Harv

IT helped launch the sea borne invasions of North Africa, Sicily and France. But over the years the memories have rusted, to be replaced by holiday snapshots of a world at peace.

The tide of history, however, was baulked yesterday by a most unlikely Canute - a 71-year-old retired teacher who has led a campaign to erect a memorial to the Second World War base at Rosneath, near Helensburgh, which played a huge and now almost forgotten part in the Allied victory.

The base was closed in 1948 and is now the site of a holiday camp and residential area. Almost no sign of what took place during the war has been left standing.

However, Mr. Dennis Royal, who saw the base in action as a boy, wanted to make sure future generations could learn about what happened there so he began a campaign to have a memorial erected on the site.

Mr. Royal was partly motivated by watching the 50th anniversary of the D-Day landings on TV.

He said: "I watched but there was hardly anything about the Clyde, yet it was very important. The TV footage was pretty biased to the south coast of England and the part it played."

The Rosneath base was built by American civilian contractors and US Navy civil engineers in 1941 and 1942. It began by serving as a turn-around point for ships protecting the movement of convoys in the North Atlantic, servicing and repairing them.

Mr. Royal said: "It had extensive machine tools, a tank farm that stored 200,000 gallons of fuel oil, a 600-bed hospital, ammunition dump, and facilities for 5000 men.

"With the decision to invade Vichy French North Africa, the base became a staging and training base for US amphibious forces. After the success of the invasion, the base was handed over to the Royal Navy with the exception of the area used by Subron 50, a US Navy submarine squadron.

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