1.
May 31, 2010

I stumbled across your web site because occasionally I look for things about my father and the places and things he did during his time in the Royal Navy.

My father was a seaman on the HMS Exeter between 1937 and 1940. He was in service during the Battle of the Rio de la Plata (that is the way crew members of the HMS Exeter referred to what I see written in English as the River Plate, and sometimes erroneously as other names).

Of course all of my life, I have had the privilege of hearing all his stories of that glorious and dangerous time of the Hero Generation.

Horace Samuel Cooper's heroic participation in the war against Fascism did not end with the Exeter, although he was lucky to transfer to other ships and shore establishments before the Exeter was repaired and took off for it's terrible fate in the Java Sea against the might of Imperial Japan. My father saw service on the HMS Kenya in the Maltese naval theatre, and along the Norwegian coast when protecting the supply route to Soviet allies in Murmansk and Arkangel. He took part in the commando raids against the Quisling's Norway. He also was part the RN's patrols in Icelandic waters. And he between ships he was stationed at many shore establishments throughout the British Isles.

After the War, he left war-ravaged England for a new life in the Union of South Africa ... there was no future in England, especially since our family's homes in Sheffield had been bombed, and my surviving relatives lived for many years in quanset huts provided by the post-War Labour government. Dad boarded a Belgian freighter in Antwerp and disembarked at Lobito Bay, Angola in 1948. He travelled across the Belgian Congo via Northern Rhodesia and down to Johannesburg, South Africa, where I was born in 1950.

Seeing all your photographs of the HMS Exeter and the Admiral Graf Spee was a great delight to me, and it has prompted me to thank you for posting them on the World Wide Web. They complement the collection I already have which also includes the HMS Exeter's official photographic album that all crew members of the HMS Exeter received upon completion of their tours.

My father died a few years ago, and he would have been pleased and proud to see what you have done in honour of his comrades of the Hero Generation.

Thank you ever so much.

Met vriendelijke groeten ...

Dave Cooper
Amsterdam, The Netherlands