Name
Ronald Arthur Kentfield
Conflict
Second World War
Date of Death / Age
23/03/1944
34
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Steward Hairdresser
Merchant Navy
M.V. Ettrick (London)
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
GOLDERS GREEN CREMATORIUM
Panel 2.
United Kingdom
Headstone Inscription
NA
UK & Other Memorials
Hitchin Town Memorial, Hitchin Roll of Honour 1939 – 1945 (Book) St Mary’s Church, Hitchin
Biography
He had been a member of the crew of the ‘Ettrick’ which was a P & 0 liner of 11,279 tons built in 1938. The vessel served as an auxiliary transport during the Allied landings in French North Africa in November 1942. It was on the homeward voyage in convoy on the 15th November 1942 when it was torpedoed by a German submarine 150 miles west of Gibraltar. Eighteen naval ratings and six Indian members of the crew were killed and four men were injured. The German U-Boat U.155 commanded by K.K. Piening made a single attack with four torpedoes on convoy MK1, sinking the Escort Carrier ‘Avenger’, the Troop Transport ‘Ettrick’ and damaging the Transport ‘Almaak’.
Ronald was probably one of those wounded but he did not succumb until March 1944.
He is remembered on Panel 2 of the Golders Green Crematorium Memorial.
His parents were William Thomas and Lily Kentfield, and he was the husband of Linda Amelia Kentfield of Hitchin.
Acknowledgments
David C Baines – ‘Hitchin’s Century of Sacrifice’, ‘Dictionary of Disasters at Sea’ by C. Hocking, ‘U-Boat Operations in the 2nd World War' by K. Wynn
