Genealogy Chat

I found a distant relative on the CWGC site and as his ship was named I was able to look it up. What a shock I had.

I remember a TV documentary several years ago about an accident in World War Two involving mustard-gas, a weapon banned by the Geneva Convention. To my surprise I have found that my relative was one of the victims. On December 2, 1943 the SS John Harvey, a US Liberty ship, unloading at Berth 29 in the port of Bari, on Italy's Adriatic coast, blew up in a cataclysmic explosion during a twenty minute bombing attack by over 100 German JU-88 planes. The harbour was jam-packed with Allied merchant ships as convoy after convoy brought in much needed supplies for the British, American and Canadian armies as they advanced up the Italian mainland. Part of the cargo in the John Harvey was 100 tons of liquid mustard gas bombs, (brought in just in case the enemy resorted to chemical warfare) and guarded by a unit of the 701st Chemical Maintenance Company. The blast wave caused by the explosion destroyed or sunk seventeen ships in the harbour and killed or injured over 1,000 military and navy men, civilian workers and nearby residents of the town. As ship after ship exploded or caught fire, hundreds of men were struggling in the oil covered water in a desperate attempt to escape. On the British SS Fort Athabaska, forty-four men out of her crew of 56 were killed, including my relative. With the Allied hospitals filling up with injured, the doctors were at a loss to know what caused the terrible burns on the victims. Of the 617 men who made it to hospital, 83 had died during the first month. If they had known at the time it was mustard gas, it is possible many more lives could have been saved with the proper treatment. Winston Churchill immediately clamped a tight security blanket over the whole affair and it was not until about five years later that the public learned the whole truth.

My Dad was injured by mustard gas at an RAF bomb dump in Cambridgeshire in 1943/44 and had to be treated at the RAF hospital at Ely. Denis

My grand dad worked in hospitals dueing the war as he was 'run over' at 15 by a horse and cart and lost some of his left leg so never got sent up!! He told me that mustard-gas was awful and would never speak of it...he said he never wanted to go to chemical war.. I, Thank-you for this and its horrid but I understand a bit better now this is written by a person on the outside .....only God knows what it was like in that harbour Sharleen