Orders, Decorations and Medals

The Second World War B.E.M., Lloyd’s War Medal for Bravery at Sea awarded to Able Seaman A. E. Fry, Merchant Navy, who, having been taken aboard an enemy vessel after the loss of his own to the German raider Komoran, led a mutiny against his captors: sentenced to death by a Nazi court at Hamburg for his efforts, he was brutally tortured by the S.S. and made to dig his own grave but, probably as a result of the intervention of the Swiss authorities, eventually emerged from captivity at the War’s end: in the interim he had been shot following a gallant escape attempt from a train

British Empire Medal, (Civil) G.VI.R., 1st issue (Arthur E. Fry); Lloyd’s War Medal for Bravery at Sea (Sailor A. E. Fry, S.S. “Afric Star”, 13th March 1941), this last with its fitted case of issue, mounted as worn with a Dunkerque Medal, the first with repaired and re-pinned suspension, edge bruising and contact marks, thus generally about very fine (3) £3000-4000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Ron Penhall Collection.

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Arthur Ernest Fry was taken prisoner following the loss of the Blue Star Line’s Afric Star on 29 January 1941. Taffrail’s Blue Star Line at War 1939-45 states:

‘On 15 January 1941, the 12,000 ton, 15-knot, turbine-driven Blue Star steamer Afric Star, built in 1926, sailed from Rio de Janeiro for England by way of St. Vincent, Cape Verde Islands. Commanded by Captain Clement Ralph Cooper, she carried a full cargo of meat, a crew of 72, two naval gunners and two women passengers.

On the morning of 29 January, after an uneventful voyage, when still some hundreds of miles short of her destination, they sighted a large ship flying the Russian ensign. For some hours the stranger remained in the distance, apparently keeping the Afric Star under observation. Then at about 2 p.m., the strange ship increased speed, approached the Afric Star, struck the Russian flag and hoisted the German, unmasked her guns and opened fire. Whether this was done before the Afric Star stopped and her crew had a chance to abandon ship I do not know; but the British ship caught fire, and her crew took to the lifeboats.

The raider, which was the Kormoran, picked up the occupants of the boats, sank the Afric Star by gunfire, and then proceeded on her way south.

Some days later the prisoners were transferred to the German supply tanker Nordmark, which was masquerading under the Stars and Stripes and in the name of Dixie, and a few days afterwards to a ship called the Portland, a motor-vessel of 7,000 tons bound from Chile to Bordeaux, in German-occupied France. On the voyage a fire broke out on board, and the German guard, considering it was a case of mutiny and an attempt to destroy the ship, opened fire, killing one passenger and an able seaman of the Afric Star.

The Portland, with about 300 people from sunken vessels, finally arrived at Bordeaux on 14 March, the prisoners eventually being sent to internment camps in Germany.’

Fry’s sojourn in an internment camp was short-lived, however, for, in company with other gallant members of his “Mutiny” team, he was paraded before a special court at Hamburg and sentenced to death, the beginning of a nightmare that lasted three long years - most of them in solitary confinement. In the end he probably owed his survival to the Swiss authorities, who made a point of keeping a close eye on him, but such welcome intervention could not prevent the harsher realities of German justice. Just a few days of the events played out at Hamburg, he was visited in his cell by a brace of S.S. men, both keen to establish the identity of further “mutineers”. His unpublished but extremely interesting wartime memoir, Mutiny on the Portland, takes up the story:

‘Reluctantly, Arthur lay on the bed and took off his boots. Then his socks. Suspecting what was to follow he started to rise, but was knocked back and the two S.S. men seized his arms and handcuffed each one to the bedhead. Still not defenceless, Arthur kicked out with his bare feet, until they produced a rope and tied each leg to the foot of the bed. They had come prepared, all right. His feet protruded over the edge of the bed, and he could only lie there, helpless and unable to move. The first S.S. man produced a length of lead piping about fifteen inches long. He stood there, playing with it, and smiled. The smile even reached his cold grey eyes. “Are you going to tell me their names?” he asked, but did not wait for an answer. He smashed the pipe down on Arthur’s feet, violently. The pain was like a tidal wave that swamped his feet, his legs, his body, before smashing into his head. He felt sick. “I told you everything at my trial,” he gasped. Another blow on the toes. “What are their names?” And blow followed blow, the pipe falling on his toes, his soles, his insteps and his ankles. Pain made life a horror of revulsion. “Oh God,” he thought, “Will I ever walk again.” His feet felt like footballs filled with boiling hot water. And he was too well tied to move them out of range. Remorselessly, the pipe rose and fell, swishing the air, thudding on to the flesh, sometimes cracking a bone. And bones were being broken - this was no gentle persuasion ... ’

Then the second S.S. man approached him with a razor:

‘In a savage gesture the S.S. man brought the blade down, slashing Arthur’s thigh. It must have gone deep, as blood gushed out at once and reddened his trousers. It ran down in a warm stream on his leg ... Then the torturer started on Arthur’s chest, nicking it with the corner of the blade, just deep enough to draw blood ... Arthur could stand it no more. His body seemed to grow lighter, and it felt as if he was floating above the bed. He was in a big darkening room with black walls that seemed to move inwards and revolve at the same time. Voices mumbled in the distance, receding. Arthur fainted. Some time afterwards, he rediscovered the real world of pain. He was alone and untied, still lying on the bed in a pool of blood. As the days went by his wounds healed, but his broken toes and the metatarsal bones of his feet, untreated by the doctor, set badly and became a permanent injury ... ’

Two months later Fry was woken up by the prison warder and two other S.S. men, this time being informed that the day of his execution had arrived. He was driven off in a military truck to another prison and pushed into a courtyard:

‘It was cold and the ground was frozen hard underfoot. Arthur still wore his dirty grey garb and sandals. He stamped his feet, and swung his arms, embracing himself. A soldier took a spade from the truck, and handed it to Arthur. “Dig,” he said. He tried. The top soil was like hard ice, but he got through, digging like an automaton, his mind not completely understanding what he was doing. Or why. He got down about two feet. Then his mind opened and he realised. It was his grave ... The Sergeant stopped him when the hole was about three feet deep. He straightened up and folded his arms across his chest. One of the soldiers had opened the bolt of his rifle and was loading clips of bullets. How long do you stay conscious between the bullet and oblivion? The Sergeant put a leather helmet over his head. It was an effective blindfold, and he could no longer see the lightening dawn. The Sergeant pulled down one arm, slipped a handcuff on the wrist, then the other, and fastened the cuffs behind Arthur’s back. Then he pushed him forward a bit, probably to the edge of the grave. They all waited ... ’

In the event, the witnessing officer never turned up, and the S.S. men decided to postpone Fry’s fate and take him back to his cell - ‘only two hours had passed’ since he had been collected that morning. Sadly for Fry another two years in solitary confinement would follow in the same prison, the threat of his execution looming over him all of that time, a threat that no doubt spurred him on to make a bid for freedom when he was collected one day and placed on a train. His wartime memoir takes up the story:

‘But as the train neared Stettin the low-pitched crump of bombs and the shrill crack of flak warned them to go no further ... As soon as the raid started, Arthur, his hands handcuffed, and still wearing British battledress, leaped from the train and ran awkwardly to a road half a mile away. His bound hands made running difficult, but only a fool would worry about that at a time like this. Two guards followed him. The locomotiove exploded after a direct hit and terrible screams came from those still in the doomed train ... The guards were armed, he was in British uniform and he was handcuffed. It was now that he really understood the Germans’ wisdom in handcuffing him. He could not attack them, he could not even run away from them with any speed ... ’

Fry was quickly re-captured and placed in solitary confinement in a Punishment Block at Graudentz, in which grim surroundings he fell foul of a German Sergeant by the name of Speise:

‘He reversed the pistol he carried in his hand and smashed the butt down on Arthur’s head. Blood ran down his face and neck and he felt dizzy but did not fall. Speise was shouting like a lunatic and coming towards him, so Arthur hit him on the chin and walked past him, out of the cell, to report the matter to an officer. Some intuition made him look round, in time to see Speise aiming his Luger. Arthur jumped high into the air just as several shots rang out. At once he felt a sledge-hammer blow on his right thigh that jarred his whole body. Speise ran up and kicked him as he lay there, jumping on him and kicking hard with his jack-boots. But some officers had been alarmed by the shots and rushed up and pulled him off ... But the leg wound was a very serious one ... Four bullets had hit him, but only one was important. This one had come near enough to the bone to crack it, and it was considered safer to leave it there ... ’

When, a month or two later, Fry was forced to march away from the approaching Allies with his fellow prisoners, he took the opportunity of pushing Sergeant Speise into a river ‘ ‘One strong push and it was over. Speise slid down the bank of ice and snow, into the ice of the river. No-one missed him and he was never seen again. Murder? Or an act of war?’

Finally liberated by the Russians in East Prussia, he had to witness assorted Soviet atrocities while held at Barth, prior to being flown home in a B-17 on 11 May 1945: ‘And they gave him the British Empire Medal for his courage. But the other medal means more to him as a sailor: the highest award in the Merchant Navy - Lloyd’s Medal for Bravery at Sea.’

Sold with a quantity of original documentation, including an old album with several photographs, newspaper cuttings and pasted-down correspondence, approximately covering the period 1938-58, among the latter being the recipient’s Buckingham Palace B.E.M. forwarding letter, dated 4 September 1946, and Lloyd’s and Blue Star Line forwarding letters for his Lloyd’s Medal for Bravery at Sea, dated 29 December 1947; together with a scrap album containing a series of articles published in the Evening Post over the course of August 1961, the whole detailing the story of Fry’s remarkable wartime story; a wartime copy of the charges made against him - and his fellow “mutineers” - at Hamburg, with a covering letter from the Chief Prosecutor, dated in September 1941, several pages, German text; and a photocopy of his unpublished wartime memoir (as quoted above), 357pp., bound in blue-buckram with gilt title.