MAURICE CHARLES BARNES 

C/JX 137224, Petty Officer

HMS Seal, Royal Navy

Who died aged 24 on 9 September 1940

 

PO Maurice Barnes was the youngest of the six children of Benjamin and Eliza Barnes, and the second brother (with Eric q.v.) to join the Submarine service.

He was in the mine-laying submarine HMS Seal that narrowly escaped death when she snagged a mine on the seabed of the Baltic on 4 May 1940, only to fall into the hands of the Germans on surfacing with no power to manoeuvre when she extricated herself and surfaced the following day.  The story is recounted in the book “Will we not fear” by Warren & Benson published in 1961.

Maurice and other members of Seal’s crew arrived at Stalag XXa, a PoW camp at Thorun in Poland on 5 May.  On 29 July Maurice escaped in the company of Sgt Major George Briggs of 15/19 King’s Royal Hussars.  Helped by Polish people they travelled to Warsaw and then on Melkinia near the Russo-German Pact border.  As they attempted to cross the border on the night of 9 September 1940 Maurice was shot by Russian Border Guards (Russia, at that time, being an ally of Germany under the Ribbentrop Pact) and was taken prisoner.  It is assumed, but there is no documentary evidence to confirm, that he died the following day and was buried by Russians somewhere near the border.

His companion George Briggs was imprisoned in Russia but eventually repatriated on 11 August 1941.  On his return he came to Bergh Apton to tell the family of Maurice Barnes his tragic end.  Maurice’s nephew the late Peter Scarfe of Bradford in Yorkshire was there and remembers the event.

In 2005 we obtained the Stalag XXa records of Maurice Barnes with the help of the International Red Cross.  In 2008 we also found, with the help of Maurice’s niece Brenda Horsely, a copy of George Briggs’ 18 page account of his adventures from capture to return to England, that deals in detail with the events surrounding Maurice Barnes’ wounding and capture on the Russo-German border.

Maurice’s place of burial is, at the time of writing, unknown but his name is recorded on the Submariners’ wall of Chatham Naval Memorial, and in the chancel of Hellington church.

 

 

1. Prisoners and their guards at Stalag XXa in Poland, between 5 June and 28 July 1940.  Maurice Barnes is leaning forward sitting front row, 5th from right.

 

2. HMS Seal, possibly in Chatham.  Maurice Barnes, before promotion to Petty Officer, is standing immediately below the muzzle of the gun in cap and boiler suit.

 

4. This tricycle (here ridden by Maurice in his parents’ garden) was still a familiar sight long after the war when ridden around Bergh Apton by his father.

 

5. A studio photo of a very young Eric (l) and Maurice Barnes (r).