Medal at last for Shrewsbury hero of the Arctic convoys

Len Davies, of Shrewsbury, took part in the D-Day landings on the HMS Honeysuckle and five convoys to Russia, where he was involved in the dangerous task of getting food and ammunition to Britain's Allies in Murmansk while dodging German U-Boats.

Mr Davies died in 2001 at the age of 76.

But his son Mark Davies and brother Bob Davies received the Arctic Star medal in his honour at a special ceremony in Shrewsbury yesterday afternoon.

Members of the Royal Naval Association's Shrewsbury branch met at the Beaconsfield Club in Meadow Place to witness the medal being passed to his family.

Terry Weston, welfare officer of the branch, presented the medal to Mr Davies' family members.

In 2012, Prime Minister David Cameron announced that Arctic Stars would be presented to surviving veterans and the families of late military personnel who were involved in the dangerous missions.

More than 3,000 Royal Navy and merchant seamen died between 1941 and 1945 on the convoys. Only about 200 veterans are still alive.

Medals were presented earlier this year to surviving veterans, with the process of providing family members of military personnel who have now died with the medals now under way.

Mark Davies, who has made a scale model of HMS Honeysuckle that is now in Oswestry Museum, said it was a proud moment to receive the medal after the family waited seven decades for recognition of their father's war time exploits.

"We have had to wait for it for 70 years," he said.

His father was a toolmaker at The Sentinel Works in Harlescott and joined the Navy at 18, joining HMS Honeysuckle in 1943.

Mark said his father had not talked much about his time in the war, but he has managed to piece together information while researching the family's history.

"His ship took part in the D-Day landings, but I have no doubt that the Russian convoys were the hardest trips the men who took part had to endure," he said.

"Between December 1943 and May 8 1945, the Honeysuckle took part in five convoys from the UK to Murmansk and back to the UK again."

He said before the final convoy home on April 29, 1945, the convoy was informed there were at least 10 U-Boats waiting for them.

The Honeysuckle was sent out with other boats to depth-charge the area and keep the U-Boats below the surface.

But two of the other boats doing the same task – HMS Alnwick Castle and HMS Goodall – were hit by torpedos.

Mark said the Honeysuckle managed to rescue 18 survivors from the HMS Goodall while on fire itself.

He said: "The remainder of the voyage was uneventful and the Honeysuckle sailed into the Clyde on the morning of June 8 to the greeting crowds on the quayside and the sound of ships' sirens and whistles – it was VE Day."

But Len's war did not end there, with the Honeysuckle sailing to Ceylon to join the fleet preparing for the invasion of Japan. However, after the Americans dropped the atomic bomb the war ended and Len transferred to the destroyer HMS Norfolk before being demobbed in 1947.

He returned to Shrewsbury and worked at The Sentinel, going on to have two children with wife Joan, who died in 1957.

He married Betty in 1960 and had a further two children.