Hamilton WWII veteran awarded Russian medal and bottle of vodka

But even he was overwhelmed when a representative of the Russian Embassy in Ottawa travelled to Hamilton Aug. 15 to award him a Russian medal and brought him flowers and a bottle of vodka.

The 90-year-old Westdale resident was given the silver Ushakov Medal for his part as a sailor with the Royal Canadian Navy in escorting merchant ship convoys in 1943 and ‘44 to the port city of Murmansk in northwest Russia, close to its borders with Norway and Finland.

Although he downplays the new medal and its significance during an interview, his daughter, Michelle, reminds him, “It was very emotional when she said you’re considered a hero in Russia.”

But the Hamilton native says to this reporter, “Don’t make a big thing of it. I was just doing my job.”

Russian diplomat Maria Kreymer sees it differently.

“He’s really a hero, I think,” she says on the phone from Ottawa.

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• Dec 31, 1969
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• Dec 31, 1969
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“These convoys guarded ships that brought food, equipment and weapons. It was a great help from the Allies for a Soviet Union that was pretty exhausted by the war efforts,” she said. “The veterans and their contributions will never be forgotten by our country … I think we owe these people our lives.”

Elliott, a signalman on the frigate HMCS Nene on loan to the Canadian navy by the British, was in a convoy (which included HMCS Haida) escorting supply ships sailing between Iceland and Nazi-occupied Norway into the Barents Sea south of the Arctic Ocean and into Murmansk.

The port city was only 160 kilometres away from the German airfields in Norway, he says.

The ships were vulnerable to attack by German U-boats (submarines) patrolling the waters there and in the rest of the North Atlantic.

The Ushakov medal is awarded to sailors who have displayed courage defending Russia or its interests.

Before the Murmansk Run, Elliott’s ship escorted three transatlantic convoys from Newfoundland to Britain and did anti-submarine patrol around the British Isles.

But it is the Murmansk convoys that stand out for him.

“If you’ve never experienced polar weather in the winter in Russia, you have no idea how cold it could get. That was the thing that worried us more than the enemy. That, and the seas. The rough seas … It was fierce,” he says.

“The Germans would send out a little spy plane … you knew when you’d been spotted and it was just a matter of time before the bombers came down.”

Elliott enlisted in the navy at 17 at the HMCS Starr in 1942.

They issued him a kit “right then and there and told me to come back at 6 o’clock to leave on the train,” he says.

“I got home and my dad said, ‘Where were you? Get your dinner.’ I said I joined the navy and I was being shipped out in a couple of hours … Geez, my old man was fit to be tied.”

Elliott says he’s lucky he and his ship survived. He witnessed others going down and says the guys who didn’t come home and those who landed at Dieppe are the real heroes.