Post by Dave Homewood on Aug 28, 2006 1:21:34 GMT 12
An interesting article from th Northern Advocate
www.northernadvocate.co.nz/localnews/storydisplay.cfm?storyid=3697827&thesection=localnews&thesubsection=&thesecondsubsection=
Enemy's tribute earned top medal for gritty Kiwi
22.08.2006
By Mike Barrington
Oberleutant Clemens Schamong ordered his crew to open fire when an Allied aircraft caught the German submarine he commanded on the surface during World War Two.
Cannon shells from two 20mm guns on the U-boat hit the B24 Liberator bomber as it was manoeuvring to start a run in to attack.
The bomber caught fire and the German sailors thought it would turn away.
But piloting the wounded Liberator was 29-year-old Flying Officer Lloyd Trigg, a red-headed former Whangarei High School 1st XV winger known for his determination.
Despite many more direct hits from the anti-aircraft guns, he ran the burning bomber straight toward the submarine, dropping six depth charges from a height of 16m before the plane plunged into the Atlantic Ocean and blew up.
All seven men aboard it - four of them New Zealanders - were killed.
The date was August 11, 1943. The action took place about 340 kilometres south-west of Dakar, capital of what was French West Africa and is now Senegal.
Two of the depth charges exploded alongside the U-boat, fatal strikes which had the 500-ton submarine sinking within minutes.
Only 20 of the 46 crew managed to get out before the U-boat went under and 13 of these men quickly succumbed to sharks and barracuda in the tropical sea.
The remaining seven - including Oberleutant Schamong - kept the predatory fish at bay by submerging their heads and "roaring".
In a twist of fate, after 30 minutes in the ocean they survived by finding the Liberator's rubber dinghy floating near them, inflating it with the air bottle attached and scrambling aboard.
When an Allied aircraft spotted them the next day the dinghy was being circled by very large sharks. A British corvette rescued the Germans 24 hours later and they became prisoners of war.
Oberleutant Schamong told his captors the U-boat crew could see their cannon shells piercing the hull of the blazing Liberator, but Flying Officer Trigg did not give up as they thought and hoped he would, continuing through the deadly fusillade until his "ash cans" could be dropped on target.
The 26-year-old submarine commander, who held an Iron Cross, 1st class, said that in Germany such a gallant fighter as Trigg would be decorated with the highest medal or honour.
The Allied Command took the recommendation to heart.
Solely on the evidence of Oberleutant Schamong and another officer among the German survivors, Trigg was posthumously decorated with the Victoria Cross.
Of the 21 New Zealanders who have been awarded Britain's highest award for bravery, only two were from Northland - Flying Officer Trigg and Corporal Lawrence Weathers, born at Te Kopuru, who received his VC for service with Australian forces in France during World War One.
Lloyd Trigg was born at Houhora in 1914, the son of Welsh Boer War veteran Frank Trigg and his wife Cecelia (nee White).
Frank had a store and billiard saloon at Victoria Valley, 16km south-east of Kaitaia, where the couple lived with their three sons and daughter until Frank died, aged 48, in 1929.
Cecelia sold the store and the family moved to Princes St in Mairtown, Whangarei, and Lloyd attended Whangarei High School, where he was in the 1st XV, played violin in the school orchestra and excelled academically, sitting university units in his senior year.
His cousin, Lawrence McBeath, 89, of Kamo, recalled Lloyd as a slim lad who had a "very determined nature" and was "quite grown up - he carried himself well".
Lloyd's sister, Olwyn Reynolds, 87, of Tikipunga, remembered him as "a very loving brother" who had looked out for her when their mother died in 1932 and a housekeeper had cared for the children.
After leaving school, Lloyd worked on farms, then was the Northland sales and service agent for Christchurch agricultural equipment company Booth MacDonald.
He married Nola McGarvie and they had two sons, John and Waynn, before he enlisted in the Royal New Zealand Air Force in 1941 and, after training, was assigned to convoy protection with the Royal Air Force.
Waynn - who was also in the Whangarei Boys' High 1st XV - died of skin cancer and Nola has also passed on.
But John Trigg, 67, retired, of Kaitaia, said his mother never remarried and, struggling to bring up the two boys alone, had sold his father's Victoria Cross and Distinguished Flying Cross in the 1960s to buy a house in Auckland.
John didn't know what the medals had fetched other than "enough to buy the house".
The medals went overseas and brought a then world record price of $421,000 when they were sold at auction in London in 1998.
John Trigg has replicas of them which he was to present to Whangarei Boys' High School at the ceremony tomorrow.
He said that when younger, he had sometimes cursed his Dad for going to war and leaving him fatherless.
Some of his relatives had been in touch with former submariner Clemens Schamong, who was described by his British wartime interrogators as "a civilised type with considerable poise and charm".
His mother, like many of her generation, had hated Germans, Herr Schamong in particular.
But John Trigg said: "I've got nothing against the guy.
"If it wasn't for him we would never have known what happened. We'd just have been told Dad was missing in action."
*Honouring our hero
The achievements of Whangarei bomber pilot Lloyd Trigg, posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross on the recommendation of a German U-boat captain whose submarine he sank, will be commemorated in a ceremony at Whangarei Boys' High School at 12.30pm tomorrow.
A former colonel who was a pupil at the school, Grant Crowley, of Wellington, will present the school with a photograph of Flying Officer Trigg in uniform. John Trigg, of Kaitaia, will present replicas of his father's medals. There will be speeches acknowledging Lloyd Trigg's fine record in the military and at the school
Many of his relatives will be there and Royal New Zealand Air Force officers are also expected to attend.
www.northernadvocate.co.nz/localnews/storydisplay.cfm?storyid=3697827&thesection=localnews&thesubsection=&thesecondsubsection=
Enemy's tribute earned top medal for gritty Kiwi
22.08.2006
By Mike Barrington
Oberleutant Clemens Schamong ordered his crew to open fire when an Allied aircraft caught the German submarine he commanded on the surface during World War Two.
Cannon shells from two 20mm guns on the U-boat hit the B24 Liberator bomber as it was manoeuvring to start a run in to attack.
The bomber caught fire and the German sailors thought it would turn away.
But piloting the wounded Liberator was 29-year-old Flying Officer Lloyd Trigg, a red-headed former Whangarei High School 1st XV winger known for his determination.
Despite many more direct hits from the anti-aircraft guns, he ran the burning bomber straight toward the submarine, dropping six depth charges from a height of 16m before the plane plunged into the Atlantic Ocean and blew up.
All seven men aboard it - four of them New Zealanders - were killed.
The date was August 11, 1943. The action took place about 340 kilometres south-west of Dakar, capital of what was French West Africa and is now Senegal.
Two of the depth charges exploded alongside the U-boat, fatal strikes which had the 500-ton submarine sinking within minutes.
Only 20 of the 46 crew managed to get out before the U-boat went under and 13 of these men quickly succumbed to sharks and barracuda in the tropical sea.
The remaining seven - including Oberleutant Schamong - kept the predatory fish at bay by submerging their heads and "roaring".
In a twist of fate, after 30 minutes in the ocean they survived by finding the Liberator's rubber dinghy floating near them, inflating it with the air bottle attached and scrambling aboard.
When an Allied aircraft spotted them the next day the dinghy was being circled by very large sharks. A British corvette rescued the Germans 24 hours later and they became prisoners of war.
Oberleutant Schamong told his captors the U-boat crew could see their cannon shells piercing the hull of the blazing Liberator, but Flying Officer Trigg did not give up as they thought and hoped he would, continuing through the deadly fusillade until his "ash cans" could be dropped on target.
The 26-year-old submarine commander, who held an Iron Cross, 1st class, said that in Germany such a gallant fighter as Trigg would be decorated with the highest medal or honour.
The Allied Command took the recommendation to heart.
Solely on the evidence of Oberleutant Schamong and another officer among the German survivors, Trigg was posthumously decorated with the Victoria Cross.
Of the 21 New Zealanders who have been awarded Britain's highest award for bravery, only two were from Northland - Flying Officer Trigg and Corporal Lawrence Weathers, born at Te Kopuru, who received his VC for service with Australian forces in France during World War One.
Lloyd Trigg was born at Houhora in 1914, the son of Welsh Boer War veteran Frank Trigg and his wife Cecelia (nee White).
Frank had a store and billiard saloon at Victoria Valley, 16km south-east of Kaitaia, where the couple lived with their three sons and daughter until Frank died, aged 48, in 1929.
Cecelia sold the store and the family moved to Princes St in Mairtown, Whangarei, and Lloyd attended Whangarei High School, where he was in the 1st XV, played violin in the school orchestra and excelled academically, sitting university units in his senior year.
His cousin, Lawrence McBeath, 89, of Kamo, recalled Lloyd as a slim lad who had a "very determined nature" and was "quite grown up - he carried himself well".
Lloyd's sister, Olwyn Reynolds, 87, of Tikipunga, remembered him as "a very loving brother" who had looked out for her when their mother died in 1932 and a housekeeper had cared for the children.
After leaving school, Lloyd worked on farms, then was the Northland sales and service agent for Christchurch agricultural equipment company Booth MacDonald.
He married Nola McGarvie and they had two sons, John and Waynn, before he enlisted in the Royal New Zealand Air Force in 1941 and, after training, was assigned to convoy protection with the Royal Air Force.
Waynn - who was also in the Whangarei Boys' High 1st XV - died of skin cancer and Nola has also passed on.
But John Trigg, 67, retired, of Kaitaia, said his mother never remarried and, struggling to bring up the two boys alone, had sold his father's Victoria Cross and Distinguished Flying Cross in the 1960s to buy a house in Auckland.
John didn't know what the medals had fetched other than "enough to buy the house".
The medals went overseas and brought a then world record price of $421,000 when they were sold at auction in London in 1998.
John Trigg has replicas of them which he was to present to Whangarei Boys' High School at the ceremony tomorrow.
He said that when younger, he had sometimes cursed his Dad for going to war and leaving him fatherless.
Some of his relatives had been in touch with former submariner Clemens Schamong, who was described by his British wartime interrogators as "a civilised type with considerable poise and charm".
His mother, like many of her generation, had hated Germans, Herr Schamong in particular.
But John Trigg said: "I've got nothing against the guy.
"If it wasn't for him we would never have known what happened. We'd just have been told Dad was missing in action."
*Honouring our hero
The achievements of Whangarei bomber pilot Lloyd Trigg, posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross on the recommendation of a German U-boat captain whose submarine he sank, will be commemorated in a ceremony at Whangarei Boys' High School at 12.30pm tomorrow.
A former colonel who was a pupil at the school, Grant Crowley, of Wellington, will present the school with a photograph of Flying Officer Trigg in uniform. John Trigg, of Kaitaia, will present replicas of his father's medals. There will be speeches acknowledging Lloyd Trigg's fine record in the military and at the school
Many of his relatives will be there and Royal New Zealand Air Force officers are also expected to attend.
