Past-President Alan Cook spoke of his family's wartime experiences

The Belfast War Memorial Musesum has for some time been collecting audio recordings of interviews with people who either themselves have memories of World War 2 or who had family members with relevant experiences that they could speak about. At a recent meeting of North Down Rotary Club, Rotarian Alan Cook played the recording of the interview concerning members of his family which he provided and also showed pictorial illustrations of the stories that he spoke about.

The outstanding feature of what he had to say was the sheer number of family members who enlisted during the war. Alan’s paternal family lived in England and the entire family, both men and women, except for his grandmother, were in the forces. His grandfather had served in the navy in World War 1. At the outbreak of World War 2 he was recalled and given command of a paddle steamer called the Medway Queen. The ship began work minesweeping in the Thames, but when the evacuation from Dunkirk began in 1940 it was called on with a number of other paddle steamers to help rescue soldiers from the beaches. The Medway Queen was one of the first to arrive, took off an initial batch of 700 soldiers and set off back for England. On the way they witnessed two other of the paddle steamers being sunk and rescued several hundred of those they had been carrying.

The original plan was that the ship would only make a single trip to Dunkirk but the need was so great that there were seven in all and the ship carried back to the UK a total of 7000 soldiers.. On the final trip, one of the last to leave Dunkirk, the ship carried 600 French soldiers.  Admiral Ramsey who was in charge of the evacuation signalled: “Well done Medway Queen, heroine of Dunkirk”. In recognition of his ship’s immense contribution to the evacuation and his own bravery in leading it, Captain Alfred Thomas Cook was awarded the DSC.

His son, Alan’s father, also went to sea, this time as a Merchant Navy Officer. He was serving on a merchant ship in a convoy returning from South America when it was diverted off its normal course into the Bay of Biscay. This was peculiar because it actually increased the risk of attack by U-Boats. It turned out that the reason was the convoy being used as a decoy to keep submarines away from a troop convoy on its way to North Africa. One of the troopships in that convoy was the Royal Ulsterman, now commanded by Captain Alfred Thomas Cook DSC. Unfortunately the decoy worked too well and Alan’s father’s ship was one of a number that were sunk. Only by a miracle was he saved when cotton bales coming out of the sinking ship brought him to the surface. He found a life raft with other survivors on it and took command of it, ensuring that the men stayed awake and did everything to help their survival for the twenty four hours until they were found. His bravery was recognised by the award of an MBE and the Merchant Navy’s highest wartime award for bravery, the Lloyd’s Medal.

Having decided he no longer wished to be on the receiving end of the Battle of the Atlantic he volunteered for the Royal Navy and was posted as Navigating Officer to a frigate stationed in Belfast which acted as a convoy escort, hunting U-Boats in the North Atlantic. While there he met Alan’s mother who came from Belfast and they married after the war and settled here. By coincidence his maternal grandfather, a Scottish soldier, met his grandmother in England, although she too was from Northern Ireland and they settled in Belfast. They were fortunate to survive a near miss on their butcher’s shop by a bomb during the Belfast Blitz.

Alan pointed out that one of the real heroes of his family’s story was his paternal grandmother, Captain Cook’s wife, living alone in London with the entire family away at the war. She deserves recognition for holding the family together through all the trauma. One of her sons, also called Alan, served as a Flight Sergeant in the RAF but was shot down over Germany. Although posted missing he surfaced as a PoW in a camp in Poland and she received a letter from him telling her about his experiences. Unfortunately that was the last that was heard from him as he was shot dead trying to escape from the prison camp. Alan, who was named in memory of his uncle, was able to locate the grave through the War Graves Commission and has visited it in Krakow.