Naval Medals from the Collection of the Late Jason Pilalas

The emotive Great War M.C. group of five awarded to Lieutenant-Colonel F. P. R. Nichols, Royal Army Service Corps, who died after nearly three weeks adrift in a lifeboat from the Cunard White Star Line’s Laconia, which ship, when torpedoed and sunk in shark-infested waters in the South Atlantic in September 1942, had 1800 Italian P.O.Ws aboard: upon learning of this, the U-Boat commander commenced rescue operations, but his admirable endeavours, and those of other U-Boats that joined the scene, were quickly curtailed by an unfortunate attack delivered by Allied aircraft - and the consequent transmittal of Admiral Donitz’s notorious “Laconia Order”

Military Cross, G.V.R.; 1914 Star, with clasp (2. Lieut:F. P. R. Nichols. A.S.C.); British War and Victory Medals (Capt. F. P. R. Nichols.; Khedive’s Sudan 1910-21, 2nd issue, 1 clasp, Garjak Nuer, unnamed as issued, mounted as worn, very fine (5) £1,600-£2,000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Naval Medals from the Collection of the Late Jason Pilalas.

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M.C. London Gazette 1 January 1917.

Francis Peter Ross Nichols was born in October 1892 and was commissioned into the Army Service Corps in February 1912. As a young officer he served with the B.E.F. out in France and Belgium between August 1914 and March 1915, and again between March 1916 and November 1918, gaining advancement to Captain in September 1917. After the War, between April 1919 and January 1925, Nichols was attached to the Egyptian Army, and was present in the Garjak Nuer operations of 1920. He was also attached, between January 1925 and April 1929, to the Sudan Defence Force. And by the renewal of hostilities he had risen to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.

For exactly what reasons Nichols found himself aboard the Laconia in September 1942 remains unknown, but the 49-year old Colonel would have joined her at either Suez or the Cape, from which ports she continued her homeward bound voyage with some 2700 people aboard. A few of these passengers no doubt constituted the reason behind her wartime role as an Admiralty-requisitioned troopship, Nichols among them, but 1800 of them were actually Italian P.O.Ws, under a 160-strong Polish guard.

On 12 September 1942, in a position about 500 miles south of Cape Palmas, Liberia, the Laconia was torpedoed and sunk by the U-156, commanded by Kapitain Werner Hartenstein. Shortly after the liner capsized, the crew of the now surfaced U-Boat were amazed to hear Italian voices yelling amongst the survivors struggling in the water, and on speaking to some of them, Werner Hartenstein immediately began rescue operations, alerting at the same time nearby U-Boats to come to his assistance. Also by radio he contacted his seniors in Germany, asking for instructions and, more courageously, sent out an uncoded message inviting any nearby ships to assist, allied or otherwise, promising not to attack them on the basis his U-Boat, too, was left unmolested. And amazingly, to begin with at least, Berlin replied in the affirmative, although Hitler personally intervened to threaten Admiral Raeder in the event of any U-Boats being lost to enemy action as a result of the rescue operation. Over the next few days, Hartenstein’s ‘rescue package’ achieved commendable results, and by 16 September, U-156 had picked up around 400 survivors, half of which she towed astern in lifeboats, while other enemy U-Boats, the U-506 and the U-507, and the Italian Cappellini, had arrived on the scene and acted with similar compassion.

Tragically, on 16 September, an American Liberator bomber, operating out of Ascension Island, attacked the gathered U-Boats and Cappellini, forcing Hartenstein and his fellow captains to cut their tows with the lifeboats and submerge. Mercifully, some neutral (Vichy) French warships arrived on the scene soon afterwards from Dakar, and in total, including those still aboard the U-Boats, some several hundred men, women and children were saved. But two lifeboats remained undiscovered, their occupants having to endure a living nightmare, adrift without adequate sustenance, under a burning sun, with sharks for company, for several weeks.

One of those lifeboats became the final refuge of Nichols, who valiantly battled on for nearly three weeks before finally succumbing to the elements. Thanks to the account of a survivor from the same boat, Doris Hawkins, a moving picture emerges of the Colonel’s last days, and how he displayed no small degree of leadership and courage under the most appalling circumstances. For there can be little, if any, doubt that he is the Army Officer referred to in her account, given the combination of his rank and date of death, specifically recorded by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission as 30 September, and not the actual date of the Laconia’s loss.

To begin with, assisted by Laconia’s young surgeon, Dr. Purslow, he assumed responsibility of the the daily rations and water supply for the 68 unfortunates crammed into the 30 foot lifeboat, which had a leak which necessitated pumping day and night. Those rations comprised in the morning of ‘four or five Horlicks tablets and three pieces of chocolate’ (and no water), and in the evening of ‘two ship’s biscuits, one teaspoonful of pemmican and two ounces of water’. Inevitably, extra space soon became available in the lifeboat, and those who were committed to the deep probably encouraged the sharks that followed it with ‘uncanny knowledge’. Miss Hawkins, who was a trained nurse, felt completely helpless as a result of the total lack of medical supplies, a dreadful variety of painful infections and other illnesses being brought on by starvation, lack of water and constant exposure to the elements. Morale, too, began to falter, as each day and night passed, Hawkins recording how the Colonel did his best to raise hopes on the 27th, after everyone fell silent when a three-funnelled vessel passed them by from a distance of about four miles in the morning:

‘That was a silent day. Towards evening, as the Colonel was about to help serve the rations, he spoke to us all: “listen, everyone,” he said, “We have had a big disappointment today, but there’s always tomorrow. The fact we have seen a ship means that we are near a shipping route, and perhaps our luck will turn now. Don’t lose hope because of what happened this morning.” ’

By this stage, with no water left, deaths were common place among the dwindling survivors, and although Hawkins makes no specific reference to the Colonel’s passing, it seems likely that she was responsible for recording his date of demise as the 30 September. As stated, and most unusually, that is the date cited by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, whose archives even have a reference to the Colonel having been in a lifeboat. Hawkins and a few others lived to reach Liberia on 8 October 1942, the former stating in the final chapter of her subsequent and moving story: “We who survived will remember some whose patience, tact and courage was an inspiration.” Undoubtedly among those in her thoughts was the gallant Colonel, who is commemorated on the Brookwood Memorial in Surrey and who left a widow, Evelyn Aubre Nichols.

Note
Following his enforced departure from the scene of rescue on 16 September, Kapitain Hartenstein remained in contact with Berlin, in a vain attempt to complete his worthy task. In the event, he, and his fellow U-Boat commanders, received Donitz’s famous “Laconia Order”, a diktat that mercilessly rewrote the conduct of sea warfare (and cost the Grand Admiral dearly at Nuremberg):

1. Every attempt to save survivors of sunken ships, also the picking up of swimming men and putting them on board lifeboats, the setting right of upturned lifeboats, and the handing over of food and water have been discontinued. These rescues contradict the primary demands of warfare, especially the destruction of enemy ships and their crews.
2. The orders concerning the bringing in of skippers and chief engineers stay in effect.
3. Survivors are only to be rescued if their statements are of importance regarding their ship.
4. Stay hard. Don’t forget that the enemy doesn’t take any regard for women and children when bombarding German towns.

Sold with a copy of The Sinking of the Laconia, A Tragedy in the Battle of the Atlantic, by Frederick Grossmith, the definitive, and well illustrated account of this extraordinary incident, together with an Army Service Corps officer’s bi-metal cap badge.