b. 08/08/1902 Petersfield, Hampshire.  d. 11/04/1945 near Soltau, Germany.

DATE OF AM ACTION: 13/05/1937 Almeria, Spain.

Bryan G Scurfield
DSO OBE AM

Bryan Gouthwhaite Scurfield was born on 8 August 1902, the eldest of eight children. His unusual middle name was his paternal grandmother’s maiden name. Educated at Charterhouse, in September 1920 he became a ‘Special Entry’ Cadet in the Royal Navy. He served as a Midshipman in the flagships of the Atlantic and then the Mediterranean Fleet (respectively the super-dreadnought H.M.S. Queen Elizabeth and the dreadnought H.M.S. Iron Duke) and in September 1924 commanded a platoon of the Naval Landing Force protecting the evacuation of British, Greek and Christian refugees from Smyrna, Turkey. After attending the Navy College in 1924 (including the crucial Navigation School) Scurfield was promoted to Sub-Lieutenant and began his service in destroyers. In September 1926 he was assigned to H.M.S. Hawkins, the Shanghai-based Flagship of the China Station. He spent some months in the destroyer H.M.S. Wolverine, which protected British Concessions and merchant ships on the Yangtze River from warlords and pirates. After a period as Lieutenant and then Lieutenant-Commander in the brand-new battleship H.M.S. Nelson, Scurfield commanded the destroyer H.M.S. Skate during the 1935 Jubilee Naval review at Spithead, for which he received the Jubilee Medal.

His next appointment was to the command of the newly-built destroyer H.M.S. Hunter, which sailed to join the Mediterranean Fleet in October 1936. In May 1937, Hunter was designated as part of Britain’s contribution to the League of Nations Arms Blockade and Non-Intervention Patrols, intended to help end the Spanish Civil War between the left-wing Republican government and General Franco’s fascist Nationalists, who were supplied by Germany and Italy.

Scurfield was appointed Captain of the elderly destroyer H.M.S. Broke on 27 September 1939. Initially Broke was mostly employed on convoy escort and anti-submarine work, but after Dunkirk she was sent on several independent cross-Channel sorties to north-west France, without any senior officers hovering nearby to impart their ‘wisdom’. She was attacked by aircraft off Le Havre, but went on to demolish port installations there before embarking 200 Polish troops and assorted refugees at Brest. Scurfield was exhausted from lack of sleep, but his wife commented: “I think he enjoyed it as he’d been mostly on his own. Dive bombers just missed them.” The Polish government awarded him the Cross of Valour for his “gallant and brave conduct”.

Broke’s First Lieutenant from August 1940 was Lieutenant Peter Scott R.N.V.R., the famous artist, yachtsman and naturalist, son of Captain Scott of the Antarctic, who recorded his intense admiration of Scurfield in his autobiography The Eye of the Wind. On 6 April 1941 Broke was on convoy duty in the North Atlantic when she was alerted to a serious fire which had erupted in the engine-room of H.M.S. Comorin, a P & O liner built in 1925 which had been taken over by the Admiralty and equipped as an Armed Merchant Cruiser. Comorin was plunging up and down wildly in a heavy head sea with a gale blowing. There was no hope of controlling the fire and the appalling, monstrous sea conditions meant that attempts by other ships to rescue those on board were proceeding at a snail’s-pace. Scurfield wrote that “At times from the bridge I was level with the ship’s top deck and at others I could see her rudder and propellers out of the water… I was forced to the conclusion that the only way was to nose my forecastle alongside the quarter of the burning ship and for the men to jump. The first ten jumped on board at 9.15 pm… I don’t know how many times I went alongside – perhaps 25 – but the engineers received 685 orders for the engines during those three hours!”

With each ship-to-ship contact, Broke suffered collision damage and had to draw away, until Peter Scott could verify that she was still seaworthy enough to attempt another rescue. Each time he reported, his skipper “was calmer & more confident.” “Alright,” he said, “let’s go in & get some more”. I have the most vivid mental picture of him lit by the glare of the flames with his very infectious boyish grin. And of course he kept on going in “to get some more” until he had rescued them all! Scurfield saved 180 survivors, but was worried that he would be officially reprimanded for the damage done to the upper works of his ship.

The Captain of one of the other warships at the scene reported to the Admiralty “I do not ever again expect to see a ship handled so magnificently”. Soon Scurfield was able to write: “I had another signal yesterday from “The Admiralty & First Sea Lord personally” of congratulations – very nice as a change from the usual “raspberries”. This one read “Congratulations on the fine seamanship you displayed in going repeatedly alongside Cormorin in heavy weather”.

Having decided not to reprimand him, the Admiralty bureaucracy began to debate the difficult question of which award to bestow on Scurfield. Enemy action was not involved, which ruled out the ‘on active service in the presence of the enemy’ awards. The Albert Medal for Gallantry at Sea would have been perfectly appropriate, except that Scurfield already had one and the statutes of the Albert Medal did not authorise bars. Ever since Wellington had severely criticised the issue of multiple awards of the same medal, it was established official policy never to do this again. The optimal choice would have been the newly created George Cross or George Medal, the statutes for which had been published and first awards gazetted. However, one of Scurfield’s officers on Hunter had been awarded the Empire Gallantry Medal for assisting him during the aftermath of the explosion. In 1937 the E.G.M. was a lesser honour than the Albert Medal, but by 1941, as a result of the decision to convert every E.G.M. into a George Cross, his G.C. now outranked Scurfield’s A.M. An award of either the George Cross or the George Medal to Scurfield A.M. would have emboldened those officials who highlighted the anomalous position of the A.M. after the mandatory conversion of the E.G.M. The final, conservative, decision was to award Scurfield a Military O.B.E. (which at the time also outranked the Albert Medal but not to the extent that the George Cross did).

In July 1941 Scurfield took command of the splendid Tribal-class Fleet Destroyer H.M.S. Bedouin. He spent a long, cold winter escorting Arctic convoys to Murmansk in Russia and participating in the Boxing Day 1941 Commando attack on the Lofoten Islands. Meanwhile, in the Mediterranean, Rommel had begun another offensive in Cyrenaica and the blockade and Siege of Malta was approaching a climax. The Admiralty decided to send two strongly escorted relief convoys to Malta simultaneously from opposite directions, one east to west from Alexandria and the other west to east from Gibraltar, in the hope that at least a few ships carrying much-needed supplies of ammunition, fuel and food would be able successfully to run the gauntlet of German and Italian forces. Scurfield was the Senior Officer of the destroyers safeguarding the east-bound convoy, known as the ‘Harpoon Convoy’.

On 15 June 1942, after four days of mounting air and submarine attacks, the convoy was south of Sardinia, entering waters considered too risky for capital ships, so the most powerful escort vessels turned back to Gibraltar at dusk. Towards midnight, Scurfield was informed that the 7th Cruiser Division of the Italian surface fleet had sailed from Sicily. Early in the afternoon Scurfield ordered his tow to be slipped, due to enemy air activity, and sent Partridge away, so it would present less of a target. Thanks to the efforts of his engineers, Bedouin was just getting underway again when suddenly an Italian SM 79 bomber appeared through the smoke. It was engaged by every gun, but managed to drop its torpedo before coming down in the sea. Bedouin was hit in her engine room and sank within five minutes. After spending several hours in the water, the 213 survivors were spotted by a German aircraft and rescued by an Italian Red Cross ship.

His well-deserved D.S.O. was gazetted in September 1942 and sent to his next of kin, his wife, Mary Katherine (née Lee), known to all as ‘Dena’. In July 1942 Scurfield arrived at his first Prisoner of War camp, a former monastery south of Naples. The sombre statement quoted above had been inscribed above its main entrance centuries earlier, but it aptly described Scurfield’s situation during his long captivity. Several moves between camps, geography and the unpredictability of the Italian guards precluded any escape attempts. When the Italians surrendered in September 1943, those responsible for guarding Scurfield’s camp kept its security arrangements in place until German troops arrived. He was subsequently sent to Germany, finally ending up in Marlag ‘O’, a camp near Bremen.

On 9 April 1945, British forces reached Bremen. The Germans decided to evacuate the camp and march their prisoners to Lubeck, 80 miles away. As Senior British Officer, Scurfield issued instructions to the prisoners to take over the initiative from the demoralised German guards and to slow progress as much as possible, in the hope that the victorious Allies would overtake them as the war in Europe drew towards its end: “March discipline to be preserved. Important to show the Germans we can run the show. In case of a strafing attack split 2 ranks, 1 to right, 1 to left.”

In the mid-afternoon of the second day’s march, 11th April, six Allied fighters made a low-level strafing run on the column of prisoners, believing them to be German soldiers. An eye-witness reported that: “Commander Scurfield, without any thought for his own safety and after assessing the situation, strode up and down the road ordering everyone to disperse.” He was hit by friendly forces’ cannon fire in his back and both legs, and died a few hours later. He is commemorated by name in Becklingen War Cemetery, Niedersachsen, Germany.

AM CITATION:

On 13th May, 1937, H.M.S. ” Hunter” sustained serious damage in an explosion off Almeria, Spain. Immediately the ship took on a heavy list, all lights were extinguished and there was no steam. Apparently she was about to sink. Lieutenant-Commander Scurfield, who was aft, rushed forward. Passing the galley, he heard cries from the Petty Officer Cook, who had fallen into the boiler room. He jumped down through the smoke, oil fuel, steam and debris, and by extraordinary feats of strength removed the wreckage pinning the man down. The rating was passed up on deck, but did not long survive. Lieutenant-Commander Scurfield then proceeded to the Torpedomen’s mess deck. This was flooded to a depth of 2| feet in oil fuel; also battery gas had escaped from the switchboard room. The ladder having been blown away, he jumped down into the mess deck, not knowing whether it was intact, and passed up two men. Calling for assistance, he was joined by Lieutenant Humphreys and A.Bs. Collins, Thomas and Abrahams. After the mess deck had been cleared, he led the party into the stoker petty officers’ mess. The bulkhead had been shattered, and bedding and curtains were smouldering on top of the oil fuel. Bodies were pulled out from under the wreckage, and passed up on deck. During the whole of this time, he might in the darkness have fallen into the oil fuel tanks below or into the sea. By his gallant behaviour he saved the lives of Stoker Petty Officers Lott, May and Fenley, Stoker Neil and A.B. Oliffe.