Soviets honour Chch men

Press, 9 December 1988, Page 7

Soviets honour Chch men

By

DAVE WILSON

Forty-three years after World War 11, seven Christchurch men will be honoured by the Soviet Union this evening for their wartime work in convoys to Russia.

The seven will receive the Soviet Jubilee Medallion, struck in 1985 to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the end of World War 11.

The' medal specifically refers to The Great Patriotic War 1941-1945, which the war is known as in the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Ambassador,

Mr Yuri Sokolov, will make the presentations, at the Christchurch clubrooms of the Returned Services’ Association. Similar ceremonies have been held in Wellington and Auckland and another is planned for Timaru.

The wartime Arctic convoys produced some of the fiercest fighting in the war, as German submarine wolf packs and aircraft harried Allied merchant ships carrying food and vital war machinery to Russia. More than 90 merchantmen and 18 warships

were sunk in this theatre of the war.

Mr John Phillips, of Christchurch, manned a gun on a Royal Navy destroyer in one of the most famous actions of the Arctic convoy war.

Convoy PQ 17 sailed for Russia with 36 ships and yesterday he recalled the conditions were “hellish cold” with the sailors poorly clothed for the sub-zero temperatures. "We were fighting only a few hundred miles from the North Pole, with pack ice and icebergs all around us.”

Convoy PQ 17 was ordered to scatter when the Admiralty thought the German fleet was about to attack it. Stripped of its naval protection, it was decimated by U-boats and German dive bombers.

Only 11 of the original 36 ships got through to Russia.

Mr Phillips, who will be among the seven men to be honoured this evening, was also on the next convoy, PQ 18. Heavily armed and reinforced, this convoy beat off the German forces and signalled a turnaround in the Arctic war.