Letter: Lew Lind

Author

Letter Writer

Subjects

Biographies and personal histories, Letter to the Editor

Tags

Crete, Lew Lind

RAN Ships

None noted.

Publication

December 2021 edition of the Naval Historical Review (all rights reserved)

Dear Walter,

Re LEW LIND

Thank you for your reply, 15 September 2021, I would be honoured if you used my letter as a Letter to the Editor in your magazine.

My family has no direct connection with wartime Crete, although both my father and his twin brother were professional soldiers. My father Hugh Edward Fernyhough was a Gunner and spent about nine months in New Zealand (1942-1943) at the Staff College at Palmerston North. He was soon back in England, appointed Commander 53rd Medium Regiment RA so landed in Normandy on D Day and then onward through northwest Europe. While travelling back from NZ to UK, his ship got stuck in the Panama Canal…he was not impressed!

His brother, Alan Fernyhough, while serving in India, picked up a particularly virulent bug, which gave him a ‘stiff leg’. (The cause of this ‘stiff leg’ was actually a permanently damaged hip, which he endured for the next 47 years without ever complaining). But the disability did lead to a change of regiment – to the Royal Army Ordnance Corps. His ‘stiff leg’ did not prevent him from organising ammunition supply on the beach-head at Dunkirk in 1940. A Military Cross was his reward.

Then he was sent to Cairo, to the Central Ordnance Provision Office. I have never been clear as to the timing of his arrival in Cairo, but my guess is that it was probably close to the time of the Battle of Crete. He was certainly in Cairo during the island’s resistance years that followed. Sadly, he died before I became interested in Crete, but I have a rather fanciful hope that he played some small role in organising supplies to the SOE Operatives, who had a constant presence on the island until liberation. This certainly included one or two Australians and New Zealanders.

This is my tenuous link with the island, and, as you can see, there is no naval connection, but I still thought it might be of interest.

With best wishes to you and the Naval Historical Society of Australia.

Yours,

Hugh