(image shows Sinking of German u-boat, U-175, sunk by depth charges and gunfire from USCGC Spencer in the North Atlantic, south-west of Ireland. 13 of her crew died and 41 survived. Previously, U-175 sank 10 merchant vessels, including five from the United States.) Credit: U.S. Coast Guard
Polaris founder Ben Pinnington writing on LinkedIn
Remembering all those who served in the American armed forces on Memorial Day in the United States.
I am keenly aware having promoted the UK’s national monument to the Battle of the Atlantic in Liverpool that without American intervention and the Atlantic convoys the UK would have succumbed to the Nazis as an island nation unable to arm, feed or fuel itself.
At a press conference to promote the memorial in Liverpool in 2018 I met the late merchant navy seafarer Graeme Cubbin then aged 94, pictured below.
He went to sea in 1940 aged 16, survived ship wrecking, capture and a prisoner of war camp in North Africa. When I asked him what the BOA meant to him he immediately said: “If we didn’t win we’d be speaking German now.” I have often thought back to that.
10,000 US seafarers died in the BOA and 600 US vessels were sunk. In total, 100,000 died in the Atlantic in terrifying circumstances hunted by U-Boats including 50,000 from Britain, and 10,000 from allied nations including Canada, Poland, Norway, Denmark, Greece and Ireland. What a debt we own to the lionhearted generation. A further 30,000 Germans were killed.
It is a reminder that we can never take freedom of navigation on the Atlantic for granted especially now in this era of heightened tension with Russian submarines menacing the North Sea and Baltic Sea.
America was also critical to the Arctic Convoys, D-Day and the liberation of the Western Europe involving three million American troops, 185,000 of whom died fighting for freedom.
As the late great American historian David McCullough wrote: “We have to value what our forebears did for us, or we’re not going to take it very seriously and it can slip away.”
I was always very proud of the work my company Polaris Media did with Dean Ford of the Modern Agency creating the BOA memorial brand, pictured below, which has a rugged defiance and whose color theme followed the Battle of the Atlantic Medal, known as the Atlantic Star.
