Orders, Decorations and Medals

The Second World War Mediterranean and Far East operations D.S.O., D.S.C. and Bar group of nine awarded to Lieutenant-Commander A. C. G. Mars, Royal Navy, the celebrated submariner ace who commanded Unbroken and Thule with great distinction, survived 30 war patrols in 1000 days at sea - and 15 depth-charge attacks of the hair-raising kind: court-martialled admidst much publicity in 1952, he embarked on a second career as an author, his subsequent work selling nearly a million copies worldwide

Distinguished Service Order, G.VI.R., 1st issue, silver-gilt and enamels, the reverse of the suspension bar officially dated ‘1942’; Distinguished Service Cross, G.VI.R., with Second Award Bar, the reverse of the Cross officially dated ‘1943’ and privately engraved, ‘Lieut.A. C. G. Mars, R.N.’, and the reverse of the Bar officially dated ‘1945’; 1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star; Africa Star, clasp, North Africa 1942-43; Burma Star, (copy) clasp, Pacific; Italy Star; Defence and War Medals, these last seven privately engraved “Boots-style” ‘Lieut. Cmdr. A. C. G. Mars, D.S.O., D.S.C., R.N.’, mounted as worn, generally good very fine (9) £8000-10000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Ron Penhall Collection.

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D.S.O. London Gazette 22 December 1942:

‘For gallant and distinguished services in successful patrols.’

D.S.C. London Gazette 27 July 1943. The original recommendation states:

‘Since previously recommended for a decoration on 31 August 1942, Lieutenant Mars has carried out ten war patrols in H.M. Submarine Unbroken. He has consistently shown great determination in his attacks on the enemy and has sunk one 6,000 ton merchant vessel, probably sunk two merchant ships totalling 9,400 tons and damaged one 10,000 ton tanker, all by torpedo attack. On one of these occasions a very heavy counter-attack was experienced. In addition he has carried out two landing operations with fine skill and judgment. He is strongly recommended for the award of a decoration.’

Bar to D.S.C. London Gazette 6 November 1945. The original recommendation states:

‘For outstanding skill and determination during six war patrols in the Eastern Theatre between November 1944 and August 1945 during which H.M.S. Thule, under the command of Lieutenant-Commander Mars, sank or destroyed 29 coasting craft, laid a minefield and carried out three very special operations, two of them 100% successful. A measure of the importance of these particular operations and the skill with which they were carried out by H.M.S. Thule was a signal from the C. in C.E.I. (130911Z, July) requesting the C. in C.B.P.F. to transfer Thule back to him to carry out another of the series. Accordingly Thule was recalled from offensive patrol under American control to comply. Had it not been for Thule being kept off offensive patrol for these operations it is certain that the dash and determination of Lieutenant-Commander Mars would have achieved a notable record of sinkings, and it is considered that his service had been outstanding.’

Alastair Campbell Gillespie Mars was born in Canada and was appointed a Midshipman in the Royal Navy in January 1933. Transferring to submarines prior to the outbreak of hostilities, he served briefly as First Lieutenant of the Perseus in the Mediterranean in the summer of 1940, prior to taking command of a submarine training ship. But in November 1941, much to his delight, he gained his first command, as C.O. of the P. 42 (a.k.a. Unbroken), fitting out at Barrow - ‘I was 26 years old and bubbling with enthusiasm’. Ordered to Malta to join the famous “Fighting Tenth” Flotilla after Unbroken’s completion in July 1942, Mars very quickly established himself as a submariner of repute - in fact, on one of his very first war patrols, in support of the famous Malta convoy “Operation Pedestal” in August 1942, one of his torpedo attacks so severely damaged two Italian cruisers that they never returned to an operational footing. Mars described the resultant Italian counter-attack in his Unbroken - The Story of a Submarine:

‘There were at least three destroyers after us, sweeping in to drop depth charges at a rate of one a minute. The patterns were closer than anything we had experienced before, their nearness judged by two sounds apart from the violence of the vibrations ... In the next 45 minutes each of our tormentors performed eight or nine culminating patterns of five or seven charges. Many were close enough to bring down the insulating cork from the hull, but I soon came to the conclusion that the enemy had no idea of our depth. The firing was accurate, but the charges were set to explode shallow, and we were out of real danger so long as we kept at 120 feet.

By nine o’clock, after 105 depth charges had been dropped, it appeared the enemy had either lost us or had gone off for further supplies of depth charges. Had we possessed any more torpedoes it would have been our duty - and pleasure! - to return to the scene of the attack and finish off a lame duck or kipper one of the destroyers. But with one 3-inch gun we would have had as much chance against an 8-inch cruiser as a puppy with a pea-shooter against a rogue elephant.

We had no means of knowing whether the enemy had left a destroyer behind to track us at dead-slow speed while the others returned for more depth charges, and after our experience off Cape Milazzo we did not under-estimate the Italian’s ability to stick to us once we he’d truly found us. Therefore, although all was quiet above us, and no more ashcans came our way, we kept to silent routine until dusk, grabbing a snack meal of cold meat and tea toward noon.

In a way, the thought of a depth charge attack is worse than the attack itself. Once an attack has started there is little to do but wait, sweat and pray, a process less of a strain on the nerves than the fear there might be a ship stalking you, there might be an aircraft circling overhead, there might be a sudden fury of explosives about your ears. So it was, from nine in the morning until seven at night, we endured ten unbroken hours of silent misery, hardly daring to breathe, talk, or move our cramped limbs.

At seven o’clock we planed to periscope depth. Nothing in sight. Two hours later we surfaced and sent a report to Malta of the morning’s encounter ... ’

It was later established that Unbroken’s attack had severely damaged the 8-inch Italian cruiser Bolzano and the 6-inch cruiser Muzio Attendolo - the former was hit in a fuel tank and fire gutted the ship before she was beached, and the latter lost 60 feet of her bows. Neither of them saw further action. The incident off Cape Milazzo to which Mars refers occurred just two days earlier, when he and his crew endured two further depth-charge attacks. In this same patrol, too, he got Unbroken’s 3-inch gun into action against a coastal railway line, cutting a train in half with the very first round. He was awarded the D.S.O.:

‘I know it is considered bad taste to refer to medals in any terms save those of self-depreciation - “Frankly, old boy, I don’t know why they gave it to me” - but the honest fact remains that once a chap knows he’s due for a “gong” he’s impatient to get it. He wants to pin it up before he bites the dust. Vanity? Arrogance? Conceit? Perhaps. But no worse than the mock modesty and hypocritical humility. I remember discussing this with Lynch Maydon, skipper of the Umbra, on our return to Malta, and we consoled ourselves with the thought that the Powers that Be had more important matters to occupy their minds. After leaving Lynch, I sipped a gin in the Lazaretto ward-room and ran through the “U” class captains between his boat and mine - P. 35 and P. 42. Seven boats had slid from the Vickers launching stage - there being no P. 40 - and Lynch and myself were the only two left. Of the others, four had been killed and one relieved. God had been good to me, and that, I reflected, was more than compensation for the late arrival of a couple of ounces of ribboned enamel’ (Unbroken - The Story of a Submarine refers).

Mars went on to complete nearly a full year of operations in Unbroken, a period that witnessed him sinking over 30,000 tons of enemy shipping, participating in four clandestine missions and three successful gun actions, and surviving a total of some 400 depth charges - in addition to innumerable air and surface attacks. Of these subsequent depth-charge attacks, one of the most serious took place in October 1942, after Mars had torpedoed a tanker - his last view through his periscope as he dived was of an enemy ‘seaplane in a steep bank with a full view of the pilot in his cockpit, and a dropping marker flare’. In the ensuing depth-charge attack several near misses damaged the batteries and the resultant fumes (chlorine gas) were so bad that most of the crew entered port seated on the submarine’s casing, while those compelled to remain below wore D.S.E.A. sets. And of his clandestine operations - one of which inevitably included the embarkation of that celebrated raider Captain R. “Tug” Wilson, D.S.O. - probably the most notable was his delivery of ‘a cosmopolitan collection of thugs’ to a point just outside Hammamet on the Tunisian coast in January 1943, where said thugs (actually Free French Commandos under the command of Captain J. Eyre, R.E.) blew up the nearby railway bridge. Mars was awarded the D.S.C. on completion of his tenth war patrol and “rested” in the early summer of 1943 - and received his decorations at Buckingham Palace investitures held in July and November of the same year.

Later in the same year, he was appointed Assistant Staff Officer (Operations) to the Flag Officer Commanding Submarines, in London, and helped to plan the midget submarine attack on the Tirpitz. The following year he returned to active service in command of the submarine Thule out in the Far East, a period of command that lasted from November 1944 to August 1945 and resulted in the award of a Bar to his D.S.C. These latter operations involved numerous gun actions against enemy coasters and small craft, so much so that Thule’s bridge positively bristled with machine-guns, grenades and other arms, the whole purloined by Mars from any number of sources in port. So, too, clandestine operations to deliver and pick-up assorted personnel, among the latter being Signalman “Waggy” Wagstaff, M.M., who had spent three years behind enemy lines in the Malayan jungle - see Lot 75.

After the War Mars held several appointments overseas, including an unfortunate commission that encompassed the ‘Mutiny of the New Zealand Navy’. Indeed a rapid succession of postings led to him, his wife and children moving home on no less than16 occasions in a six year period, and to serious debt as a result of so many relocation expenses - quite a few of them never repaid by the authorities. And it was just such issues that led to him clashing with the Admiralty on his return to England, where he was put in command of an Escort Maintenance Vessel and nine Fleet Minesweepers in the Operational Reserve. Indeed he refused to take up his next appointment at Portsmouth in 1952, stating that he had to remain at home to nurse his wife who had suffered a nervous breakdown, and that he wished to be placed on the Retired List. While Their Lordships said that they would consider his retirement proposal, they still insisted he report to his new post at Portsmouth, but Mars refused and, amidst a blaze of publicity, was arrested at his London home. A sensational Court-Martial ensued and he was dismissed the Service, but he retaliated in civil law and forced the Admiralty to settle an action for assault, improper arrest and false imprisonment. Sadly, however, that settlement was insufficient to meet his mounting debts, and he was quickly back in the newspapers for having sold ‘his sword, uniform and radio set’ and for having ‘pawned his medals’. In the event, he was able to get his medals back, but by 1965, after a string of temporary jobs, among them ‘driving cars and a furniture van’, he was on the dole - that August it was revealed by the Daily Mirror that he had ‘to sell his medals for 105 guineas to keep going’.

These unhappy tidings were to some extent countered by his subsequent career as an author, and he had over 10 books published - which sold nearly a million copies - prior to his death in March 1985. So, too, albeit posthumously, by the Navy granting permission for his ashes to be scattered from the deck of H.M.S. Valiant, a nuclear powered hunter-killer submarine, some 33 years after his very public dismissal.

Sold with two cassette recordings of a speech made by Mars to graduates of the Royal Roads Military College in British Columbia, Canada in March 1980, when he was a guest of Ron Penhall, together with an annotated, signed photocopy of his official war patrol report of 28 August 1942 and four signed portrait or crew images, these all inscribed during his stay with Mr. Penhall; a copy of the Spink & Son Ltd. invoice detailing the sale of Mars’ awards to him on 13 December 1979; a modern portrait of Mars in oils; and copies of his classic 1939-45 War titles, Unbroken - The Story of a Submarine and H.M.S. Thule Intercepts, together with his later Court Martial, all of these with inscriptions to Ron Penhall from Alastair Mars, dated 24 March 1980.