Ajax Veterans Street Dedication: Blowers Crescent
Description
- Media Type
- Image
- Description
- Street Name: Blowers Crescent
Name of Veteran: Hubert Roy Blowers (July 16, 1925-Nov. 17, 2017)
Rank: Royal Marine
Ship Served: HMS Ajax
Date of Service on Ship: Oct.1942 to May 1943
Year of Visit/Dedication: 1999
Veteran or Family Visit: Roy Blowers and wife Linda
Veteran of the Battle of the River Plate: No
Died at Battle: No
Hubert Roy Blowers was born in Lowestoft, England on July 16, 1925. He joined the Royal Marines on January 21, 1942 at the age of 16 and a half (1 year underage). After training at Chatham he was assigned to his first ship, HMS Ajax. While on the Ajax he traveled to the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic where the ship escorted convoys and guard ships to Mediterranean ports and patrolled for U-boats.
Roy Blowers wrote;
We were put out of action on the 2 January, 1943 by 500lb bomb dropped by a Stuka, dive bomber whilst in harbour in Bone, North Africa. The bomb passed through the deck approximately 10 feet from our gun crew, of which I was one, hitting and killing one of our marines. The bomb went through the deck and exploded in the boiler room blowing a hole in the side of the ship and killing around 18 matelots.
After being towed to Gibraltar, one boiler was repaired and the hole in the side of the ship patched, we sailed to Brooklyn Naval Docks in New York for repairs.
On his return to England Roy volunteered to join the Combined Operation Royal Marines. He then trained for D-Day landings and landed on D-Day, on the first wave on the Normandy beach called Arromanches. He then went through France, Belgium, Holland, crossed the Rhine in Germany and eventually took part in taking over the submarine pens at Wilheimshaven in Germany.
Roy was then transferred to S.E.A.C. (South East Asia Command) and under the command of Louis Mountbatten sent to Burma. At the end of the Japanese war he was then transferred to Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, to await return to England and finally to be demobbed on May 29, 1946.
Roy married, had one daughter and finished his working days as an area manager. He died on November 17, 2017 at the age of 92. - Copyright Statement
- Copyright status unknown. Responsibility for determining the copyright status and any use rests exclusively with the user.
- Location of Original
- Original document and image located in the Ajax Archives.
- Contact
- Ajax Public LibraryEmail:libraryinfo@ajaxlibrary.ca
Website:
Agency street/mail address:55 Harwood Avenue S.
Ajax, Ontario
L1S 2H8
