CLAIM BY DESERTER

Greymouth Evening Star, 15 August 1942, Page 5

CLAIM BY DESERTER

FOURTH SURVIVOR FROM HOOD

LONDON, July 10

It was believed that there were only three survivors from the British battlecruiser Hood, but in a London police court a stoker, Jack Charles Reginald Silk, 23, who pleaded guilty to desertion and to having a false identity card, said he was the fourth survivor.

A policeman who questioned Silk in the street because he appeared to be of military age, and then arrested him, gave evidence that Silk told him be as aboard the Hood when she was blown up. He drifted on a raft for three days before he was picked up by a trawler. Silk landed at Liverpool, but did not report himself as a survivor.

Silk, from the dock, said he was officially still “missing, believed killed.” It has been established that Silk’s name appeared thus in the official casualty list. The policeman who gave evidence said he verified Silk as a member of the Hood’s complement,, but the Magistrate adjourned the case for a week, in which inauiries will be made as to whether Silk was a deserter before the Hood left her last port of call or whether, as he is now charged, he deserted “from the day the Hood sank.”