JACK CORNWELL

Hutt News, Volume 3, Issue 8, 17 July 1930, Page 4

JACK CORNWELL

In the Great War, when Germany fought Britain for .more than four years, there was in our King's Navy a boy named John Travers Cornwell. It seemed to him very fine indeed to be a sailor on a battle-ship in time of war.

The German battle-ships would sometimes cross the North Sea and fire on the English coast, and then hurry back to their own ports; but at the end of May in 1916, when they came to do this, they found themselves met by the British fleet.

Jack Cornwell* who was then sixteen years old, was on a. ship

called "The Chester". When the battle between the two fleets started his job was to stand by one of the guns on a part of the ship which had no, shelter, and take orders from an officer which way to turn the gun. That was all he had to do—take orders, and obey., Often that is all a hero.has tp do; and often it is very hard.

The guns- from both fleets boomed out across the sea, and Jack looked forward to the fight; but in the first five minutes of the battle a German shell broke Jack's gun, and killed the men who^were to fire it. Only Jack was left, and he was badly wounded.

Do you think that Jack told any of the men, or asked for help? No—he stood there in great pain) facing the enemy—stood there^ waiting for orders, in case he could serve England, He was all alone on that part of the ship; no one else had so little shelter.

The battle went on—for the Germans fought very * l)ravely-r----and'. with- the noise of the guns and the great clouds of smoke which some ships put up to hid.c what other ships were doing, Jack could not have known very much about what happened. All he knew really was that as an English sail-or-boy he would stick to nis post.

He hoped and prayed that England might win that day; he' did his bit to see that England won. In the evening, when there was

some mist and daylight was fading, all the German ships which were "left tried to get away unseen. The British ships saw them, however/ and they had to go on fighting until it was quite dark.

But in the darkness they did slip away, and on the morning of the first of June there was no German ship in sight, The British fleet had won.

Then the British ships turned slowly homeward with their wounded,and put out boats to pick up any German sailors who niigjht be clinging to floating pieces of wreckage. They saved three hundred German sailors in this way.

Jack Cornwell was taken to the hospital at Grinisby, and as one of the kind nurses there bent over him she said:

"Well, how did the battle go?" Jack smiled at her, and said: "Oh, we carried on all right!"— but his voice was very weak, and nothing they could do for him could save his life. He died next day.

I do not think the nurse knew just how Jack had "carried on" in the North Sea battle, until the Admiral of the Fleet himself ) Sir David Beatty^ told how the boy;, through badly wounded, stuck to his post, all alone on that part of the ship, till the battle was over. The Admiral said that Jack's deed was one drfi the bravest in the whole battle, arid deserved the Victoria Cross,

Jack did not live to receive this? the greatest and most prized of all military rewards; but after his death the medal was sent to his mother.