Orders, Decorations and Medals

A good post-war M.B.E., Second World War minesweeping operations D.S.C. group of six awarded to Lieutenant-Commander J. A. B. Harrisson, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, M.B.E. (Military) Member’s 2nd type breast badge; Distinguished Service Cross, G.VI.R., reverse officially dated ‘1944’, hallmarks for London 1942; 1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star, clasp, France and Germany; War Medal 1939-45; Naval General Service 1915-62, 2 clasps, S.E. Asia 1945-46, Minesweeping 1945-51 (Ty./A./Lt. Cdr. (SP) J. A. B. Harrisson, D.S.C., R.N.V.R.), this last with official correction to last four letters of surname, cleaned and lacquered, very fine and better (6) £1600-1800

M.B.E. London Gazette 1 January 1951.

D.S.C. London Gazette 9 May 1944:

‘For enterprise and skill in minesweeping in H.M. Ships Bressay, Exmouth, Sycamore, Bouvet III and Light Craft.’

John Anthony Bernard Harrisson was born at Holbeach, Lincolnshire in February 1909 and was commissioned as a Temporary Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in July 1940, when he joined the paddle minesweeper H.M.S. Queen of Kent, which operated out of the Firth of Forth. In December of the same year, having briefly attended the Hartlepool base Paragon, he was given command of the minesweeper trawler Ben Torc and, between November 1942 and June 1943, he served in a similar capacity in the Sukha, a whaler minesweeper. But it was for his subsequent command of the M.M.S. 272, in the period June 1943 to April 1945, and more specifically in “Operation SN. 123” - hazardous minesweeping operations in the Orkneys and Shetlands - that he was awarded his D.S.C., which distinction he received at an investiture in October 1944. Of his wartime career in minesweeping, his son wrote:

‘I know one of his trawlers was sunk under him and he spent many hours in the North Sea before being picked up suffering from hyperthermia; he also had a very lucky escape when he paid a visit to the heads during the night - he returned to find a piece of red hot shrapnel in the centre of his blazing pillow ... I do know that he dismantled one of the very first acoustic mines that they had swept, but did not recognize - rather than detonate it in the usual manner, a net was cast over it and it was towed to shallow water and then very carefully manhandled on to the beach.’

In August 1945, after a brief spell at the training establishment King Alfred, and by now an Acting Temporary Lieutenant-Commander, Harrisson took command of the landing ship (tanks) L.S.T. 3020, in which vessel he served out in the Far East until August 1946 and was present at the Japanese surrender of Bali - his son was under the impression that he may have received a Dutch award on the same occasion, but no such distinction appears in Seedie’s. And his final seagoing appointment was in the “Danlayer” Lingay, following which he served out in Germany as a representative on the Control Commission, a period that also witnessed him returning to minesweeping duties, this time in command of ex-German Navy personnel and ships.

Having then been demobbed, Harrisson lent good service to the Sea Cadet Corps, and was awarded his M.B.E. while stationed at the Akbar Nautical Training College, Heswell, Cheshire, which distinction he received at an investiture held in February 1951. In August 1954, however, he was appointed a Flight Lieutenant in the Education Branch of the Royal Air Force, in which capacity he served until relinquishing his commission in August 1963.

A keen poet all his life, Harrisson died in Norwich, Norfolk in 1983; sold with a copy of his co-authored Minesweeping Nonsense Verses (a.k.a. PAD), published in November 1944, and his Catullus, The Dedication to Cornelius and the Poems about Lesbia, published in 1980, this signed by author; together with an e-mail from his son outlining his late father’s naval career, including a copy of a photograph of recipient in later life.