Cockleshell Heroes
“At twenty-two minutes past eight, under a sky filled with stars, with the German searchlights playing, the patrol boat closing in on them, in a heavy swell and freezing air, the ship’s company of the Tuna, in the words of her captain, ‘waved au revoir to a magnificent bunch of black-faced villains with whom it has been a real pleasure to work’, and withdrew to the south and west.” (1)
(1) Cockleshell Heroes by C.E.Lucas Phillips Pan Books Ltd London X458
The painting was gifted to the Cockleshell Heroes Memorial Appeal which commemorates the Royal Marines of Operation Frankton, the limpet mine attack by ten marines in canoes on shipping in Bordeaux Harbour in 1942, in what was described by Winston Churchill, Admiral Lord Mountbatten, and more recently HRH Prince Phillip as the most daring small scale raid of WW2. The painting was reproduced as a bronze relief casting to be attached to one of the stones of the memorial which was unveiled in France at Pointe de Grave on 31st March 2011.
250 Limited edition signed prints of the painting were produced for sale in support of the appeal.
Click on images for detail
Oil on Canvas 80cm x 75cm
Unveiling Ceremony at Le Verdon sur mer on 31st March 2011
Bronze cast of John's painting at the Memorial
Service at the memorial unveiling
French Servicemen and Royal Marine at the unveiling Ceremony
John Farlie and Paddy Ashdown.
© 2015 by John Lawrence.