On this day in 1941, Charles ‘Charlie’ Holder (1912-1941) died in Egypt when a ship – in which he was helping to guard about 1,000 German and Italian prisoners of war – was attacked and sunk by a German U-boat.
Charlie was a private in the 1st Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry when he was found drowned on December 23, 1941. He was 29.
On January 17, 1942, The Merthyr Express reported that Charlie’s parents – who lived at 74, Bryntaf, Aberfan – had been notified by the War Office that he was ‘missing, believed drowned as a result of enemy action while disembarking in the Middle East’.
On May 9, 1942, the newspaper reported that Charlie’s parents had now been officially notified that their son had died.
‘Originally, it was announced that he was missing, believed drowned. Then it was reported that he had been located in hospital,’ said The Merthyr Express.
‘Finally, his wife and parents received a letter from a padre stating that Holder’s body had been found on the seashore east of Sollum – a harbourside town along the Egyptian-Libyan coast of the Mediterranean Sea – and buried with military honours.’
Charlie was among 40 soldiers of Durham Light Infantry guarding prisoners of war in SS Shuntien when she was attacked by the German U-boat 559 in the Mediterranean at 7pm on December 23, 1941.
Shuntien, a coastal passenger and cargo ship converted into a Defensively-Equipped Merchant Ship (DEMS) during the war before being turned into a prison ship, was on the way to Alexandria in Egypt from Tobruk in Libya.
A torpedo from the U-boat blew off the stern of Shuntien, killing her captain, four officers and chief steward. She sank within five minutes.
A convoy escort – HMS Salvia – rescued 100 survivors from the Shuntien, including the master, 46 of the ship’s officers and men, soldiers of the Durham Light Infantry and a number of prisoners.
In the early hours of December 24, another German submarine – U-boat 568 – torpedoed Salvia about 100 miles west of Alexandria, breaking her in two. All those aboard – including survivors of the Shuntien – died.
It is believed that Charlie died in the attack on Shuntien, but he may have been one of the survivors aboard Salvia when she was torpedoed.
Charlie is remembered on the Alamein British Memorial in Egypt.
Paul Roberts
NOTES
Charlie was the son of James Holder (1885-1955) and Annie Eliza Arscott (1887-1974). Annie was the daughter of Charles Arscott (1858-1926) and Emma Courtney Turner (1854-1899). Charles was the son of Samuel Arscott (1814-) and Mary Ann Courtney (1815-). Samuel was the brother of John Arscott (1807-1879), my great-great-grandfather.
Born on July 18, 1912 in Merthyr Tydfil, Charlie married Phyllis Maud Dolby (1918-1999) in 1938 in Windsor, Berkshire. In 1939, he was a bus conductor, living with Phyllis in Maidenhead.
Picture below
The Alemain Memorial. Picture taken on September 10, 2003 by Roland Unger (CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AlameinCommCemet6.jpg
