245166 Able Sea. Arthur "Snowy" Hardwick Royal Navy HMS Manchester from:Somercotes, Derbyshire When HMS Manchester was sunk in the Med in October 1942 Arthur Hardwick told me he had to dash up and down the deck to look for a life belt as he could not swim. Having found one he jumped in and was strafed by fighters but luckily was not wounded and managed to reach the Tunisian shore which was only a few hundred yards away.
In the prison camp he remembers one fellow crew member tried to escape and was shot dead. He and his mates received Red Cross parcels from home which kept them going but even so they lost a lot of weight. After six months or so their camp was overrun by the British Army and they were liberated and repatriated back to England. After some leave boarded the Queen Mary liner to Boston USA and had to wait six weeks for the completion of their new ship. This was probably the best time of his life as the American people were incredibly generous and treated them like the heroes they were.
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