Bill Blythe

Dec 12 2007 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

HE WAS, of course, a pirate, who kept his wooden leg in a shed at the back of the house.

But, observed his canny grandchildren and his many nieces and nephews, the man had two legs of his own and a fine pair they were, too.

“Ah,” said the man, “when I stopped being a pirate, the leg grew back.”

“Gosh,” said the children, and then they noticed a twinkling in the vivid blue of the eyes on the man, whose face was otherwise as straight as could be because he was a master storyteller.

Enoch William (Bill) Blythe was a master of many skills, generosity and humour high among them.

But history will remember him as the last of the Liverpool Scottish men, who, in March,1942, took part in the raid on the French port of St Nazaire by the Royal Navy, supported by commandos.

The destroyer Cambletown, accompanied by 18 shallow boats, rammed the lock gates and was blown up, blocking the dock. Commandos destroyed other dock structures before attempting to fight their way out. All but 27 of the commandos from a force of some 200 were either killed or wounded.

But the loss of the dry dock meant that German warships in need of repairs had to return to home waters.

Lance-Corporal Blythe, a tall and strongly-built man with black hair, was captured and spent the rest of the war in a prison camp at Stern- berg, in the Sudenteland, where – among many scrapes – he persuaded the guards that the injury he sustained when a wall-spike passed through his thigh had not been caused in an escape attempt. That old gift for storytelling.

Bill was brought up in Connaught Street, Birkenhead, and later Brow Road, Bidston. His grandfather, George, had run the old smithy in Claughton and his father, also George, worked for an oil company.

From Brassey Street School, Bill became a butcher’s boy, delivering meat on a bike, before joining Spiller’s flour mill, where he was eventually silo foreman.

In 1939, he enlisted with the Liverpool Scottish and was trained in Scotland for special duties.

Bill married his next door sweetheart, Muriel Williams, and they had a daughter and three sons, whom he took to Tranmere Rovers.

Bill rarely spoke of the war, preferring his life as a pirate.

Bill Blythe, commando; born January 15, 1920,died November 24, 2007.