Jack Green
Date of birth: 1919
Date of death: 17.6.1943
Area: Knottingley
Regiment: Royal Engineers
Family information: Husband of Vera Green nee Austwick
Rank: Sapper
Service number: 2157806
War Service
Jack Green was serving with 994 Docks Operating Company, Royal Engineers when he was killed on 17th June 1943 age 24.
Troops of 994 Dock operating Company, Royal Engineers, were on board SS Yoma from Sfax to Alexandria for kitting out for Sicily. SS Yoma was a passenger / cargo liner for troop carrying and was in convoy with 4 more ships when at 7.30am, when most men were at breakfast, it was torpedoed by submarine U81 near Derna, off Cyrencia, Libya. The ship sank stern first in 5 minutes and 451 of the 1,670 troops on board were killed. Bodies of many of those killed were never recovered, simply recorded as “missing, presumed dead.” Many next of kin were not officially notified until the following February.
He is commemorated on the Brookwood 1939 – 45 Memorial in Surrey, panel 6 column 1.
Pontefract & Castleford Express 3rd March 1944 p5 (with photo)
“PRESUMED KILLED
Mrs Green, formerly Miss Vera Austwick of Knottingley, has received notification from the War Office that her husband Sapper Jack Green of the Royal Engineers, must be presumed killed in action at sea in June 1944. Sapper Green was stationed in North Africa and is believed to have lost his life in an attack on the voyage to Sicily.”
Family Life
Jack Green was born in the first quarter of 1919 and his birth was registered at Pontefract. He was the son of Jack Green and Gertrude (nee Huckerby) who married on 23rd March 1913 at St Botolph’s Church, Knottingley. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission says that he was the son of Jack and Alice so perhaps his father remarried after Gertrude died in 1939.
Jack himself married Vera Austwick and their marriage was registered in the third quarter of 1940 at Pontefract. They had a son, Roy, born 16th April 1942, when Jack was shown as a Bricklayer of Weeland Road, Knottingley.
Brookwood 1939 - 45 Memorial
