The torpedo timer

I'm not big on military memorabilia but this set of photographs alongside what looked like a pocket watch in the antique shop window caught my interest today. The labels say
Only 118* German midget submarines used during WW2. This is the torpedo timer captured by Wilfred Perry after D Day landings
There's Wilfred on the right in civvies with a very suave hairstyle and on the left he's with fellow naval officers/ratings. Above is a group photo of Class 216 of HMS Royal Arthur a naval assessment and training centre that was housed in the Butlins holiday camp at Skegness for the duration of the war; below are a couple of snaps of, I presume, the captured midget sub from which the timer was pocketed.

I hadn't heard of midget submarines and when I looked them up I was horrified to read about the conditions in which the German sailors who manned them worked. Only big enough for a tiny crew of one or two men, they operated from a mother ship and would be deployed for specific missions lasting a few hours or maybe days. There was no space for a toilet so the crew would be fed a low-fibre diet beforehand and issued only with energy tablets to sustain them for the duration of the deployment. Being so small the subs would be tossed about in the sea by depth charges and waves, with sea sickness an inevitable consequence - but there was nowhere to vomit except in the bilges. The nauseous miasma often masked the onset of another hazard, carbon dioxide poisoning which led to confusion, unconsciousness and death. Many pilots died from suffocation or simply became disorientated and lost and with no way of communicating vanished without trace. The crew were mainly volunteers from different branches of the navy but the survival rate for even a single mission was very low. You can find the full details here but basically it seems that these men were sealed into a metal canister, submerged, fired upon and shaken around their own poo and puke with no food, air or direction home.

I should add that the German navy was not the only one to use midget subs and for all I know conditions may have been similar elsewhere. Nor do I know whether Wilfred Perry was a local man or what became of him. However, by coincidence, a former member of the German navy was a near neighbour and friend of ours until his death last year. Werner was as tough as old boots: a U-boat volunteer he was bombed at sea and drifted in the water for several days with severe wounds before being picked up. As a POW in Wales he fitted easily back into the farming life he knew, stayed on, married and became a well-liked member of the local community, much mourned when he died at the age of 87. He was a survivor, not only of war but of the notion of enmity, living out a peaceful and productive life among his former 'enemies'. Not many of the midget submariners had that opportunity it seems and yet here is the timer that one of them handled, in a shop on Fishguard Square.

*According to what I found there were many more than this.