Lieutenant, Royal Navy
Born: May 16th 1912
Died: February 18th 1944
Age at Death: 31
Killed, February 18th 1944
Percy Godfrey Openshaw was born on 16 May 1912 in Lewisham, then in Kent, to Percy Austin Openshaw, a schoolmaster who later became a headmaster and priest, and Hilda (née Jarratt). In 1935 he became a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and the next year married Ena Bayliss, who bore him two daughters, Angela and Jennifer. Shortly after his wedding he took part in the evacuation of refugees from the Spanish Civil War.
During the Second World War he was aboard the battleship HMS Resolution when she participated in the unsuccessful attempt to capture the Vichy French port of Dakar in French West Africa. The ship was torpedoed by the enemy French during the mission and was sent to the US for repair. Openshaw was reassigned to HMS Pegasus, a seaplane carrier escorting convoys. He was then assigned to HMS Penelope, a light cruiser serving in the Mediterranean, nicknamed HMS Pepperpot by her crew because of the number of holes left in her by enemy action.
On 18 February 1944 the Penelope was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine off the coast of Anzio in Italy, where the Allied forces had the previous month established a bridgehead. Only one third of the crew survived, and Openshaw was not among them. He is commemorated at the Portsmouth Naval Memorial. In a poignant postscript, his grandson, Commodore James Godfrey Higham, was the commander of the Portsmouth base at the time of Be Grateful’s publication. Shortly after beginning his duties, he found the battle-worn ensign of the doomed HMS Penelope in a storeroom.