D-Day 80 The Last Veterans: Mary Holley

Mary Holley, Age 100, Royal Navy spouse

Interviewed 15 November 2023

Working in a firm helping the war effort, Mary Holley met her late husband Roy before he joined the Royal Navy and was sent to the Far East with the battleship HMS Frobisher.

They married two months before D-Day when he came home on leave. 

She said: "D-Day was coming up. They had seven days and that was that. He came home on  Monday and we married on Wednesday and then he went back to his ship on the second Monday."

Mrs Holley, like others, suspected some military operation was about to happen and that her new husband’s ship had returned.

"Before D-Day - months before - the whole of the South coast was cordoned off," she said.

"And only people who lived or worked there could go. We all suspected. I knew he was on Frobisher, I knew she was a cruiser so she would have been up in the forefront.

"They were in the bombardment of Gold Beach each and it must have worked because he was one of the signalmen sent ashore. I don’t know how, presumably by tender. To set up a signal station on the beach.

"It must of been after that that she was torpedoed. 

"And they thought she was going to sink so the order was given that they should abandon ship. With Roy you only heard the funny stories. He was below somewhere and had to make his way up to deck. He picked up someone’s breakfast left on someone’s plate so he went into the sea carrying someone’s breakfast.

"I don’t know how long they were in the sea. But the one thing he did say about it was about the oily water they swallowed. So the ship didn’t sink.

"And they were considered safer on board than in the sea. I don’t know what they did in the sea because if a ship was going down you got away from it because you didn’t want to be sucked in with all the water. So they must have been some way away from the ship.

"They were picked up again and climbed back on board and she made her way back to her station.

"I was anxious a bit but not worried. It was probably fool’s whatever but nothing was going to happen to Royston. He was coming home. That was that.

"That was all that could keep you going really."

Following a happy marriage, Roy died in 2014.

Mrs Holley is now a resident with Royal Star & Garter, a charity providing care to veterans and their partners living with disability.

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