Commander Reuben James Rawe walks behind
Commodore J.E.A. Wey, the Nigerian Chief of Naval Staff, during a passing out
parade of one hundred non-commissioned naval personnel in April 1967 (Still
from a Reuters newsreel).
I have always wanted to piece together a sketch
of the career of Reuben James Rawe, an expatriate English naval officer of whom
I had only the skimpiest of memories from my childhood in Nigeria. But the
memories have been lightened in recent years as I discovered old newsreel
footage to do with the Nigerian Navy, an organisation within which my Father
made a career and of which Rawe helped develop from its early years. Rawe, I
have since discovered, was a participant in the Normandy invasion of
Nazi-occupied Europe, as well as a ship’s commander during the Nigerian Civil
War. He also won a libel action against a prominent author who had referred to
him in a book as a “swashbuckling mercenary.” In 2016, at age 90, Rawe was
among the ever-decreasing number of World War 2 veterans who were honoured for
their roles in the D-Day landings by receiving the Legion d'honneur medal.
The earliest
record that I have of Reuben James Rawe is among the names of temporary
Midshipmen contained in a list provided by the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve
(RNVR). A Midshipman is the lowest rank of an officer, and Rawe, who would have
been at least eighteen at the time, has his date of entry as January 20th, 1944.
Less than five months later, First Lieutenant Rawe would serve as the navigating officer on a Mark IV Landing Craft Tank (LCT 977) during the D-Day landings of June 6,
1944. His vessel had been earmarked to land at Utah Beach, a task that was
fraught with great obstacles amid the chaos of war. He offered the following
recollection to the National Museum of the Royal Navy in 2018:
As dawn broke,
we moved to our allocated area. We had a Battalion of HQ Company of the US 12th
Infantry on board commanded by a Colonel Luckett. As the first waves of troops
started their dash to the beach the Colonel got reports of how easy it was but
the beach control party had made a mistake. We were landing in the wrong place,
between the beaches scheduled as Utah and Omaha. When we got to the final
departure point 1000yds from the beach, landing was temporarily stopped. The
beach was coming under heavy fire, but the Colonel decided he had to get in and
find out what was happening. I heard later that out of the 180 men we landed,
only 27 survived the first 14 days and Colonel Luckett took over command of the
Division as the senior surviving Officer.
A photograph taken of Rawe
soon after his return to Portsmouth from Normandy in HM LCT 1051 appeared in
the Portsmouth Evening News.
Rawe stayed on in the Royal Navy until 1955 when he opted to find employment with the naval force of the
British colony of Nigeria. The role of a naval officer in West Africa is one
which appealed to some about-to-retire British naval officers and others who aspired to
nautical careers. The young Graham Greene for one nursed alternate ambitions
after completing his degree at Oxford University. One was to join the colonial
service, while the other was to join the “Nigerian Navy.”
In the 1920s,
the yet to be constituted Nigerian Naval Force was known as the colonial Marine
Department of the Royal Navy which in 1959 was redesignated as the Royal
Nigerian Navy. By 1960, the year Nigeria would obtain its independence from
Britain, the nascent navy had few Indigenous officers. In his 2019 paper titled
“Historicizing the Development and Intensification of the Nigerian Navy between
1956-1958” for the International Journal
of History and Cultural Studies, Dr. William Abiodun Duyile notes that the
navy had one Nigerian officer in the executive branch, three in the engineering
branch and five in the supply branch. “The rest of the officers were retired
Royal Navy officers.”
As was the case
with the Nigerian Army, independence brought with it a policy of rapid
“Nigerianisation.” But the necessity of foreign input through the secondments
and training teams provided by Britain and India was a given. As a “military
brat” I came to know some of these figures, officers such as Captain Ian Wright
and Commodore M.P. Singh who were around in the 1970s. Prior to them was Captain James Rawe.
Rawe appeared
not to be merely an expatriate on secondment but in fact, an integrated member
of the more or less fully indigenised naval force which had dropped the “Royal”
prefix when the nation became a republic in 1963. His promotions were announced
alongside Nigerian Navy promotions within the Nigerian government's official
gazette. For instance, he was promoted to the rank of Substantive Captain in June
1969 on the same day that Nelson Soroh was promoted to Substantive Commodore.
This, incidentally, was the same day that my Father was promoted to Substantive
Lieutenant Commander along with Ebenge Okpo and Alfred Diete-Spiff, the
military governor of the old Rivers State.
Also, whereas
British military officers recommended to receive medals on the British honours
system were referred to as been “on loan to the government of the Federation of
Nigeria”, the award of Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (M.B.E.) to
Lieutenant Commander Rawe at the beginning of 1964 referred to him as an
officer of the Royal Nigerian Navy, while the 1967 award of the Ordinary Officer of
the Military Division of the said Most Excellent Order (O.B.E.) to Commander
Rawe referred to him as an officer of the Nigerian Navy.
Newsreel clips
capture Rawe’s service at various official and ceremonial engagements usually
shadowing the Chief of Naval Staff, Commodore (later Vice Admiral) J.E.A. Wey,
to whom my Father served as Flag Lieutenant. There is film of Rawe as part of
the entourage greeting Lord
Mountbatten, then the Chief of the Defence Staff, while on
a visit to Nigeria in October 1964. Another piece of footage shows Rawe accompanying
Wey during a passing out parade
of a hundred non-commissioned naval personnel in April 1967, and in October 1968,
Rawe was part of the ceremony surrounding the award of the Nigerian Navy its
first colours by the head of the Federal Military Government Major General Yakubu
Gowon.
But Rawe’s
tasks were more than ceremonial. He engaged in steering the development of the
military capabilities of the navy during politically volatile circumstances of
the 1960s. Although the navy was not involved in the violent uprisings of
January and July 1966 which were the fruit of conspiracies within the army, the
navy gave legitimacy to the military governments formed respectively by Major
General J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi and Lieutenant
Colonel Yakubu Gowon.
With its
personnel largely drawn from the south of the country, the navy was not subject
to the intense rivalry between army officers and men from the Eastern Region
and the Northern Region. Nonetheless, the wider tensions in the country brought
about a policy of separating sailors of Igbo origin who began to be suspected
of planning a mass defection to the about-to-secede Eastern Region. Acts of
sabotage were committed on onshore equipment, as well as on electrical and electronic
equipment on almost all the ships in April 1967, with most Igbo
personnel defecting that month.
Commander Rawe
was involved in the commencement of and the maintaining of the naval blockade
instituted by Federal Nigeria against the secessionist state of Biafra which
was headed by the former military governor of the Eastern Region Lieutenant
Colonel Chukwuemeka Ojukwu. He took
command of NNS Penelope, a survey ship, which performed reconnoitring duties.
And given his experience during the Normandy Landings, it is likely that he
would have been a key advisor to Lt. Colonel Benjamin Adekunle, Commander of the Third Infantry Division, prior to the
seaborne assault on the oil terminal town of Bonny. The subsequent amphibious
landing in July 1967 was the first of its kind ever to be attempted by African troops.
Rawe was
awarded a series of medals for his services between 1966 and 1970. They include
the General Service Medal, the National Service Medal, and the Defence Service Medal.
He would also receive the Tenth Anniversary of the Republic Medal, the
Independence Medal, and the Forces Service Star Medal.
Rawe retired from the Nigerian Navy in 1970. The Official Gazette of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (No.46/Vol.57, published in August 1970) records his leaving the employ of the Ministry of Defence on March 25th 1970. On returning to England, he joined the Probation Service in Oxfordshire in the early part of 1971. The Justice of the Peace (Vol.135/Iss.47-53, Page 847) records his appointment as the Principal Probation Officer at Henley Magistrates' Court.
In April 1974,
Captain Rawe won damages and costs from the author John de St. Jorre and Hodder
and Stoughton Publishers. De St. Jorre’s book, The Nigerian Civil War which had been published in 1972, suggested
that Rawe “walked around with a heavy pistol strapped to his thigh”. The
implication that he was a soldier of fortune, or as the Sunday Telegraph report of Tuesday, April 30th, 1974, put it “a
swashbuckling mercenary", offended Rawe who showed the court that he had been a
member of the Royal Nigerian Navy and the successor Nigerian Navy for many
years prior to the war. He was represented by the barrister Leon Brittan, who
later became a prominent Tory government minister during the administration of
Margaret Thatcher.
He has lived a long life and it must have been
personally gratifying for him to have received the Legion d'honneur medal from Sylvie Bermann, the
French Ambassador to Britain, a few days before the 72nd anniversary of D-Day,
during a ceremony at the French embassy in Kensington, London.
It would be an honour and a delight to speak with him if he is still alive.
© Adeyinka
Makinde (2022).
Adeyinka
Makinde is a writer based in London, England.
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