Lieutenant John Michael Humfrey MASSE (87296)
B Section, 1st Divisional Petrol Company, Royal Army Service Corps

Date of birth: 10th November 1918
Date of death: 28th May 1940

Killed in action aged 21
Commemorated on the Dunkirk Memorial Column 132
John Michael Humfrey Massé was born on at Ealing the 10th of November 1918 the only child of Lieutenant Colonel Charles Henri Massé MC, Royal Army Service Corps, and Helen (nee Caithness) of West Hagley, Farnborough in Hampshire and later of Lansdown in Bath.

He was educated at the Junior King’s School from September 1927 and at the King’s School Canterbury, where he was in Holme House, from September 1932 to July 1935. On leaving school he went to work in the Lloyd’s insurance market during which time he enlisted as a Private in the Honourable Artillery Company.

He was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Army Service Corps in the Supplementary Reserve of Officers on the 22nd of April 1939 and was appointed as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Army Service Corps on the 13th of October 1939. He proceeded to France where he joined the 1st Divisional Supply Column. He was posted to the 1st Division Petrol Company, Royal Army Service Corps and joined them in the field at Corbehem on the 28th of February 1940 where he was placed in command of the Headquarters Section. In May 1940 he was placed in command of B Section.

Following the German invasion and the subsequent retreat he was one of six hundred and forty allied troops who were evacuated from Bray Dunes at Dunkirk on board the destroyer HMS Wakeful (H88).

At 12.36am on the morning of the 28th of May 1940 HMS Wakeful, under the command of Commander Ralph Lindsay Fisher RN, was approaching the Kwinte Whistle Buoy having just passed through the Noord Pass some 13 miles off Nieuport and was increasing her speed from 12 to 20 knots. She had commenced zig zagging when Fisher spotted two torpedo tracks in the water 150 metres off the starboard bow and shouted "Good God! Hard to port". The first torpedo, which had been fired by the German E Boat S-30, under the command of Oberleutnant Wilhelm Zimmermann, missed the bow but the second one hit the forward boiler room causing the ship to explode, break in two and sink in fifteen minutes. The evacuated soldiers were asleep below decks and there was only one survivor among their number. Twenty five of the crew survived including Commander Fisher.

He is commemorated on the war memorial at Lloyd's of London.
Holme House

Back