Lieutenant George Butler Honour 1918 –2002

George Honour was born at Bristol and joined the Royal Navy when war broke out in 1939, serving in small ships in the Mediterranean. He volunteered for hazardous duties, which proved to consist of commanding a midget submarine. These vessels had a 4-man crew, were powered by the same Gardner diesel engines used in London buses, and must have been one of the most uncomfortable craft ever devised. For rest, the crew used in turn a single narrow bunk, and if they turned over carelessly in their sleep, risked electrocution. The only means of heating food was in the control room, where the contents of a single tin could be heated..
In this alarming vessel, George Honour and his crew were submerged for 64 hours off the French coast, just before D-day, their vigil increased by the 24-hour postponement of the invasion ordered by General Eisenhower because of rough weather. Their task was to act as a navigation marker off Sword beach, and required them to erect an 18 foot high navigation beacon on the casing of the submarine in rough seas and in full view of the German defences. Incredibly they survived, and Honour was awarded the DSC, his citation concluding that his report of proceedings “was a masterpiece of understatement reading like the deck log of a ship in harbour in peacetime”
George Honour lived for some years at Pemberton Cottage, Mathon.