HERO OF MALTA CONVOY

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 62, 10 September 1942, Page 5

HERO OF MALTA CONVOY

N.Z. CAPTAIN

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.) (Special Correspondent.) (Rec. 10 a.m.) LONDON, Sept. 9. Captain David Rattray Macfarlanc, 0.8.E., who is one of the first three men of the Merchant Navy to be awarded the D.5.0., is commended in the "Gazette" for "fortitude, seamanship, and endurance in taking a merchantman through to Malta in the face of relentless attacks by day and night from enemy submarines and surface forces." The three awards are described as the "first short list in recognition of those officers of the Merchant Navy whose services in this operation have been brought to notice as most outstanding." I Captain Macfarlane, who is 46, was about to take some belated leave when he heard that an important job was ahead. He guessed it might be a Malta

convoy, so he refused his leave, being determined to see his ship through. His only comment during the height of the enemy attack in the Mediterranean was: "We set out for Malta. We will go through to Malta." Mrs. Macfarlane, who is English, lives at Ilford. "SOMETHING STICKY." | She said: "I knew he was off for an important job, but did not know what it was. He merely said, 'Something sticky.' He sent a cable from Malta, saying he was well. I do not expect! to see him perhaps for months. He left New Zealand as a boy and returned as captain of his ship. He has been many times in New Zealand in the last eight years." Warm approval is expressed at the decision to confer these honours on men of the Merchant Navy. "The Times" says that the officers and men of the Merchant Navy, though still nominally civilians, today are in the forefront of the fighting.