The boy who built a warship from orange boxes — and grew up to be a Navy hero
BRITAIN is full of unsung heroes and heroines who deserve recognition. Here, in our weekly obituary column, the moving and inspirational stories of ordinary people who have lived extraordinary lives, and who died recently, are told by their loved ones . .
MY FATHER JOHN ‘JACK’ BROOKS
One of my father’s most vivid childhood memories was of standing in front of the police station in Barrowford, Lancashire, and being transfixed by a poster in the window. It said ‘Join The navy See The World’.
He went home and built his own cruiser in the attic — from three orange boxes and an old gramophone motor. He wrote a poem: someday i’ll be a sailor/ And sail the spanish Main/ i’ll sail it like sir Walter did/ in sunshine and in rain.
Before he died, he documented his memories and I’m so glad we have them now. Dad did join the Royal navy, signing up in 1939 when he was 17 years old, to go to war, and he trained on HMS Raleigh. His first destroyer was HMS Tynedale, and he says she turned him from a boy into a man — although he passed out after having his first ‘grog’ (rum).
Dad fondly remembered all of his ships. Later in life, he made a model of his beloved HMS Zambesi. There was nothing my Dad, a Leading Seaman, could not make, or fix — picture frames, models, whatever.
He never talked much about the war, but his memoirs are vivid and make you shiver. He chased U-boats, lost shipmates — he once saw four or five lads swept over the side then back on board again — and faced 60ft waves, freezing temperatures and dive bombers. He remembered one of the escort vessels disappearing in a flash of flames.
He did see the world — Russia, Sierra Leone, newfoundland — and he saved lives. In March 1945, he and his shipmates evacuated the inhabitants of an island off norway called Soroy who were in danger from the nazis. They got them all out, hundreds of them — mothers, fathers carrying sick babies, sliding and tumbling down the hills to the waiting boats. Later the people of norway gave the crew the freedom of the city of Bergen. He was proud of that.
Just a couple of years ago, I went to London to receive another medal at the Russian embassy after they decided to finally recognise the efforts of my Dad and his mates. not that you’d have known any of this from talking to my Dad. He didn’t regard himself as a hero.
When he came home from the war, he got a job as a weaver with a textile firm in the town of nelson. Later, he had his own weaving loom in his garage.
My mum Betty was the love of his life. He idolised her and my brother David and I — and later his three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. He’d dress up, play games, and every family holiday involved the sea in some way. He was always full of fun.
When Mum died in 1995, he was lost and moved up to Durham to live with me.
It was hard to see him getting less mobile. He wouldn’t accept there were things he couldn’t do. He’d loved cars and he drove too fast and there were a few incidents. Then he had a mobility scooter, which he also drove too fast. He took the handbrake off going down a hill once and had to jump — well, fall — out.
When he went into hospital with an infection, we didn’t know he wouldn’t come out again. But the day before he died, he wanted a pint of bitter. I said he couldn’t have it, but my son-in-law went to the pub and came back with a pint glass and a bottle of John Smiths. So he had his final pint. If anyone deserved it, my Dad did.
John Brooks, born May 16, 1922, died July 15, 2017, aged 95.