Cmdr. Kenneth Edwards - Men of Action

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This edition is published by Arcole Publishingwww.pp-publishing.com

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Text originally published in 1947 under the same title.

Arcole Publishing 2017, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publishers Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Authors original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern readers benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

MEN OF ACTION

BY

COMMANDER KENNETH EDWARDS R.N.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION

To all who serve with them.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

REAR-ADMIRAL R. L. BURNETT

VICE-ADMIRAL SIR H. M. BURROUGH

CAPTAIN J. A. COLLINS

ADMIRAL OF THE FLEET SIR ANDREW CUNNINGHAM, BT.

VICE-ADMIRAL SIR H. HARWOOD

ADMIRAL SIR MAX K. HORTON

VICE-ADMIRAL SIR A. L. ST. G. LYSTER

THE LORD LOUIS MOUNTBATTEN

ADMIRAL SIR PERCY L. H. NOBLE

CAPTAIN A. L. POLAND

ADMIRAL OF THE FLEET SIR DUDLEY POUND

VICE-ADMIRAL SIR H. D. PRIDHAM-WIPPELL

CAPTAIN G. W. G. SIMPSON

ADMIRAL SIR JAMES F. SOMERVILLE

CAPTAIN G. H. STOKES

MAJOR-GENERAL R. G. STURGES

ADMIRAL SIR JOHN C. TOVEY

REAR-ADMIRAL SIR PHILIP L. VIAN

VICE-ADMIRAL SIR W. F. WAKE-WALKER

ROBERT LINDSAY BURNETT, C.B., D.S.O., O.B.E.Rear-Admiral in His Majestys Fleet

IT IS a traditional ceremony in the Royal Navy that when commanding officers and flag officers come on board a warship they do so to the trilling of bosns pipes. This ceremony of piping the side is a survival of the days when senior officers were hoisted on board in a bosns chair at the end of a rope or whip led through a block at the yard arm. The pipe was the order to hoist away.

Tens of thousands of naval officers have been honoured in the traditional way as they have stepped up the gangway on to the quarter-deck, but only one has been so honoured while being actually hoisted on board in a bosns chair at sea in wartime. That officer is Rear-Admiral Robert Lindsay Burnett.

The incident happened in far northern waters, when circumstances made it necessary for Rear-Admiral Burnett to transfer his flag from the light cruiser Scylla to the destroyer Milne . The weather was too bad for the ships to lie alongside one another and Rear-Admiral Burnett climbed into a bosns chair (which is merely a wooden seat like that of a swing or the rung of a rope ladder), hooked on to the wire of the Scyllas aircraft crane. With this he was hoisted off the cruisers deck, swung outboard across the tumbling water between the two ships, and lowered on to the deck of the Milne . As he swung over to the destroyer six seamen stood up in the whaler at the davit-heads and piped the Admiral on board. As he landed on the deck his Rear-Admirals flag broke at the destroyers masthead.

The men who enacted this little ceremony had been fighting for several days and nights, running a convoy to north Russia through the worst that the U-boats and the Luftwaffe could do. It has been said that tradition dies hard. In the Royal Navy the best of tradition never dies.

Bob Burnett, he is called in the Navy. He is of medium height, thick-set, with fair hair and what might be termed a ruddy complexion, and an ever-ready laugh. Had the sobriquet not already been applied to another naval officer, there is no doubt that he would have been known as the jolly sailor.

Like so many of the men who have distinguished themselves in this war, Bob Burnett is a small-ship officer. At the beginning of the last war he was First Lieutenant of the destroyer Laertes , in the Harwich Force. On the very first day of hostilities he was in action, when the German minelayer Knigin Luise was sunk in the North Sea. At the Battle of the Heligoland Bight the Laertes was hit and put out of action by the German cruiser Mainz at the very moment that the Laertes torpedoed the Mainz . The Laertes had to be towed back across the North Sea, but while in tow her crew patched up her damaged boilers and succeeded in raising steam. There are many who allege that the Laertes deliberately parted the tow in order to avoid being ignominiously lugged into harbour at the end of a string.

The Laertes was also present at the Battle of the Dogger Bank, during which she picked up many of the survivors from the sunken German cruiser Blcher .

In February, 1915, Burnett got his first command. This was the tiny Torpedo-boat No. 26. He was then twenty-seven years of age and was a lieutenant of rather less than five years seniority. Of one of his exploits in this craft, Bob Burnett has a unique photographic record. It is entitled Alone I Did It and illustrates the story of an overland journey which T.B. No. 26 did as a result of a navigational error. He says that he keeps it as a reminder that even in the olden days he was not entirely free from human error. The eyes of many young officers have wandered to that picture for comfort when they have been on the mat in Burnetts cabin!

For the rest of the 1914-18 war Burnett commanded destroyers Paisley , Acheron , Nessus and Scotsman mostly with the Grand Fleet, but he also had experience in the Western Approaches and in the Dover Patrol.

Shortly before the Armistice Burnett was taken from sea appointments to help reorganise the Physical Training branch of the Navy, and after two years at Portsmouth, he spent the next three years on the staff of Admiral Sir John de Robeck, the Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean Fleet, as the first Fleet Recreational Officer in either the Mediterranean or Atlantic Fleets.

Burnett went back to destroyers in 1931 as a young captain. He then took command of the 8 th Destroyer Flotilla on the China Station, where his ships spent the greater part of their time on anti-piracy patrols.

As a senior captain, he was Commodore of the Royal Naval Barracks at Chatham, where he had the arduous task of mobilising the personnel of the East country manning port for war. He hoisted his flag as an Acting Rear-Admiral in December, 1940, and in March, 1942, he was appointed Rear-Admiral Commanding the destroyer flotillas of the Home Fleet.

Sport and physical training are his passions. He is a springer, as the Navy calls those who have specialised in physical and recreational training, and has been Director of Physical Training and Secretary of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines Sports Control Board. As such he has probably done more than any other officer for the sport and physical training of the Service. Nor has his concern with athletics been purely administrative. He has held the sabre championship at the Royal Tournament and is a very keen fencer and boxer. He tells a story of his final appearance in the ring, when, at the age of thirty-two, he took a stone and a half and a grand hiding from the great Jim Driscoll in a three-round alleged exhibition contest.

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