Nova Scotia/Nunavut Command of The Royal Canadian Legion www.ns.legion.ca 31 Denis was born in East Finchley, Middlesex County, England on 11 May 1924, he was the son of the late Standbridge Mark and Emily Maud (Dyer) Jarvis. As a teenager he earned a scholarship and was schooled at the Christ College, London. He joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in 1941, at the age of 17, and started his service on a corvette. While aboard the corvette he did a convoy run to Russia and one to Canada. His last corvette trip was to the western Mediterranean where his ship was attacked by German bombers. During that attack Denis was a gunner on one of the anti-aircraft guns. Two of his friends, who were assisting him on the gun as ammunition carriers, were killed. His damaged ship was taken into a dry dock for repairs. While on shore leave, he saw a notice that the navy was looking for volunteers for special operations and that included extra pay (he thought that was bonus enough for him). Denis joined the naval special forces and served briefly in a RN Commando unit before, at age 19, he was called into a ‘closed door’ meeting to be interviewed by a naval commander. The senior naval officer made note of the fact that Denis had been an accomplished swimmer while in school. He then offered Denis a position in a classified ‘service’ of the Royal Navy. The young ordinary seaman was not given any details about the position, except that it came with a commission and some ‘extra-pay.’ He suspected the job the navy was offering was with the Chariot manned torpedo program. Denis accepted the offer and a few weeks later the newly minted SubLieutenant Denis Jarvis, RNVR, found himself in the service of the Midget Submarine (X-craft) program – not as a chariot operator but as an x-craft diver. He was soon off to Lock Erisort on the Isle of Lewis, in Scotland, for specialized training. Much of his x-craft training was in Holy Loch near Glasgow. On 16 October 1944, Denis married Helen Findley Andrews of Port Glasgow, Scotland. The X-Craft (aka ‘midget submarine’) held a maximum crew of four. They were tasked with clandestine assessments of potential breaches for assaulting forces (this was accomplished by the divers collecting soil/sand samples from the beaches); acting as navigational beacons to help the invasion fleets; and entering enemy-held harbors to destroy infrastructure, sink enemy warships by laying/detonating explosive charges on the harbour floor beneath them, and cutting telephone/telegraphic under-sea cables. Denis Victor Mark Jarvis continued ...
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