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Naval World War II bomb disposal expert Boyd dies aged 100

That bomb disposal/neutralisation work came to an end when a large device detonated around 20 metres away from him; the blast embedded a chunk of shrapnel in his stomach.   It put an end to his career – recuperation took years, but also led to a long (64 years) and happy marriage for Boyd fell for one of his physiotherapists, Jacqueline.  In civvy street he became a chartered engineer and settled with his family in Lymington, where he enjoyed playing golf and painting.  He remained active into the final months of his life – he celebrated his 100th birthday with a 40-minute helicopter flight over the Solent, visited the modern-day home of RN diving/bomb disposal on Horsea Island (divers replaced his set of missing wartime medals) and he helped launch Lymington’s annual poppy appeal.  He died shortly before Christmas and his remarkable life was celebrated by fellow residents of the Lymington care home where he spent his final years.
2 January 2025
We have lost one of the last links with brave men who sought to make post-war Europe safe with the passing of Boyd Salmon at the age of 100.

Mr Salmon was one of the last surviving members of specialist Royal Navy teams of bomb disposal/mine warfare experts neutralising the vast quantities of unexploded ordnance which littered former battlegrounds.

He had originally joined the Navy as a rating, aged 17, and served on Atlantic convoys as well as in the Mediterranean before being selected to become an officer, commissioning on Trafalgar Day 1944.

In the wake of the liberating allied armies, the Royal Navy’s Enemy Mining Section moved in to clear harbours and ports of unexploded ordnance and booby traps left by the retreating German forces – who were determined to prevent the use of facilities in Cherbourg, Le Havre and Antwerp to the Allies, whose supply lines continued to extend back to the Mulberry Harbour in Normandy.

Among those performing the dangerous task was then Sub Lieutenant Boyd Salmon, who volunteered for RMS duties before he knew what the acronym stood for: Render Mines Safe.

When he completed his training – split between the South Coast and Cumbria – he was dispatched to Normandy to tackle ordnance on Sword Beach before moving on to the Dutch island of Walcheren, liberated thanks in no small part to the Royal Marines in the autumn of 1944.

That bomb disposal/neutralisation work came to an end when a large device detonated around 20 metres away from him; the blast embedded a chunk of shrapnel in his stomach. 

It put an end to his career – recuperation took years, but also led to a long (64 years) and happy marriage for Boyd fell for one of his physiotherapists, Jacqueline.

In civvy street he became a chartered engineer and settled with his family in Lymington, where he enjoyed playing golf and painting.

He remained active into the final months of his life – he celebrated his 100th birthday with a 40-minute helicopter flight over the Solent, visited the modern-day home of RN diving/bomb disposal on Horsea Island (divers replaced his set of missing wartime medals) and he helped launch Lymington’s annual poppy appeal.

He died shortly before Christmas and his remarkable life was celebrated by fellow residents of the Lymington care home where he spent his final years.

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