Alfred Brentnall

My name is Nicholas Brentnall, I am the only surviving child at 84 years old of a family of three children, both my twin sister and elder brother are no longer with us. My father I never knew, Alfred Sydney Brentnall served in the RAF, with 84 Squadron. Ranked Flying Officer, he was a technical engineer with particular responsibility for maintenance of Blenheim bombers. Born Gillingham in Kent but his last home was Grantham in Lincolnshire. In common with most relatives of victims of the Suez Maru atrocity I have felt the loss of my father all my life although I have no recollection of him. The photo of him holding my twin sister and I in his arms, not long after our birth, is probably the last time he held us before leaving to join his unit in 1938 never to return. I remember the fateful telegram being delivered advising his death and the grief of my mother that she carried all her life.

I do have one extraordinary anecdote to share with you and I quote from an article written by my late brother John in 2006. On holiday in Madeira sitting on a bench looking out to sea an elderly English couple came over and asked to the share the bench with us. We got talking and he introduced himself and his wife, informing us that their name was Hollis, and they were from East London. My reply that we were the Brentnall’s from Grantham brought about a long pause and eventually the reply came from Mr Hollis, “I haven’t heard that name for a long time – I don’t suppose your father’s name was Alfred, by any chance.” When I replied that it was, he then asked was he in the RAF during the war and did he make it home. I replied that he was and sadly did not make it back to England. He then went on to inform me that when the Japanese invaded Sumatra, attacking the two airfields at Palembang, (P1 and P2), initially taking P1 followed in two or three days by P2. He had been at P2 with the Army Airfield Defences when they were overrun by the Japanese. They were given the command to make their way south, some three hundred miles away where ships would take them to Java. The airfield itself was surrounded by the Japanese which meant that they had to fight their way out. The last he saw of my father was in a Lysander with another RAF member strafing the enemy  with its Lewis gun. Hollis and a few of his colleagues escaped and initially made their way north after stealing a small boat and sailing via Malaya and Burma. After six months in hospital in India and two and a half years after the war had ended Mr Hollis returned to England. My father was not so lucky being captured by the Japanese, worked almost to death and ultimately being killed on the Suez Maru.

I’m Sarah Morris, and granddaughter of the Suez Maru serviceman Alfred Sidney Brentnall. I didn’t know my grandfather, only through information that my father and gran told me. Alfred Sidney (known as Alf) was born in 1907 in Gillingham Kent. He married Edith Lilian Saunders in 1933 in Grantham Lincs. My father, John, was born in 1934, and twins Nicholas and Jeanne in 1938 (shown in the picture above). Alf was a loving and caring husband and father. My own father told stories to me of how he and his father spent many a happy hour together tending to their garden, tinkering with pieces of wood and building things together. Also, of the memories stood on the back step of their home, waving his father goodbye — the last time he saw him. My father would wait on that doorstep looking out for his father to return. Only to be called to his headmaster’s office to be told that his father was dead. Thankfully, the happy memories were prevalent — but the Suez Maru atrocity and the lack of an apology weighed heavy in my father’s mind particularly towards the end of his own life. I was only 12 years old when my gran died, but I remember the warmth and affection of how gran spoke to me of her “dearest Alf” — she never stopped grieving for him. My gran, father & aunty all died without hearing an apology nor learning the true facts of the Suez Maru atrocity. This great feeling is still as strong in my generation and my children’s too. We continue to be immensely proud of Alfred Sidney Brentnall, he will never be forgotten, but, we are also deeply saddened by his death & the manner in which it happened.