Dear Sir: Herewith you receive a Commemorative Medal "The 60th Anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945". It comes to you as recognition of your contribution to our common fight against fascism.

¿ Embassy of the Russian Federation, London, July 2005

In July 2005, 60 years after the end of the "Great Patriotic War", or to non-Russians, the Second World War, Owen H. Darrell of Pembroke received a letter and commemorative medal from Russia for his service on the Murmansk Run, one of the most dangerous voyages of that conflict.

The Medal came with the admonishment that it was "a keepsake and cannot be worn", perhaps damping down the intent of the recognition. That acknowledgement is grounded in the fact that, according to a Canadian Veterans web site, "the strategic importance of these supply lines, fierce German resistance, and extreme weather conditions, the merchant mariners and Navy sailors that sailed their vessels on The Murmansk Run are considered some of the bravest veterans in history".

As far as is known, Owen Darrell was the only Bermudian to join other bulldogs, British and otherwise, on that momentous convoy run up to the North Cape and eastward to Murmansk, the only Russian harbour of consequence that does not freeze in winter.

In was through Murmansk that the Allies supplied Stalin with war material to continue the eastern war with Germany, a matter some, in the light of subsequent Communist aggression, came to regret. Another Bermudian, the late Francis (Goose) Gosling served in the Murmansk region, but as a flyer with the Royal Air Force.

Attending Oxford as Bermuda's Rhodes Scholar for 1940, Darrell was caught up in the war, as were other locals at school overseas, but first opted for the Royal Tank Regiment. Thinking upon his Bermuda roots, Owen thought it would be better to pursue a maritime commitment to the struggle and transferred to the Royal Navy.

Thus in January 1942, he found himself on the Clyde awaiting the refit of the appropriately named HMS Bulldog. In another dock, a new cruiser was being completed and that, even more appropriately was HMS Bermuda. Time changes language and the old metaphor of the British bulldog, exemplified in the war by Churchill through his tenacious character and perhaps otherwise, has given way to a new expression. However, it is unlikely that we shall ever see an HMS Pitbull.

HMS Bulldog had earlier made history by capturing an Enigma code machine from the German submarine U-110 on its second and final voyage on May 9, 1941. Unlike the U-505, which was kept secret but afloat, being brought into Bermuda after its capture in 1944, the U-110 was allowed to sink to disguise its interception.

This story also relates to Bermuda for on April 27, the U-110 torpedoed the French ship Henri Mory, out of Freetown, Sierra Leone, with iron ore for Britain, via Bermuda. It is now presumed that it was here that Bermudian Howard Sinclair Burgess joined the ill-fated vessel and he and 25 other crew were lost with the ship. It was sunk in the North Atlantic some 300 miles west of Blaskets Island, off the coast of Ireland, which for a period was the most westerly inhabited piece of Europe.

Another Bermuda connection with the U-110 was that the Enigma machine and code books went to the famous British intelligence centre at Bletchley Park, where worked Pamela, the bride to be of Owen. On August 5, 2008, they celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary, but it is not known if Owen presented Pam with a commemorative medallion on that memorable occasion, although a congratulatory card was received from Her Majesty.

On his 21st birthday, Darrell found himself with HMS Bulldog in Iceland, where at Reykjavik in 1944 Bermudian Pilot Office Harold Edwin Hutchings, RCAF, would be laid to rest, one of our 35 military losses during the war. The Murmansk convoys were assembled at Iceland and Convoy PQ14, with 25 ships and escorts, including Bulldog departed for the northern run on April 8, 1942.

While attempting a rendezvous with the cruiser HMS Edinburgh, the convoy ran into heavy ice and growlers, or small icebergs, and many of the ships had to return to Iceland.

Eight ships proceeded but from April 15 were under heavy attack from submarines and aircraft out of occupied Norway; the Empire Howard was lost with 45 men. A heavy fog set in and the convoy was able make Murmansk in relative safety.

Not as fortunate was Convoy PQ17 of July 1942, which lost 24 of its 35 ships in the heaviest losses of any convoy in the entire war, described by Churchill as "one of the most melancholy episodes in the whole of the war". As indicated in the graph, the North Atlantic, including the Barents Seas of the Murmansk Run, suffered almost three-quarters of all sinkings in all theatres of the conflict.

After the Murmansk run, Owen joined HMS Packice, not for other northern climes as the name might intimate, but for minesweeping operations in the Mediterranean. Like many vessels, the Packice had been pressed into war service from civilian operations, in this instance, the whaling industry. The ship originally was the Vestfold III, built in Norway, a whale catcher running under the Panamanian flag of the Vestfold Corporation of Johan Rasmussen & Co., of Sandefjord.

With minesweepers, BYMS 2033 and BYMS 2075, HMS Packice and Lieut. Darrell took part in the liberation of Greece in November 1944, finally returning home to Bermuda a few years later, latterly as a member of the "North Russia Club" of Murmansk veterans.

Owen Darrell, like so many with that name, is descended from a Norman from the village of Airel ¿ this Norman was d'Airel ¿ a useful patronymic for the Darells and Darrells of England, Bermuda and elsewhere. William d'Airel crossed the English Channel with William the Conqueror in 1066. Skipping several centuries to 1939-45, the Admiralty awarded Owen four service medals prior to the Russian Medal Recognition.

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Dr. Edward Harris, MBE, JP, FSA, Bermudian, is the Executive Director of the Bermuda Maritime Museum. This article represents his opinions and not necessarily those of persons associated with the Museum. Comments can be sent to drharrislogic.bm or by telephone to 332-5480.