D-Day 80: Royal Navy veteran dies days before Portsmouth 80th anniversary aged 98

Able Seaman Lewis Curl passed away at St Richard’s Hospital in Chichester on May 22 at the age of 98. He was a part of the force from 1942 to 1946 and was a cypher coder on HMS Belfast.

AB Curl was originally granted leave but on his return to Portsmouth a telegram awaited, recalling him to join HMS Dacres off Le Harve, France. The sailor was packed on a transport freighter filled with army lorries, transport and fuel during the D-Day operation.

The freighter was bombed and sank off the French coast, with AB Curl jumping into an amphibious vehicle which became overloaded and started to sink. He swam away and landed ashore when a launch appeared, proceeding along the coast in the dark and finally arriving at the naval base where he was taken to HMS Dacres.

Able Seamen do not get piped aboard ship, but 19-year-old Able Seaman Lewis Curl did. An officer took him to one side and told him the ship’s company had bets on if he was going to make it, with the odds being stacked against him. HMS Dacres left for the Bay of Biscay to conduct submarine boat surveillance, with German code books being secured.

On returning to Portsmouth, AB Curl was posted to Rosyth to join HMS Loch Glendhu and returned to the Bay of Biscay. He was in Glasgow for the VE Day celebrations in 1945 and proceeded to head back to Portsmouth to join HMS Swiftsure, which was headed for the Far East.

Crew aboard the vessel spent much of their operation “pushing mines away from the ship with long poles”, the Royal Navy said, while operating in the Mediterranean, Suez Canal, India, Madras, Calcutta and the Malacca Straights. AB Curl volunteered for night searching for the presence of Japanese personnel and become infected by a tropical disease while ashore. The hospital he was in was then evacuated when the Japanese came too close.

The sailor was left in the ward as he was “too ill to move”, with staff returning to find him as the only survivor out of the four people who were left behind. After convalescing, he was repatriated back to the UK on HMS Barfleur. AB Curl, who also served in HMS Mercury, was awarded the 1938/45 Medal, the Victory Medal, Atlantic Star and Bar, Burma Star, France and Germany Star, and Civil Medal. He was a member of the Bognor Regis branch of the Royal Naval Association.