Auction Catalogue

26 March 2009

Starting at 10:00 AM

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Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Washington Mayfair Hotel  London  W1J 5HE

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Lot

№ 761 x

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26 March 2009

Hammer Price:
£550

A Second World War Arctic convoys D.S.C. group of seven attributed to Surgeon-Lieutenant M. J. Hood, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve

Distinguished Service Cross, G.VI.R., hallmarks for London 1943, reverse dated ‘1943’ and privately inscribed, ‘Surg. Lieut., H.M.S. Obdurate, Artic (sic)’, note no initials or surname; 1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star; Africa Star; Pacific Star; Defence and War Medals, M.I.D. oak leaf, these unnamed as issued, very fine and better (7) £600-700

D.S.C. London Gazette 19 October 1943:

‘For fortitude and great devotion to duty in services to the wounded when his ship was attacked from the air.’

Maurice John Hood was decorated for his services in the Oribi-class destroyer H.M.S. Obdurate, most probably for his gallant deeds during convoy RA. 53 in early March 1943, when his ship came under heavy air attack. But it is likely too that the grounds to his decoration stemmed from his earlier deeds in the final days of December 1942, when Obdurate played a prominent part in the “Battle of Barents Sea” and was damaged by the heavy cruiser Hipper - in fact Hood was transferred from Obdurate to treat wounded aboard the trawler Northern Gem on the following day, by means of leaping onto the latter’s foredeck in heavy seas. Dudley Pope’s 73 North takes up the story:

‘As soon as he was on board Hood washed his hands and began treating the wounded. He congratulated Mayer on the work he had done and then, despite the violent rolling of the ship, went from man to man, cleaning, cutting, stitching and bandaging. Helped by Mayer and Peyton-Jones, he often had to wedge himself to avoid being flung about while dealing with a particularly difficult wound ... The men worked all through the day; it was evening before they finished, worn out but pleased.’

Tragically, however, Hood lost his life after re-enacting this daring procedure during convoy JW. 56A in January 1944 - Arctic Destroyers, The 17th Flotilla, by G. G. Connell, takes up the story:

‘Closing a labouring and badly damaged freighter, Claude [Obdurate’s captain] approached with great caution in a following sea to place his lighter pitching destroyer alongside to transfer expert medical assistance. Hood, his Surgeon Lieutenant R.N.V.R., who a year previously had made a more difficult transfer to the trawler Northern Gem to bring succour to the survivors of Achates, was raring to go. With valiant and athletic ability he succeeded in making a rather easier jump from the fo’c’s’le of his ship to a jumping ladder draping the towering side of Fort Bellingham and scrambled aboard.

Two hours later the unfortunate commodore’s ship was struck by a second acoustic torpedo fired by one of the Isegrin pack, U-957. The 7,143 ton ship began to sink rapidly as she once again fell out of line, and dropped astern, shadowed by her killer submarine. In Fort Bellingham men with little hope of survival prepared for the second time to abandon ship into the freezing seas. Hood, who had just operated on his patient, brought him up on to the fast-heeling upperdeck and refused an opportunity to leave the side of the helpless merchant seaman for a place in one of the few rafts being launched from the dying ship. U-957, Lieutenant Schaar, with uncharacteristic concern had closed its victim and picked up a number of survivors who would become prisoners of war. Lieutenant Hood and his patient were not among that number.’

He was posthumously mentioned in despatches (London Gazette 6 June 1944 refers), which distinction and his D.S.C. were subsequently presented to his parents at a Buckingham Palace investiture.