262984 Maj. Leo Noel O'Hara DSO.British Army Royal Army Medical Corps from:3 Anderson Street, Chelsea Leo O'Hara was our dad. A doctor, he was a general practitioner in Chelsea and did urology and anaesthetics at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea.
He worked on both HMS Dorsetshire and HMHS Somersetshire at different times. His diary says he was on one of these ships (we're not sure which) at the evacuation from St. Nazaire in June 1940. On the quayside, he discovered a railway wagon containing a substantial amount of France's gold, it was being loaded as a whole into the front hold. He was under orders to remain in France, a fairly harebrained idea and jumped onto the ship as it was going down the lock on its way out of St. Nazaire. He was court-martialed and demoted to captain for a while as a result. As they had gone out to sea, they had to steer around the Lancastria, which had been sunk the day before with a major loss of life.
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