Memory Corners: Things Sailors Leave

Northern Advocate, 3 January 1941, Page 8

Memory Corners: Things Sailors Leave

You might call them the Royal Navy’s Memory Corners. The Navy itself is not so sentimental. It calls them Reserved Effects Stores—just departments at Fleet depots. But in these stores are gathered the treasured possessions of officers and men who have died in the war—little trinkets, photographs, letters, cap ribbons, silk handkerchiefs. . . .

In tiny packages which are worth just nothing at all by the standards of the mattei'-of-fact world, the trinkets and letters and ribbons and photographs are sent to wives, mothers, sweethearts—who find them priceless. They are packages of memories to these women, memories with a touch of heartbreak. Reminders of happiness which has gone, but which somehow still proudly lives on. There are secrets.

But the Navy’s Memory Corners reveal some stories which can be told. A widow living in the north of England treasures the photographs and odd trinkets left by her son. She knows he died in action. But she does not know that her boy gave his life so that his pals, escaping from a sinking ship, might get their pay.

Died—For Their Pay,

A cheque which found its way into the Reserved Effects store told the story.

Once a pay cheque is despatched, technically a crew is paid. This rating knew this. He dashed back to get the cheque so that his shipmates would be saved the bother of special pay claims. The cheque was found in his belt as he lay mortally wounded.

A young widow has a compact filled with the most expensive beauty aids and gadgets. Now she will never use them. Her husband was bringing it home to her when he died in action. The gift he sought out to give her a surprise now means memories to the girl he loved. And seamen are so sentimental. In practically every ditty box there are silk handkerchiefs, all deeply perfumed, bought as souvenirs thousands of miles from home. And there are bundles of family snaps.

The picture of an Iceland beauty adorned the inside of one ditty box; alongside, looking much nicer and more homely, was the snap of a girl —maybe the girl he had married or planned to make his bride.

Saved Her Ideal

And there are finds which, even among tragedy and heartbreak, bring a smile.

Such as the diary of the young sailor with the proverbial girl in every port—a careful list of his conquests all over the world.. There were, for instance, Olga in Sydney, Nancy in Colombo, Pearl in Shanghai. ... Other diaries, lacking in that kind of romance, tell of hard fighting, with heroism between the lines of stories written down with almost schoolboy precision. Sometimes the men who run these Memory Corners have saved wives and sweethearts from memories which would be bitter. . >

A kindly captain made sure that a newly-married girl did not learn from a batch of letters kept by her sailor husband that he had broken her trust, and the trust of another innocent girl, too.