STEETON boy John Henry Parnell joined the renowned Royal Marines when he enlisted a year into the First World War.
But the Lancashire-born millworker ended up having a quiet war at a Royal Navy depot on the coast of Ireland.
He was part of the crew of a former corvette HMS Royalist, renamed HMS Colleen and used as a hulk receiving ship at Queenstown in County Cork.
John was born in Oldham in 1894 and six years later was living in Hawkcliffe Cottage, Steeton. At the age of 16 he lived in Long Lee and worked as an assistant timekeeper at a mill making textile machinery.
In 1915 John enlisted in Manchester, while working as a labourer at a Lancashire foundry, and following training in Plymouth embarked on HMS Colleen.
In 1917 he married Beatrice Craven in Keighley, and finished the war on Portsmouth depot ship HMS Victory.
One mystery surrounds John’s war service: an entry on his record marked British Expeditionary Force France October 25, 1918 states “wounds and hurts, Special Services”.
Nobody on HMS Colleen was listed as being killed or injured during the war.
Both John and his ship survived the war, with HMS Colleen being transferred to the Irish government in 1923 and being broken up in 1950.
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