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Auction: 22001 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 214

'On 20 April 1941, from Wren Headquarters, we realised H.M.S. Drake was the target. I eventually arrived at Casualty Office to utter tragedy. Five bombs had straddled the huge dormitory of the P.O's Mess. My own office block opposite was full of debris and glass. During the morning, tarpaulins were laid out by the parade ground and by noon, dozens of bodies were being recovered. Identification was difficult, for many men were in night-clothes.

I suppose many men had slipped [put] on greatcoats. One young sailor was identified by the tag on his coat. Dozens of telegrams went to next of kin and eventually, later on, our Casualty Office Wrens stood and watched as the sad procession of gun carriages, draped in Union Jacks, left H.M.S. Drake, some to Weston Mill cemetery …'

Muriel Holland, an ex-C.P.O. in the W.R.N.S., recalls the tragic events of 20-21 April 1941, when Boscawen block at H.M.S. Drake was heavily damaged in an enemy raid; see the 'B.B.C. WW2 People's War' website.

Muriel Holland, an ex-C.P.O. in the W.R.N.S., recalls the tragic events of 20-21 April 1941, when Boscawen block at H.M.S. Drake was heavily damaged in an enemy raid; see the 'B.B.C. WW2 People's War' website.

A poignant Great War campaign group of four awarded to Chief Ordnance Artificer C. S. Old, Royal Navy

On coming ashore in the 1930s, he became the popular landlord of the Crown Inn in Penzance, a happy sojourn ended by the renewal of hostilities in September 1939, when he was recalled to active service

Tragically he was killed during an enemy air raid on Plymouth on 21 April 1941, whilst based in Boscawen's block at H.M.S. Drake

1914-15 Star (M. 3868, C. S. Old, Ar. Mte., R.N.); British War and Victory Medals (M. 3868 C. S. Old, Act. Armr., R.N.); Royal Navy L.S. & G.C., G.V.R., 2nd issue, fixed suspension (M. 3868 C. S. Old, C.O.A. 2, H.M.S. Ramillies.), edge bruising and contact marks, nearly very fine or better (4)

Charles Seymour Old was born in Truro, Cornwall on 14 December 1889 and entered the Royal Navy as an Armourer's crewman in December 1911.

By the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, he was serving as an Armourer's Mate in H.M.S. Yarmouth on the China station, and he remained similarly employed until coming ashore in July 1915. Having then returned to sea in the cruiser Warrior in the period September 1915 to June 1916, he ended the war in the battle cruiser Glorious.

Advanced to Armourer in April 1919, and to Chief Ordnance Artificer 2nd Class in May 1925, Old was awarded his L.S. & G.C. Medal in January 1927.

He was finally pensioned ashore in December 1933, when he became, among other employment, a popular landlord of the Crown Inn in Penzance; see above.

Journey's end

Recalled as a Chief Ordnance Artificer on the renewal of hostilities in September 1939, he served in the ex-Union Castle liner Edinburgh Castle at Freetown, Sierra Leone, between April and September 1940, when she was used to accommodate survivors from torpedoed ships.

Old then returned to the U.K. to take up an appointment at the Plymouth shore establishment Drake, where he was based in Boscawen's block. And he was likewise employed when killed in an enemy air raid on 21 April 1941, a raid in which 113 of his shipmates died.

In early May 1941, Winston Churchill, accompanied by the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, and Lady Nancy Astor, M.P., visited the ruined barracks at Drake. They saw the gymnasium filled with coffins and met some forty injured sailors who had survived the air raid, the two groups separated only be a low curtain.

Old is buried in Section C of Plymouth's (Weston Mill) Cemetery, where his headstone states that he lies 'near this spot'.

He left a widow, Rhoda May Old, whom he had married at Redruth, Cornwall, in the summer of 1915, after coming ashore from the Yarmouth; she died there in January 1957.

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Sold for
£300

Starting price
£160