BRAVE RESCUE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 May 1942, Page 3

BRAVE RESCUE

AUCKLAND ABLE SEAMAN’S DEED i OFFICER SAVED FROM BURNING OIL. WHEN GHURKA WAS TORPEDOED IN MEDITERRANEAN. (Received This Day, 11.0 a.m.) (Special P.A. Correspondent.) LONDON, May 26. Able Seaman W. M. Armstrong, of Auckland, who was recently awarded the British Empire Medal, saved an English sub-lieutenant from burning oil when the destroyer Ghurka was torpedoed in the Mediterranean’ last January. Able Seaman Armstrong said: “I was forrard, shaving, at 7.30 a.m., preparing to start my watch as a gunlay, when the torpedo struck a fuel tank aft. I immediately rushed to my action station, but a torpedo hit directly under the gun mounting, with the result that it became a mass of debris. There was a fierce fire burning, so six of us attempted to put it out, but there was insufficient water pressure. We then discovered that there was someone beneath us, in the officers’ wardroom, which was directly over the fuel tank which had been hit. I saw an officer, who was severely injured, struggle to the side of the ship. He was tangled up in wires and kept disappearing under oil each time the ship dipped. I tied, a heaving line found my waist, went amidships and dived in. I managed to reach him and pull him out. Then my mates pulled us amidships and got us aboard just before the oil floating on the sea burst into flames. I never realised that the ship could carry so much oil.” Able Seaman Armstrong added: “A Dutch ship picked us up and landed us at Tobruk. The Dutchmen gave us all the clothes they had, but we were still very cold in Tobruk, where we spent two days and experienced an air raid on the day we left. I was for two months in Alexandria and then went to England.” Armstrong is going to H.M.S. King Alfred to study for a commission. Able Seamen D. Burns and J. Wallace, both of Wellington, were also in the Ghurka when she was torpedoed. They were later posted to different ships. Burns is now a prisoner in Algeria and Wallace is somewhere in the Mediterranean.