Obituaries

to all.

Bazyli Henryk Chmaruk died...

Bazyli was born in March 28, 1918 in Potapowicze, Poland, and graduated in 1938 from Polish Air Force Academy. In 1939, he flew against advancing Germans, disbanded because they could not compete with what was coming at them from the west. He was on his way home to rescue his family in the east to escape to England. The Polish Government in exile was located there. He was captured by the advancing Soviets. He was a head of Catyn and other massacres of Polish military, government and intelligencia. Bazyli became a prisoner of war and survived a Soviet concentration camp where few survived. He was transported to England and flew 60 missions (dropping agents and supplies to underground forces) in Polish RAF "special duty" squadron #138. In August 1944, he was shot down over Hungary returning from supplying Warsaw Uprising, was captured by Hungarians. He again became a prisoner of war. He was transferred to Germany, survived the Nazi-forced Death March for 700 miles through Winter 1944-45 through northern Germany and was liberated by British commandos. Bazyli was awarded Polish order Virtuti Militari and many other distinctions.
As Poland fell behind the Iron Curtain, Bazyli was blacklisted by the communist regimes and could not return home to Poland. He remained in England, became a licensed aircraft engineer and test pilot, and in 1957 plotted German commercial aviation flight paths converting from Marshall Plan (used Collins Radio meters in flying laboratory to plot flight paths used today). In 1959, he joined Collins Radio International Division London as an avionics system engineer to leading aircraft manufacturers and operators (chiefly concerned with design, installation and flight tests of autopilots, flight systems, gyro stabilized compass, NAV/COMM and accessory Apparatus). He represented Collins at Paris and Farnborough Air Shows, setup Collins field service offices throughout Europe, and immigrated to the United States in 1966 through the State Department to conduct autopilot research at Collins, Cedar Rapids. He was a pre-eminent Collins avionics troubleshooter, autopilot certification expert, and installed the autopilot on Air Force One during Nixon administration. He traveled to Poland each year since 1978. In 1994 he built a wonderful gravesite for his parents near his childhood hometown, now located in Belarus as of Yalta Agreement. (Polish border shifted west thus his childhood home was no longer in Poland.)
Memberships: Polish Air Force Veterans Association Chicago Wing, Warsaw '44 Club, Caterpillar Club (saved life by parachute, silk manufacturer).

source:The Kalona News.

Lieutenant-Colonel Geoffrey Sherman

Geoffrey Sherman's activities as a Royal Marines officer during the Second World War were remarkable for their variety, very much "soldier and sailor too" as Rudyard Kipling once remarked.

While in the heavy cruiser Berwick, he was part of the extraordinary and largely forgotten Operation Fork; the sequestration of Iceland in May 1940. In April, after the Germans had launched their invasions of Denmark and Norway, the British feared that Iceland, strategically well placed to threaten Atlantic convoy routes, might be next. Accordingly, a scratch force of 746 Royal Marines, nearly all of whom were raw recruits, were embarked in the cruisers Berwick and Glasgow and, suffering acutely from seasickness, shipped to Iceland, where they transferred to two destroyers and landed at Reykjavik. Surprise had been lost when Berwick's Walrus seaplane overflew Reykjavik by mistake when on anti-submarine patrol.

Sherman was in command of the Berwick's Royal Marines detachment who, well trained and immune to seasickness, were the spearhead of an under-equipped force which nevertheless secured the post office, the broadcasting service and the German consulate without difficulty, salvaging a substantial number of documents found burning in the consul's bath.

This was a flagrant violation of Icelandic neutrality, but Britain ignored the very proper diplomatic protests. Shortly afterwards the Royal Marines were relieved by 4,000 British soldiers and in July 1941, six months before Pearl Harbor and America's entry into the war, a large US occupation force.

Berwick arrived in the Mediterranean in November 1940 and took part in operations which included supporting the brilliant Fleet Air Arm attack on the Italian fleet in Taranto. She was the only ship to be damaged at the battle of Cape Spartivento, Admiral Somerville's inconclusive action against the Italians. As was widely the custom, the Royal Marines manned the after eight-inch gun turret and this was hit by two shells. Commanding the turret, seven of Sherman's people were killed and he, with eight others, was wounded.

In December Berwick was slightly damaged by the German commerce raider, the heavy cruiser Hipper, while defending a convoy. After repairs and equipment upgrades, Berwick escorted several convoys to Russia, Sherman leaving her in 1942 for the army staff course at Camberley.

He was then appointed to the Eighth Army headquarters in Egypt under General Montgomery. In September 1943 he took part in Operation Baytown, the first landing on the Italian mainland near Reggio di Calabria. In 1944 he was sent to Ceylon as GSO1 or chief staff officer to Lieutenant-General "Boy" Browning, chief of staff to Lord Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia. Mountbatten's pet plan, Operation Zipper, the invasion of the Malayan mainland, was negated by the atom bombs and the Japanese surrender.

Arriving in Singapore, Sherman was one of the first to relieve the half starved inmates of Changi jail. He was assigned under the watchful eye of Lady Edwina Mountbatten to set up suitably imposing ceremonies for the surrender of the regional Imperial Japanese forces by General Seishiro Itagaki on September 12, 1945. Sherman's family came to possess the Union and Malayan flag that were used at that event and which were flying in Tanglin Barracks when the Japanese invaded in 1942.

After the war Sherman served in the Cabinet Office until 1950 when he was invalided as a result of his war injuries. He then joined John Holt's, a West African trading company, and worked in Nigeria until independence in 1958. He was also a superintendent in the Nigerian Special Constabulary. Returning to England, he was managing director of Rodex and subsequently joined British Aerospace in 1970.

A considerable sportsman, Sherman played cricket for the MCC. He played for Nigeria as a bowler and wicketkeeper. At rugby football, he played for Wasps and the Royal Navy. In retirement his many charitable activities included establishing the Blackpool branch of the Samaritans under Chad Varah, their founder, and chairmanship of the Yeovil Alzheimer's Association. He was president of the Surrey Small Bore Rifle Association at Bisley.

He is survived by his wife, Evelyn, whom he was married to in the fateful month of November 1939, and their two sons and a daughter.

Lieutenant-Colonel Geoffrey Sherman, Royal Marines, organiser of the Japanese surrender of Singapore in 1945, was born on April 6, 1915. He died on March 22, 2009, aged 93

With the passing of the last of the junior officers that participated in the early battles of the war, we're now losing the last of the living memories of the participants of the prewar armed services. RIP sir!

Click to expand...

From The Times
April 7, 2009
Commander Norman Tod: Naval officer on the cruiser Ajax

Norman Tod was awarded the DSC for his courage and efficiency when navigating officer of the light cruiser Ajax at the Battle of the River Plate. This celebrated engagement, which took place on December 13, 1939, resulted in the scuttling in Montevideo of the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee and was a timely tonic early in the war when national morale had been lowered by inactivity punctuated with disasters.

Tod's charts of the preliminary part of the action, now with the Imperial War Museum, show that Commodore Harwood and his staff initially believed that their opponent was the sister ship Admiral Scheer. As navigator of the flagship of Harwood's small force of three cruisers — Exeter, Ajax and
Achilles — Tod would have contributed to Harwood's shrewd appreciation that Graf Spee, having found and sunk only nine merchant ships, might gravitate towards the traffic node at the River Plate.

Graf Spee's 11-inch guns soon inflicted grave damage to the 8-inch gunned Exeter, which had to retire in a near-sinking condition with many casualties, leaving the two 6-inch cruisers to continue the battle. Both were hit by 11-inch shells and damaged by splinters; Ajax losing the use of half her armament and Achilles her gunnery control system. But Graf Spee had also been damaged. Trammelled by Hague Convention legalities regarding combatants in neutral ports, lack of fuel and ammunition, the arrival of the heavy cruiser Cumberland and the threat of further reinforcements, her captain, Hans Langsdorff, ordered her scuttled and committed suicide. To his credit, no merchant seamen were killed during his operations; all were captured.

Tod was navigator of the cruiser Norfolk when she and Suffolk, both radar-fitted, intercepted, reported and shadowed the battleship Bismarck and the cruiser Prinz Eugen as they broke out through the Denmark Strait in May 1941. Witnessing the subsequent action with the battleship Prince of Wales
and the battlecruiser Hood, Tod saw the Hood destroyed in one mighty explosion. Although losing contact next day, Norfolk was present at the final sinking of the Bismarck.

Tod's subsequent war service included navigating the battleship Queen Elizabeth in the East Indies campaign against the Japanese and, promoted to commander in 1944, a post on the staff of the fleet commander at Colombo.

Norman Kelso Tod was born in Quetta, now in Pakistan, his father serving in the Indian cavalry. Taken "home" to live with grandparents at 3, he joined the Navy at 13 and throughout the 1920s and early 1930s enjoyed a colourful time around the Mediterranean and the Baltic, at one time crewing for the
King's yacht Britannia. Having qualified as a navigator, he served for two years in Gulf sloops, helping to establish the Bahrain naval base and showing the flag to the still medieval parts of the region. He joined Ajax in 1938 in the West Indies.
After the war he was assistant naval attaché in Shanghai followed by command of the frigate Loch Glendhu in the East Indies, a tour at the naval tactical school and as naval attaché in Lisbon. He retired in the rank of acting captain based at Karachi and as naval adviser to the High Commission in
Pakistan. Being averse to office work he became a courier for upmarket travel agencies, escorting groups of the more determined type of tourist and in some 24 years visited many countries in North Africa, the Middle East and South-East Asia. His travels were terminated by a stroke in Thailand in
2002. Commander Norman Tod, DSC, naval officer, was born in India on November 12, 1910. He died on March 6, 2009, aged 98

Fair winds and following seas, Shipmate!

TO

Jewish boxer Salamo Arouch, survivor of Auschwitz, dies age 86.

Salamo Arouch, a Jewish boxer who survived the Auschwitz death camp by fighting exhibition bouts for Nazi officers and inspired a Hollywood movie about his life, has died in Israel. He was 86.
The Haaretz newspaper did not give the cause of death of the Greek-born fighter, but quoted his daughter Dalia Gonen as saying he had been unwell since suffering a stroke 15 years ago.
It said he died on Sunday but did not say where.
Born in the Greek town of Saloniki, Arouch became middleweight champion of the Balkans, but his professional career was cut short by World War II and the German invasion of his homeland.
Like thousands of other Saloniki Jews, he and his family and friends were deported to Auschwitz.
Arouch, ordered by the Nazis to fight other prisoners for their entertainment, survived the camp. At the end of the war he immigrated to British-ruled Palestine and saw the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948.
His story was the basis for the 1989 movie 'Triumph of the Spirit,' starring Willem Dafoe.
Much of the film was made on location in Auschwitz, with Arouch on site as an adviser, Haaretz quoted his widow Martha as saying.
'He stayed there for three months, going through the process again with the actors,' she told the paper.
'He was happy that something would remain of him after he passed on.'

source: Dailymail

Rest in peace.

Mosquito design team member passes

In Telegraph Deaths column: Ralph Marcus Hare on 4th May 2009, aged 94, aircraft engineer and member of Mosquito prototype design team. Thanksgiving Service at St Andrews Church, Cuffley, Herts, on Thursday 21st May at 12 noon