Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A Second War destroyer commander’s D.S.O., D.S.C. group of seven attributed to Commander Mark Thornton, Royal Navy, whose exploits included the withdrawal of troops from Dunkirk and the sinking of the U-32 and the U-208 whilst in command of H.M.S. Harvester, and the destruction of two further U-boats whilst in command of H.M.S. Petard, including the highly important capture of a new four-wheel Enigma cypher machine and cypher books from U-559

Distinguished Service Order, G.VI.R., silver-gilt and enamel, reverse officially dated 1943, with integral top riband bar; Distinguished Service Cross, G.VI.R., reverse officially dated 1941, and hallmarked London 1941; 1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star, 1 clasp, France and Germany; Africa Star, 1 clasp, North Africa 1942-43; War Medal 1939-45, with M.I.D. oak leaf; Greece, War Cross 1940, mounted court style as worn, together with matching set of mounted miniature medals, ribbon bar, three spare oak leaf emblems with enclosure letter, and a Mediterranean Fleet Rifle Meeting, silver prize medal, hallmarked Birmingham 1934, top suspension bar dated ‘1934’ and ribbon bar inscribed ‘Rifle Title 1934’, very fine or better (15) £1,800-£2,200

D.S.O. London Gazette 12 January 1943: Sinking of the Italian submarine Uarsciek south of Malta on 15 December 1942 by the British destroyer Petard (Lieut.-Commander M. Thornton) and the Greek destroyer Vasilissa Olga.

Greek War Cross London Gazette 22 June 1943: for services as above.

D.S.C. London Gazette 31 January 1941: Sinking of the U-32 north-west of Ireland on 30 October 1940 by the destroyers Harvester (Lieut.-Commander M. Thornton) and Highlander (Commander W. A. Dallmeyer).

M.I.D. London Gazette 16 August 1940: Evacuation of troops from Dunkirk by H.M.S. Harvester (Lieut.-Commander M. Thornton).

M.I.D. London Gazette 14 September 1943: Sinking of the U-559 in the Mediterranean on 30 October 1942.

Mark Thornton was born on 14 September 1907, and joined the Royal Navy as Acting Sub-Lieutenant on 1 January 1928; Sub-Lieutenant, 16 September 1928; Lieutenant, 16 November 1930; Lieutenant-Commander, 16 November 1938; Commander 31 December 1945; retired 15 May 1956. Served in H.M.S. Scimitar, 7 June 1938 to 26 February 1940; in command of H.M.S. Harvester from 11 March 1940 to 15 March 1942; in command of H.M.S. Petard from 28 April 1942 to January 1943; in command of H.M.S. Verulam from 20 September to 8 December, 1944.

In Harvester, Lieutenant-Commander Thornton was also successful in the sinking of the U-208 in the North Atlantic west of Gibraltar on 7 December 1941, in company with Hesperus (Lieut.-Commander A. A. Tait). His part in the sinking of the U-559 when in command of Petard and the capture of her Enigma cypher code books proved to be of the greatest importance. The following extract is taken from The Real Enigma Heroes by Phil Shanahan:

‘On 30 October 1942, two Royal Navy men serving on HMS Petard drowned whilst capturing codebooks from a German U-boat. A teenager, who helped them, tragically died two years later.

Able Seaman Colin Grazier, from Tamworth in Staffordshire, was 22 and had been married for just two days before he set out to join the British destroyer. First Lieutenant Tony Fasson, from Jedburgh in Scotland, was 29. The Enigma material they seized from the U-559 enabled Alan Turing and his team of brilliant codebreakers at Bletchley Park to crack the German naval Enigma code and pave the way for peace.

According to shipmates, Fasson and Grazier stripped naked and swam out to the crippled U-559. In doing so, they headed for the very hell their enemy was fleeing. They boarded the submarine together and began to smash open cabinets with their guns. They passed the contents, including the codebooks, up to Brown who had joined a boarding party making its way to the vessel on a small boat. Both Fasson and Grazier went down with the U-boat when it took in a sudden rush of water. Their bodies were never recovered. Brown had managed to pass the books up to his colleagues. As the submarine sank he popped out of the conning tower like a cork and survived.

Soon the documents were in the hands of the codebreakers who could scarcely believe their luck. It gave them the clues to finally cracking the four-rotor Enigma code which had prevented them reading the scrambled U-boat messages for the previous 10 months. The codebooks seized from the U-boat included the Short Signal Book and the Short Weather Cipher, which proved to be priceless materials for the Allies. Thanks to the documents the men got from the U-559, the code (known as Shark) was solved at Bletchley Park on December 13, 1942. Retrieving the Enigma codebooks from U-559 meant the messages used by the German high command to communicate with their U-boat fleet out in the Atlantic could now be read. Intelligence gained from the deciphered communications was codenamed “Ultra” and revealed the positions of the submarines. As a result, convoys bringing essential supplies, including food, to Britain from America could be re-routed to avoid attack. The tables were turned as the hunters became the hunted. The U-boat wolf packs had been sinking Allied ships at double the rate they were being built, with a terrible loss of life. In contrast the number of U-boats was doubling as the Germans gained the upper hand in the war. Up to 800,000 tonnes of Allied shipping was being lost in the Atlantic on a monthly basis. It was unsustainable and Britain was getting ever closer to the ropes.

The need for secrecy condemned these men to anonymity. For decades after the war the Navy men’s heroism remained cloaked in secrecy for fear the Germans would find out their ‘unbreakable’ Enigma code had been compromised. Not even their own families could be told what they had achieved. But all that changed when Phil Shanahan took up their cause while working as deputy editor of the Tamworth Herald in 1998.

“It started off as a purely local story and campaign for Colin Grazier to raise money for some sort of memorial to him in Tamworth, but we soon saw it was much bigger than that and found ourselves carrying the torch for Fasson and Brown too,” he said.

The culmination of the campaign was the unveiling of the three-anchors monument in St Editha’s Square, Tamworth. The memorial was created by world-renowned sculptor Walenty Pytel, who produced the Queen’s Jubilee fountain sculpture at the Houses of Parliament. The Enigma heroes sculpture features a genuine ship’s anchor weighing more than two tonnes. Each anchor represents one of the men’s lives.

Many other tributes came about as a result of the campaign. In Tamworth there is now a Colin Grazier hotel and roads have been named after each of the men, Bletchley Park, HMS Petard and even the ship’s captain, Mark Thornton. Beers have also been named after the heroes and last year Shanahan helped to script a short film about the story at Bletchley Park.’

In autumn of 2017 Parliament officially recognised and commemorated these heroes in an Early Day Motion. Sir Winston Churchill’s grandson, Sir Nicholas Soames MP, was among the signatories. The motion states,

“That this House salutes the extraordinary courage of the three crew members of HMS Petard who, on 30 October 1942, boarded the sinking German submarine U-559 in circumstances of extreme peril; recognises that the Enigma material they retrieved proved vital in saving countless Allied ships and lives; deeply regrets that two of them were drowned when the submarine foundered and the third did not survive the war; and believes that the example and self-sacrifice of Lieutenant Anthony Fasson GC, Able Seaman Colin Grazier GC and Canteen Assistant Tommy Brown GM must never be forgotten.”

Sold with a copy of Hugh Sebag-Montefiore’s book ENIGMA The battle for the Code which contains a 7-page detailed account of the U-559 story.