my writing am keen to resume my research. Inspired by Michael Palin’s recent book Great Uncle Harry, I set out to see whether I could honour the memory of my own ancestor.
Richard Noakes was born on 9 December 1920, when my Granddad, Roy, was 17 months old. When the 1939 Register was taken shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War, he is listed as an “Ordinary Seaman, Royal Navy, HMS Esk”, which suggests that he had chosen a life at sea prior to the outbreak of the conflict and was on leave at the time the data was collected.
HMS Esk was primarily used for mine-laying and sank on 31 August 1940 after hitting mines while assisting HMS Express, which had itself struck a mine in the North Sea, off the Dutch coast. However, by this point, Richard Noakes was not part of the Ship’s Company recorded by Herbert Vaughan, who survived the sinking.
The only thing I know for sure about my Great Uncle Richard’s Naval career is he was part of the crew of HMS Dunedin when it was torpedoed on 24 November 1941. The ship had been based in Freetown, Sierra Leone and was 900 miles from Freetown when it was lost. I am indebted to the HMS Dunedin Society for the following paragraphs:
“The Admiralty had gleaned from Enigma decrypts that the Germans were planning an operation to attack shipping near Cape Town, involving four U-boats, an armed merchant raider (Atlantis) and a supply ship (Python). HMS Devonshire, HMS Dorsetshire, and Dunedin were ordered independently to track them down.
“On the afternoon of 24 November, U-124, commanded by Jochen Mohr, was on its way to rendezvous with Python. Near St Paul’s Rocks, 900 miles west of Freetown, just south of the Equator, Mohr sighted Dunedin to his north east sailing a north west course. He therefore hauled out to the west to lie in wait for Dunedin. But Dunedin’s lookout spotted U-124’s periscope around 12.50pm and the Captain changed course to set off in pursuit. But because of U-124’s change of course west, Dunedin was now unwittingly pulling away from U-124. When Mohr surfaced again he saw Dunedin disappearing into the distance, at least 4,000 yards away. He nevertheless fired three torpedoes. Incredibly, from this distance, two were on target even though Dunedin was steaming 17 knots, and was under constant wheel.
“The two torpedoes hit within seconds of each other, at around 1326 GMT, the first striking amidships, wrecking the main wireless office, the second further aft, probably near the officers’ quarters. The first hit sent the ship lurching to starboard, the second caused even greater damage dismounting the after 6in gun, and blowing off the starboard screw. Immediately men began to abandon ship, jumping over the side to the Carley floats and any available debris. Dunedin turned on her beam ends and sank in about seventeen minutes.”
There were 486 men aboard Dunedin at the time of her sinking. Of those, approximately 145 made it onto life rafts but there is no evidence Richard was one. Seventy-eight hours on the rafts proved too much for many of those on them; just 72 were rescued by the Nishmaha, a US merchant ship en route from Takoradi to Philadelphia when it found the survivors. Sadly, a further five sailors perished aboard the Nishmaha.
It is because so many people like Able Seaman Richard Noakes lost their lives that the act of remembrance remains important. My great uncle died in the Atlantic Ocean less than a fortnight before his twenty-first birthday. What might he have gone on to achieve in life had he survived? That enormous, unanswerable question is even more poignant in 2024 given that there is once again war in Europe, Gaza has been reduced to rubble and a convicted felon has just been elected President of the United States. How much potential has been lost through the killing of innocent Palestinians, Ukrainians, Israelis and Russians?
In a bid to find out more about my great uncle’s nascent Naval career, I asked the National Archives for the relevant records. I got an automated reply:
“Our team is currently processing a high volume of requests with around 12,000 active cases, and we respond to all emails in date order. Please be advised that our current average processing time for a Freedom of Information (FOI) request is ten to twelve months.”
So, I won’t know for a while yet whether Richard was heading for promotion, or the kind of work he might have done in the two years between his appearance in the 1939 Register and his tragic death. But when the nation falls silent at 11:00am I will think of him and offer a silent vote of thanks to all who served. The National Archives having such a high number of requests for ancestral military records suggests that, if nothing else, the sacrifices made in two World Wars haven’t been entirely forgotten, which I think is a reason for hope.