Exceptional Naval and Polar Awards from the Collection of RC Witte

A fine Second World War anti-U-boat operations D.S.C. group of seven awarded to Commander A. H. L. Harvey, Royal Navy, a long-served destroyer officer who first went into action in H.M.S. Punjabi at Narvik in 1940, but who was decorated and twice mentioned in despatches for his subsequent services in the Croome 1941-44 - in which period she rammed and sunk an Italian submarine and shared in the destruction of two U-boats: post-war he added a third “mention” to his accolades for his command of a Landing Craft (Tank) in the Suez crisis - and wrote a hitherto unpublished account of his 1939-45 War experiences

Distinguished Service Cross, G.VI.R., hallmarks for London 1941, the reverse officially dated ‘1941’; 1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star; Africa Star, clasp, North Africa 1942-43; Italy Star; War Medal 1939-45, M.I.D. oak leaf; Naval General Service 1915-62, 2 clasps, Palestine 1945-48, Malaya (Lieut. A. H. L. Harvey, D.S.C., R.N.), mounted as worn, good very fine (7)
£2500-3000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Exceptional Naval and Polar Awards from the Collection of RC Witte.

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D.S.C. London Gazette 28 October 1941. The original recommendation states:

‘For skill and alertness as A./S. control officer resulting in the destruction of an enemy submarine.’

Arthur Herbert Lane Harvey was born in Totnes, Devon, in May 1921, the son of Engineer Commander Harold Harvey, afterwards a Rear-Admiral and C.B.

Entering the Royal Navy as a Cadet at the R.N.C. Dartmouth in September 1938, young Arthur was appointed a Midshipman in May 1939 and was serving aboard the battleship H.M.S. Rodney on the outbreak of hostilities. Removing to the patrol escort Lunar Bow that November, he remained similarly employed until joining the destroyer Punjabi in February 1940, and it was in this latter capacity that he first went into action.

Baptism of Fire - Narvik 1940

And a hot action it was - namely the second battle of Narvik on 13 April 1940 - when the Germans lost eight destroyers, but not without cost to our own forces, as illustrated by the following account of damage sustained by the Punjabi, taken from Captain Donal MacIntyre’s Narvik:

‘The British destroyers had not escaped unscathed. On the Punjabi had fallen a fierce and accurate rain of 5-inch shells. The first, plunging into her hull below the bridge, had burst between decks, splinters killing one man and wounding three others in the Transmitting Station whence the guns were controlled. While two of these were having their wounds dressed on the mess deck nearby they were more seriously injured by a second shell which had burst on the upper deck at the foot of a steel locker containing ready-use cordite charges for the guns. Tearing a hole in the deck, it had showered splinters between the decks killing two of the ammunition supply party and wounding others. Cordite charges from the locker blazed up, starting a fierce fire.


Almost simultaneously, the ship shook to another hit right forward which shattered a watertight bulkhead and caused flooding. A fire then broke out between the funnels from a bursting shell. Right aft another shell had plunged into a storeroom starting a blaze which threatened a magazine which had to be flooded. Fire and repair parties were thus all fully occupied when a fifth hit, bursting on the starboard motorboat and setting it alight, sent a jagged fragment through the upper deck, smashing a steam pipe and engulfing the engine room in a roaring cloud of steam. Other splinters had swept across the decks, killing two of the pom-pom crew and wounding two others as well as three of the torpedo-tubes’ crew.

A message from the engine room had just reached Commander H. T. Lean, Punjabi’s captain, that the engines would shortly have to be stopped owing to the burst pipe, when torpedoes were seen approaching, running to the surface. With imperturbable skill, Lean swerved his ship out of their path, but the time had come to consider what best to do for his ship in its precarious situation. The engineer had been sent for to report on the situation below. With fires blazing forward, amidships and aft, all fire hoses slashed and useless, extinguishers exhausted, the guns’ crews were urgently needed to help the parties fighting the flames by means of buckets of water. The guns were, in any case, in local control and largely ineffective owing to the damage to the Transmitting Station.

As the engineer officer arrived, oil-streaked, grimy and wild-eyed, a sixth shell burst on the upper deck below, savagely wounding him in the back and arms. He was just able to confirm his diagnosis of the damage to the steam system before collapsing. The chief stoker in charge of the party fighting the fire amidships was instantly killed and several more men wounded.



There was an urgent need for a respite in which to get the situation under control. Lean put his wheel over and retired, signalling his predicament to the Admiral. Heroic efforts were then made to master the fires. The steam system was repaired and the magazine pumped out. Within an hour Punjabi was steaming into action again, though her speed was restricted to 15 knots by the jagged hole in her bows ... ’

As Harvey concluded in his Midshipman’s Journal, had the enemy employed H.E. rather than S.P.D. shells, Punjabi would have surely been sunk. Lean was awarded the D.S.O., while fellow officers and ratings received a brace of D.S.Cs, six D.S.Ms and eight “mentions”, four of the latter posthumously. Harvey, too, would shortly find his name appear in the London Gazette, though for services aboard the destroyer Croome, which ship he joined as an Acting Sub. Lieutenant in the summer of 1941, after further seagoing appointments in the cruisers Berwick and Norfolk.

D.S.C. and a brace of “mentions” - Mediterranean 1941-44

Following a period of working-up at Scapa, Croome joined the Sixth Escort Group on the Atlantic run but, before long, found herself operating out of Gibraltar and Alexandria. Nor was it to be long before she gained her first confirmed U-boat-kill, namely the Italian Submarine Maggiore Francesco Baracca, 270 miles S.E. of the Azores on 8 September 1941. Harvey takes up the story, moments after he had masterminded two accurate depth-charge attacks:

‘Now the target was fully visible on the surface, right ahead and broadside on. The order was “Stand by to ram!” With the dome housed, the A./S. team now had nothing more to do, so I sent my yeoman, who had come up on the bridge, to fetch my cine camera, and filmed the ensuing action.

The range closed rapidly but we had to take off some speed before ramming to reduce the damage to ourselves to a minimum. The U-boat’s crew were tumbling out of the conning tower hatch and whilst some leaped overboard, others under the orders of an officer trained their gun on us and opened fire.

‘A’ gun could no longer depress sufficiently to bear on the target but the port Oerlikon was scoring hits on the conning tower and along the casement. At this stage, to prevent unnecessary bloodshed, the Captain ordered the Oerlikon gunner to fire only between the conning tower and the U-boat’s gun mounting to prevent them from supplying ammunition. Abaft the conning tower a man lay on the casing with blood pouring from a groin wound, reddening the sea which continually washed over him as the U-boat wallowed in the swell. Then we struck her just forward of the conning tower.

The impact threw all the U-boat’s crew on deck into the sea and they began swimming towards the nets lowered over our port side where the First Lieutenant, armed with a pistol, was preparing to rescue survivors and take prisoners.

The captain sent me to the iron deck to assist, but the First Lieutenant and Gunner’s Mate were calmly subduing the Italians with drawn pistols, separating the wounded from the others and directing them either to the Sick Bay or forward mess deck.

Two men, clinging to a piece of wreckage that was barely supporting them in the water, beat off a third who was wounded and desperately trying to gain a hold for support. He soon gave up and sank, exhausted.

The ship by now was drawn clear by going astern, and two survivors, breaking free from the small guard on the iron deck, ran up the break ladder to the forecastle shouting with anguish as the U-boat lifted her stern and slid under, carrying with her the less fortunate of their shipmates.

I returned to the bridge where everyone was keeping a shocked silence ... The Captain acknowledged my report of the last survivor and said he would pick him up when we were able to go ahead, so I kept my binoculars trained on him as he was difficult to spot. The chief made his report on the damage and repairs and the Captain manoeuvred the ship ahead in accordance with reports from the paint shop on the stress on the foremost watertight bulkhead.

Only 30 yards from the ship the last survivor became exhausted and sank. I reported this to the Captain who looked at me with concern, I think, for my emotional state, but I was more hardened to war than he realised.’

Lieutenant-Commander J. D. Hayes, R.N., the captain, was awarded the D.S.O., while Harvey received the D.S.C.

Croome was next busily engaged on the Malta run, where Harvey noted the ‘Union Club threw its doors open to all officers but the ‘gin’ was only fit for use as lighter fuel’; meanwhile, he had celebrated his 21st birthday:

‘My 21st birthday was celebrated ashore with Mac and the Doc, but there was not much to do until we discovered the local dance hall. There was the usual shortage of women, but one Adeni Indian girl, who was there with her two brothers, was coping well with a stream of would-be-partners, with great charm and poise. I launched a cutting-out expedition and she told me it was her 18th birthday. Only because it was my 21st birthday did she, with a slight reproof, give me a second dance, and then we returned onboard. It had made my day.’

Such diversions were welcome, for by now Harvey was feeling the strain caused by months of active service, particularly following a period of operations in the Dodecanese, where enemy aircraft were ever present:

‘One Stuka, selecting us as a target, began to dive and all of us on the bridge instinctively crouched beneath the parapet for the illusionary protection it gave. I could only get my head and shoulders under and, feeling like an ostrich, decided to stand up and watch, and die, if I must, in the open. Looking up I could see the pilot’s visored face and blue eyes as he roared down towards us pulling up above our heads and leaving the bomb to travel on. It seemed to be coming straight for me, growing larger by the second, and I prayed for a quick death; then it passed out of my line of vision and I waited for the explosion and the inevitable hot splinters in my back. It fell on the sea, a few feet from the ship’s side, and split an oil fuel tank.’

Notwithstanding such dangers, Croome notched up further successes on the anti-U-boat front, sharing in the destruction of the U-581 with the Westcott on 2 February 1942, south-west of the Azores - she picked up some of the 41 survivors, among them Kapitain-Leutnant Werner Pfeifer, who was in a rage, claiming to have been attacked in neutral waters, but Croome’s crew were having none of it and locked him in the Captain’s sea cabin with paper, pen and ink.

Then on 4 August 1942, in company with Sikh, Zulu and Tetcott, the Croome shared in the destruction of the U-372, herself delivering an accurate ten-pattern depth-charge attack and picking up 23 of the 48 survivors. Harvey was mentioned in despatches (London Gazette 20 October 1942 refers), the recommendation again citing his efficiency as the A./S. control officer.

In mid-September 1942, the Croome was ordered to lend support to “Operation Agreement”, the ill-fated attack on Tobruk. Stukas were everywhere, sinking her consorts Sikh and Zulu, in addition to the cruiser Coventry, some of whose survivors were recovered by Croome. The flotilla’s officers and men were furious:

‘That the enemy had obviously had foreknowledge of the attack led to some ugly rumours spreading concerning the lax security of the shore staff, who were by no means held in high regard after their precipitant retreat from Alexandria some weeks earlier. There was also ill-feeling between the R.A.F. and the Navy who considered they were not getting adequate fighter protection at sea. In fact it became necessary for a station memorandum to be issued forbidding Naval personnel from making derogatory remarks when they met R.A.F. personnel ashore. But the fighter protection of units at sea did improve and escorts were fitted with V.H.F. radio to enable them to communicate with, and direct fighters when available.’


Command of the Croome having devolved to Lieutenant H. D. M. Salter, R.N., in January 1943, Harvey was advanced to Lieutenant in the same month, and he went on to participate in the Sicily and Italy landings, in addition to further operations in the Aegean in the period September-November 1943, which latter activity resulted in the award of his second “mention” (London Gazette 4 April 1944 refers).

Harvey finally left the Croome in June 1944 when, much to his disappointment, he was ordered home to take up an appointment at the training establishment St. George, at Douglas on the Isle of Man.

Post-war - Palestine, Malaya and Suez

Harvey gained his first command, the destroyer Charity, in 1947, and witnessed active service off Palestine in the same year, his ship being present at the interception of illegal refugee ships on several occasions. And by far the most controversial of these incidents was the seizure of S.S. Exodus in July 1947, a vessel carrying some 4500 passengers, including 1300 women and 1700 children and teenagers, many of them ex-Holocaust refugees.

Commanded by a Haganah military wing skipper, the Exodus departed Marseilles on 11 July, the Royal Navy shadowing her throughout her subsequent voyage. Finally, on 18 July, when the Exodus was approximately 20 miles off the Palestinian coast, Charity and other destroyers moved in with boarding parties, Harvey managing to get Lieutenant G. Pearse and a few of his ratings aboard before his ship was damaged. What followed quickly seized the headlines, namely strong resistance from the refugees which resulted in three of the British boarders being wounded - more controversially, however, one crew member of the Exodus and two of her passengers were shot dead.

Having then been advanced to Lieutenant-Commander in January 1951, and given command of the Algerine-class minesweeper Jaseur, Harvey witnessed further active service off Malaya, prior to returning to a shore appointment in the U.K. in early 1953.

In April 1955, he was given command of the Landing Craft, Tank (L.C.T.) Bastion, and it was in this latter capacity that he added a third “mention” to his accolades for the Suez crisis (London Gazette 13 June 1957 refers).

Harvey was finally placed on the Retired List as a Commander in July 1961 and died in Chelsea, London in June 1985.

Sold with the recipient’s original Midshipman’s Log, covering the period April 1939 to November 1940, with usual charts, maps and other illustration, together with inserted commission warrant for Sub. Lieutenant and his three M.I.D. certificates, a fascinating record of wartime service, including the 2nd Battle of Narvik in Punjabi and beyond, owing to the later addition of his account of his wartime career in H.M.S. Croome, an important ship’s record accompanied by many wartime and post-war photographs.