HARRY Batley was one of the brave sailors who took part in the Battle of the Falklands during the First World War.

He served aboard HMS Kent, one of a fleet of British ships that scored a decisive victory over the Germans.

But like many servicemen, he told his family little about his encounter with the enemy in the South Atlantic in December 1914.

His son, Kenneth Batley, of Brookside, Chalgrove, writes: “My father was a young marine during this campaign and mentioned it occasionally. You know how little veterans say about their service.

“He usually mentioned it when I got a trifle dirty in the garden, likening me to the crew coaling at Iquique in Chile (the ‘Kent’ was coal-fired, of course). He said he had never seen anything so black as the crew when loading Chilean coal during the chase until he saw me come in from the garden!”

As we recalled (Memory Lane, April 27, May 4 and May 11), the German fleet tried to raid the British supply base on the Falklands, thinking there was only one British ship there.

In fact, the British fleet was larger than that of the Germans.

When the Germans realised their mistake, they fled and the British were soon in pursuit. All but two of the German ships were hunted down and sunk, with the loss of many lives. Among others on board HMS Kent was Royal Navy chaplain Norman Kent, a former pupil of the City of Oxford High School for Boys, who later wrote of his experiences in the school magazine.

Henry (Harry) Batley was the son of a Suffolk shepherd and joined the Royal Marines just before the First World War.

He took part in fighting on land in Belgium, then served on various ships, including HMS Southampton and HMS Kent.

He became a reservist when the war ended, married Lilian Harling and moved to Chalgrove, where his sister lived, in search of work.

He had three sons and one daughter while at Chalgrove, and moved to a larger house at Cuxham at Christmas 1938.

His son tells me: “In the Second World War, as an older reservist, he was attached to the DEMS (Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships) and served as a gunner on various merchant ships, finally sailing aboard the Cingalese Prince, an oil tanker, in 1941. This ship became involved in an argument with a submarine off Brazil. It lost and went to the bottom, and my father now lies in a Brazilian cemetery. His name is featured on the ‘In Memoriam’ tablet in Cuxham Church.

“He had certainly seen a lot of the world in his two world wars.”

pKenneth Batley, 88, who worked at the Pressed Steel car body factory in Cowley, was awarded the MBE in the Queen’s New Year Honours List for his work for Age Concern and other good causes in Chalgrove. He was described as a “lynchpin of the village” by Tim Stevenson, Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire.