Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Torpedoed boat’s last survivor dies from Covid-19
TRIBUTES have been paid to the last survivor of a torpedoed Second World War warship who has died after testing positive for Covid-19 at the age of 101.
Private Dennis Morley was a prisoner on the Japanese cargo liner turned warship - the Lisbon Maru when it was attacked in 1942, with the loss of more than 800 lives.
Dennis miraculously survived, but remained a prisoner of war until Christmas Day 1945.
He spent Christmas at the Gloucestershire Royal Hospital after a leg infection and a fall, and was expected to return home on December 29 – but then tested positive for coronavirus.
His condition deteriorated and he became unresponsive on New Year’s Eve before dying three days later.
Leone Coysh, Dennis’s great granddaughter, said: “I was absolutely heartbroken; we almost knew that would be the end then.
“It was about accepting fate at that point, because of his age.”
Dennis, who was a nurse at Standish Hospital in Stroud, Gloucestershire, after the war, never recovered and Leone was invited in to say her goodbyes.
She said: “It was the worst day of my life. It was horrendous.”
Leone, 24, a nurse at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital, was partly raised by Dennis from the age of nine till she was around 19.
Dennis, of Chalford, fought the virus for three more days until he died on January 3, the birthday of his
He was just an incredible man, someone that everybody loved LEONE COYSH
daughter and only child Denise Wynne.
“I took him a picture of my fourmonth-old daughter on Christmas Day, and he said he was so sad he wouldn’t get to see her grow up - he loved her to bits,” added Leone.
“He was just an incredible man, someone that everybody loved. He was so selfless - always thinking about other people.”
Leone said he often used to recall his wartime stories and described how he tried to calm his fellow prisoners and help them swim when the Lisbon Maru began sinking in 1942.
Dennis took Leone, then aged 10, with him on his 88th birthday on a trip of reconciliation to Japan, where he met former Japanese soldiers and forgave his captors.
Dennis, a bandsman and stretcher bearer in the Royal Scots 1st Battalion, was supposed to attend a memorial dedication ceremony for the victims of the Lisbon Maru at the National Memorial Arboretum in October this year.
In October 1942, the Lisbon Maru was carrying 1,816 prisoners that Japan had captured - after they took Hong Kong in December 1941 - to Japan without any markings indicating PoWs were on board, when it was shot by an American vessel.
Carnage ensued over the next 24 hours as Dennis and the other prisoners, who were left trapped below deck, tried to escape and swim away.
Japanese soldiers shot at the men in the water, only ceasing fire when local unarmed Chinese fishermen began rescuing nearly 400 of them from the sea.
Dennis, then in his 20s, spent the rest of the war in a PoW camp in Osaka, Japan, where he worked in the docks and at the airport.
He moved to Wotton-under-Edge in Gloucestershire after the war and he married twice.
His story has previously been shared on ITV News and by the BBC, when a Chinese film maker suggested salvaging the ship.
Brian Finch, who translated the book A Faithful Record of the Lisbon Maru Incident from Chinese, said: “Dennis Morley was the last known survivor of this terrible event.
“He and all those that suffered should never be forgotten. May he and they rest in peace.”