Proud Merchant Navy veterans remember their fallen shipmates
VETERANS of the Merchant Navy gathered in Liverpool yesterday to celebrate their achievements and remember fallen colleagues.
Merchant Navy Day falls today, but organisers in the city chose the nearest Sunday for a church service and procession to their memorial at the Pier Head.
The service took place at the parish church of Liverpool, St Nicholas’s.
Veterans’ groups from Liverpool, Wirral, Blackpool and Scarborough were amongst those taking part, alongside representatives from Canada and the Netherlands. After the church service, the procession crossed the Strand and made its way towards the Mersey.
Pat Moran, chairman of the Merchant Navy Day Committee, said: “This is a celebration, but we are also here to remember the men who fought through the longest, bloodiest and bitterest battle in history, the Battle of the Atlantic.
“These men here today are in their 80s, but at the time they were 14, 15 and 16 years old. We actually sent children to war.” More than 30,000 British Merchant Navy seamen were lost in World War II.
