A wartime seaman who served on the Arctic Convoys has received his campaign medal.

Harry Broadbent, 89, of Rastrick, served aboard HMS Jamaica in his late teens.

HMS Jamaica was part of a fleet deployed to protect shipping convoys between the UK and North Russia during the Second World War.

Widower Harry, who has two children, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, braved appalling conditions and sub-zero temperatures out at sea.

He was a gunner aboard the Jamaica and admitted he knew little about what to expect when he signed up. We were only 18 or 19. I don’t think any of us as raw recruits – whether we were Army, Navy or Airforce – really knew what it was all about. My abiding memory of the convoys was the atrocious weather, mountainous seas and icy conditions.”

The Arctic Star is awarded to members of the British armed forces or Merchant Navy who served on the convoys.

It is a retrospective award formally approved by the Queen and medals went into production early this year.

Harry applied for his Arctic Star when he read about it in a magazine and was a bit puzzled as to why it took so long for the seamen to be honoured.

“It must be a slow process,” he said.

World war II veteran, Harry Broadbent who is one of the three crew members in the top right of the picture on his ship during the Russian Convoy in 1943
World war II veteran, Harry Broadbent who is one of the three crew members in the top right of the picture on his ship during the Russian Convoy in 1943