Rare breed with nerves of steel to clear mines
RAY Maries was a born fighter. He was eager for action as soon as the storm clouds of war gathered. In 1939, he attempted to join the Royal Warwickshire Regiment at a Gosport Army Recruitment Office. He was only 14, but claimed to be two years older. The colonel took one look at the boy and immediately sent him home. Undeterred, Ray walked straight into a Royal Naval Recruitment Office, again in Gosport – and this time hit the jackpot. The Navy accepted him. Serving on HMS Menastheus as a mine clearance diver with Naval Party 1573, Ray disarmed UXBs in near-zero visibility. Because of a critical shortage of divers in the US Navy, Ray was “transferred” for a short period of time to the Americans. “This made him very popular,” says son-in-law Michael. “He had access to goods such as chocolate and nylons, which were unavailable in Britain at the time.” Ray’s bravery earned him a mention in dispatches and he was recently made a life member of the Association of First Class Naval Divers, based at the Royal Naval Dockyard, Portsmouth. He was also awarded the Arctic Medal. His exploits made it into a book about the P Parties’ operations, Open The Ports by J Grosvenor and Lt Cmd L.M Bates. Members of the P Parties were among the most decorated of the war, only rivalled by the Bomb Disposal Units. Yet unlike the BDU, P Parties suffered only one fatality – and that wasn’t during action. William Brunskill was fatally injured by a V2 rocket on December 16, 1944, while watching a film at Cinema Rex, in Antwerp.
Thanks to the P Parties, key ports purged of mines included Cherbourg, Caen, Dieppe, Le Havre, Boulogne, Rouen, Calais, Antwerp, Ostend, Terneuzen, Zeebrugge, Flushing, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Hamburg, and Bremen. Sixty mines were cleared from Bremen alone.
Today, only one P Parties diver remains – John Payne from Sussex. He served with Ray and the pair staged an emotional reunion to mark both of them reaching 60 years old.
Lady Luck smiled on Ray during the war years. He was a remarkable man who faced death on a daily basis – and later laughed about it.
Such were his heroics that even Ray’s family dismissed some of his tales as far-fetched. Now, they realise the gripping war stories were fact, not fiction.
Funeral arrangements have yet to be finalised, but a naval presence is expected.