Person    | Female  Born 5/4/1922  Died 12/2/1944

Serjeant Patricia Helen Le Poer Trench

Countries: Kenya

War dead, WW2 i

Commemorated on a memorial as having died in WW2.

Serjeant Patricia Helen Le Poer Trench

Patricia Helen Le Poer Trench was born on 5 April 1922 in Nairobi, Kenya, the younger daughter of Arthur Hugh Donald Le Poer Trench (1889-1965) and Hilda Mabel Le Poer Trench née Bradshaw (1883-1956). Her elder sister was Kathleen Muriel Le Poer Trench (1921-1999).

On 10 June 1922 she was baptised in Nairobi and the register shows her father to have been a senior coffee officer. In March 1924 she is recorded as arriving in Plymouth, Devon, with her parents and sister. They had travelled 2nd class aboard the S.S. Mantola of The British India Steam Navigation Co. Ltd line, having departed from Kilindini, Kenya. The ship's manifest shows that her father was described as a government coffee advisor and that their proposed address in the UK was to be c/o Reverend C. Bradshaw, Homesfield Vicarage, Near Sheffield, Yorkshire. It also confirmed that they intended to return to Kenya.

On 21 November 1930 she departed from the Port of London on board the S.S. Modasa of The British India Steam Navigation Co. Ltd line, with her mother and sister. The ship's manifest shows them travelling 1st class to Beira, Mozambique, that their UK address had remained as Holmesfield Vicarage, Sheffield, and that their intended future residence would be in Kenya.

She gained the rank of Serjeant in the Women's Territorial Service (East Africa), formally of the Women's Transport Service (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry), service number K/188.

On 6 February 1944 she was on board the S.S. Khedive Ismail, a liner that was being used a troopship. It formed part of Convoy KR-8 that sailed from Kilindini Harbour at Mombasa, Kenya to Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The convoy consisted of five troop transports (Khedive Ismail, City of Paris, Varsova, Ekma & Ellenga), escorted by the heavy cruiser HMS Hawkins and the destroyers HMS Petard and HMS Paladin.

In the early afternoon of Saturday 12 February 1944, a Japanese submarine sank the Khedive Ismail with two torpedoes. No fewer than 1,297 people, including 77 women, lost their lives in the two minutes it took for the Khedive Ismail to sink. Only 208 men and 6 women survived. The sinking was the third worst Allied shipping disaster of World War II and the single worst loss of female service personnel in the history of the Commonwealth of Nations. The https://www.royalmarineshistory.com/post/sinking-of-the-troopship-khedive-ismail website gives more details of the action.

She died, aged 21 years. As she has no known grave she is commemorated on Column 76 of the East Africa Memorial Kenya in the Nairobi War Cemetery, Ngong Road, Nairobi, Kenya, and on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's website

Credit for this entry to: Andrew Behan.

Comments are provided by Facebook, please ensure you are signed in here to see them

This section lists the memorials where the subject on this page is commemorated:
Serjeant Patricia Helen Le Poer Trench

Commemorated ati

Women's Transport Service (FANY)

We like the bespoke layout of this plaque: the medals, the maiden-name, the "...

Read More

Other Subjects

Mala Ashok Trivedi

Mala Ashok Trivedi

Mala Ashok Amin was born on 17 August 1953 in Narobi, Kenya. She married Ashok Trivedi in 1975 and the Civil Registration Marriage Index shows that in the 3rd quarter of 1975 a Malaben R. V. Amin w...

Person, Tragedy, Kenya

3 memorials
Robert Baden-Powell

Robert Baden-Powell

Army officer and founder of the boy scouts and girl guides. Born as Robert Stephenson Smyth Powell at 6 Stanhope Street, Paddington. His mother changed the family name to Baden-Powell after her hus...

Person, Armed Forces, Children, Community / Clubs, Seriously Famous, Afghanistan, India, Kenya, South Africa

4 memorials
Hasmukh C. Parmar

Hasmukh C. Parmar

United Kingdom citizen who died in the terrorist attacks in America on 11 September 2001. Hasmukh Chuckulal Parmar was born on 3 January 1953 in Nairobi, Kenya. He was married to his wife, Bharti...

Person, Tragedy, Kenya, USA

1 memorial
Olave Baden-Powell

Olave Baden-Powell

Born Olave Soames in Derbyshire. 1912 met Robert Baden-Powell on a trans-Atlantic ocean liner. They discovered that they shared a birthday, even if they were 32 years apart. This didn’t stop them m...

Person, Children, Community / Clubs, Kenya

1 memorial
Serjeant Beatrice Dunbar Thomson

Serjeant Beatrice Dunbar Thomson

Beatrice Dunbar Thomson was born on 2 April 1922 in Nairobi, Kenya, the younger of the two children of James Thomson (1890-1935) and Beatrice Thomson, née Dunbar (1885-1959). Her brother was James ...

Person, Kenya

War dead, WW2
1 memorial