The captain of the Highlander took a loudhailer and announced to the survivors on the deck: ‘We’ve got no radio, no food, no escort, and we are listing ten degrees to port. Where are we going?’
‘Back to Blighty!’ came the reply.
On the destroyer, the Havelock, the dead were laid out in lifeboats in piles like stacks of corn. One man was found to be still alive. At 10.30 at night, the captain said he was ready to move off, and that the corpses would be left in the sea. A volley was to be fired in their honour, but then it was realised that this might set off panic among survivors still in a state of shock. So the dead were buried at sea with no last salute.
Moving more slowly than usual because of her fouled propeller, the Havelock was heavily overcrowded as she headed for home. In the night, she suffered engine failure. During the repairs, heavy gear was dropped, making a loud noise that the edgy passengers took for a torpedo bursting.
Among those on board was a civilian passenger from the Lancastria called Green, who had been picked up with his young daughter by a French tug and transferred to the warship. An officer on the destroyer refused to believe that Claudine was Green’s daughter because she was speaking French.
‘You take the child and see what her reactions are,’ Green said.
The naval officer took hold of the girl who immediately started to scream and held out her arms to Green crying, ‘Daddy, daddy, daddy.’
Papers drawn up fifty-six years later for the obituary of the Havelock’s captain, Barry Stevens, who had transferred to the Highlander after his own ship’s propeller accident, contain an intriguing reference to the destroyer having carried ‘a large quantity of French government gold’ for which he was decorated by the French. But this appears to be a confusion with an earlier episode in which Stevens’ vessel had taken on bullion from a French ship.4
In all, 23,000 men left St-Nazaire in the night of 17–18 June. The biggest ship in the flotilla steaming back to England was the damaged liner, the Oronsay, with thousands on board, some of whom had swarmed up nets hung over the side. The direct hit on the Oronsay’s bridge by a German bomb at lunchtime had destroyed the chart, steering and wireless rooms, as well as breaking her captain’s leg. Holed, she was taking in water which was being extracted by the auxiliary pumps.
The captain had been told he could land the men back in St-Nazaire, but he chose to head for home, leaving at dusk. A young officer addressed the men on the deck, warning them that England was hundreds of miles away, that there was no escort, a 10-degree list to port, no food and no bridge.
Using the auxiliary steering gear, the captain sailed by a pocket compass, the sextant and a sketch map of France. Since the bomb had destroyed the wireless, a call was put out for somebody who knew semaphore to act as a signaller when she came towards the coast of England, where she picked up an escort of the heavy cruiser HMS Shropshire and a Sunderland flying boat. A soldier volunteered, but admitted that his skill was only of Boy Scout standard. He was stood down when an army signaller was found. As she pulled in to Plymouth, the Oronsay was listing so acutely that she could not berth, and the men had to be ferried ashore on small boats.
One of the smaller boats in the flotilla heading towards England was the pleasure yacht formerly owned by the Wills tobacco company, which had become HMS Oracle. She sailed without a pilot, her crew throwing down a plumb line to chart a course. At one point, they picked up a submarine sounding, and dropped depth charges, but they got back to Plymouth without any trouble. Among those on board was a small group of soldiers and the Lancastria electrician, Frank Brogden, along with the crew from another ship, the Teresias, who had rowed to safety after their vessel was sunk by bombing as she entered the estuary the previous day.
Major Fred Hahn and Colonel Suggate were late leavers after their final drive to and from Nantes. When they got to the quay they found it still packed with long lines of men. Though he considered them ‘fine chaps’, Hahn described them as ‘untrained and undisciplined’.5 Equipment had been dumped helter-skelter. When a flight of four German planes passed low overhead, the men watched them apathetically, making no attempt to get under cover. Instead of diving and spraying the soldiers with machine-gun fire, the aircraft flew on their way.
Hahn and Colonel Suggate were taken out to the 10,000-ton freighter, the City of Mobile, which was full of men. The eighteen cabin berths were reserved for nurses; armed guards were posted at the doors to make sure they were not molested. There was no food. There should have been half a pint of water per person, but soldiers had run off all the drinking water so there was none. The dining salon was crammed: some slept on the tables, some on ladders, their limbs wrapped round the rungs. Hahn noticed that some of the men pilfered the belongings of others.
The City of Mobile joined a convoy of six vessels, including a tramp steamer that had been torpedoed in the bow and had what Hahn called ‘a hole a double decker bus could have driven through’. Passage out of the estuary was delayed because the Germans had dropped parachute mines. After a Sunderland flying boat detonated them, the convoy sailed in the clear dawn sunshine at six knots – the best the holed tramp steamer could manage.
The ships kept a quarter of a mile apart from one another while a destroyer, HMS Drake, circled on submarine watch. They wended their way through minefields, guided by French pilots. There were alarms about U-boats, but only one appeared, and it was chased off by a depth charge.
At 11 a.m. on 18 June, a final flotilla of a dozen ships put to sea. The last to leave was a cargo vessel, the Harpathian. St-Nazaire was declared an open town to avoid fighting.
When news of the Lancastria disaster was brought to Churchill in the Cabinet Office, he immediately decided to suppress reports of what he called a ‘frightful incident’. In his memoirs, he explained the decision as follows: ‘I forbade its publication, saying, “The newspapers have got quite enough disaster for today at least.” I had intended to release the news a few days later, but events crowded upon us so black and so quickly that I forgot to lift the ban, and it was some years before the knowledge of this horror became public.’6
On the other side of the war, William Joyce, ‘Lord Haw-Haw’, announced the sinking of the Lancastria in his broadcast that night. But the Nazi turncoat carried little credibility though, for once, he was telling the truth.
The news for Britain was, indeed, grim during those days in the middle of June. Italy’s entry into the war on Germany’s side raised a new threat in the Mediterranean and North Africa. Meeting Mussolini in Munich, Hitler talked of the impending invasion of Britain, though he was also reported to have told the Duce that he thought the British Empire represented ‘an important factor in world equilibrium’. But, while he might harbour doubts about launching an offensive across the Channel and prefer to trust in the destructive power of the Luftwaffe, the Führer clearly envisaged reducing Britain to a subservient role while he ruled over a Nazi Fortress Europe.
The German advance in France remained remorseless. The Pétain government was pressing for an armistice, and nineteen National Assembly deputies who sailed to North Africa to continue the fight from there were promptly arrested. De Gaulle’s historic broadcast from London declaring that France had lost a battle not the war made little impression across the Channel.
‘What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over,’ Churchill told the Commons on the afternoon of 18 June.
I expect the Battle of Britain is about to begin. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science . . . Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties and so bear oursel
ves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say ‘This was their finest hour!’7
One of his prime concerns was to prevent France’s fleet falling into German hands. It had been a theme the Prime Minister had repeated to the French during the previous week, and, despite seeking an armistice, the new government seemed to be of the same opinion.
The country’s most modern warship, a still uncompleted battle cruiser called the Jean Bart, was in the construction yard at St-Nazaire. The French admiralty ordered her to sail for Morocco to keep out of German hands. The Jean Bart’s heavy guns had not yet been fitted, and her only defence was twelve machine guns, so she had to slip away before the Germans used their full aerial power against her. For their part, the British warned her commander, Captain Ronarc’h, that, if there was a risk of his ship falling into enemy hands, the Royal Navy and the RAF would attack her.
Crossing the course of the evacuation fleet, a destroyer, HMS Vanquisher, sailed to St-Nazaire with a vice admiral aboard to make sure that the French cruiser either left or was destroyed. An order was also sent from London to the Highlander to leave the convoy heading for home and to ensure the destruction of the Jean Bart if it did not put to sea. It was far from clear how this was to be achieved since it would have meant passing through two sets of lock gates or taking depth charges by hand along the quays. But dock workers and the crew of the Jean Bart got the ship out, and the men on the Highlander were greatly relieved when they received a second message saying the cruiser was making her way from port.
Not that her escape was a simple matter. When tugboats pulled the Jean Bart from the dock, the current floated her on to a sandbank. German planes launched bombing runs, hitting the deck. But the tugs pulled her free, and she made it to the open sea where she took fuel from a French tanker and steamed to North Africa.
St-Nazaire’s pain was not over. On 19 June, German planes launched a major air raid on the town’s centre, killing many people and destroying buildings along the main streets. Some locals blamed it on a group of Polish soldiers camped on a marsh outside St-Nazaire awaiting evacuation to England, who were said to have fired at a reconnaissance plane. Denise Petit of the Banque de France believed it was more of a reprisal for the way the British troops had escaped. Her own house was badly hit – not a single pane of glass was left in the windows, the balconies were torn off and the doors stood ajar. She and her mother left the town. Looters pillaged their home until a neighbour barricaded the entrance.
Some British soldiers were still in the town’s hospitals, as the Wehrmacht soon discovered. An officer and two men marched in to the convent where George Youngs and ten other soldiers lay on mattresses on the floor. The officer told the British they were prisoners and must not try to escape. ‘As long as you make no attempt to escape you will be cared for,’ he promised. ‘If you try to get away, you realise we can shoot you.’
The men were moved to a military hospital, Youngs clad in an outsized sports jacket and baggy trousers donated by a French civilian. At the new hospital, a nurse told them of a French coal ship that was trying to leave for England. There were no Germans around, and five of the British went to the quay.
Despite the intercession of locals urging him to take the soldiers on board, the captain of the collier refused to do so. People on the dock called him ‘Pig, Boche, Traitor’, but he insisted he would not sail with any foreign soldiers on board. Anyway, he was heading for Algeria, not Britain. So the five returned to the hospital, where an English-speaking priest visited them with books and got Youngs a pair of spectacles to replace those he had lost when the Lancastria went down.
Some days later, through the big window of their ward, looking out at the sea, the wounded men saw a British destroyer passing by. Helped by the nurses, they got into a Red Cross ambulance standing outside the hospital and drove off in the direction the destroyer had taken. Fortunately for them, the Germans had not moved down that stretch of coast.
The ship, the Punjabi, was among six destroyers and seven transport ships sent to rescue the Poles, who were reported to number 8000. In fact, there were only 2000 and the size of the fleet was a considerable waste of resources: once again, the British commanders were operating on the basis of faulty intelligence.
Catching up with the destroyer, Youngs and his companions hailed her. The tall, bearded captain came in close to the shore, and asked them who they were.
They shouted that they were survivors of the Lancastria.
‘How do I know that,’ the captain asked
‘You don’t’, they replied. ‘You will either have to take a chance or leave us to the Jerries.’
A small boat was sent to fetch the soldiers. Brought to the captain’s cabin to be questioned, they showed their British army papers. When they asked why he had decided to take them on, the captain said no German could have assumed Youngs’ cockney accent.
CHAPTER 11
Home
THE FIRST RESCUE SHIPS entered Plymouth Sound and other harbours in south-west England on the afternoon of 18 June. Survivors remembered how beautiful the weather was, and their relief at reaching dry land. But some were struck by the apparent indifference of their compatriots to the threat of invasion. Gazing at the shore while his ship came in along the coast, Sergeant Harry Pettit was shocked to see the number of holidaymakers on the beaches. My God, he thought, they just do not know what is in store.
A Royal Marine band in full dress uniform played popular tunes to welcome the rescue boats. People sang along. The cheering was so loud that one officer remarked: ‘You’d think we were winning this war, instead of losing it.’
On the John Holt, which had spent twenty-three hours on the voyage home, the captain took off his clothes for the first time in five days. Two weeks later, the boat set off without an escort to West Africa carrying 1090 French troops.
As the Havelock reached the Devonport naval base, Harry Pack of the RASC had a last look round to see if any of his friends were on board. He spotted Julie Delfosse, the Belgian woman he had swum with for four hours. After being picked up and put aboard a French trawler, she had found the son from whom she had been separated by the bombing of the Lancastria.
She told Pack she had been searching for him. ‘She recognised me by my eyes,’ he remembered. ‘She wanted to thank me.’
With Church Army sisters acting as interpreters, Julie asked him for his home address. Harry was reluctant to give it, but she insisted, so he did. Then she went ashore to be reunited with her husband, and spend the rest of the war with him in Lancashire.
From the dockside, people threw packets of biscuits, tins of corned beef and tins of milk to the men on the ships. A flying tin of bully beef cut open the head of one soldier.
As the men came ashore, they were met by young women holding out trays of cigarettes. The Salvation Army and Church Army and Women’s Voluntary Service distributed tea, sandwiches, fish and chips and postcards for men to write home that they were safe. The streets up from the docks were crowded with people, who emptied their pockets and handed over money, cigarettes and tobacco.
Some men arranged for telegrams to be dispatched to their homes saying they were still alive. In several cases, their parents had received messages from the authorities that their sons were missing in France, and were thought to have died. A chaplain sent a telegram to the parents of the Lancastria electrician, Frank Brogden, reporting that he had survived – they had previously been told he was thought to have been killed. When Joe Sweeney got home and rang the bell, his father turned pale as he opened the door: he and his wife had received a telegram from the War Office saying their son was missing in action and presumed dead.
The evacuated troops in best condition from the final episode of the evacuation of Operation Aerial went ashore first. Those from the Lancastria were kept till last; nobody wanted too many people to know what had happened.
Going down the gangplank, one man lost his balance after tre
ading on the trailing edge of the blanket wrapped round a soldier in front of him. Two nurses grabbed him, and tried to lead him to a First World War ambulance with canvas sides. The more he resisted, the more convinced they were that he was suffering from shock. Eventually, he got away from them, and joined his comrades heading for a barracks building nearby.
On the quay, evacuees from the Havelock lined up to give three cheers for the destroyer’s crew. The sailors cheered back. ‘It was a moving moment,’ Harry Pack recalled. ‘Then we marched off – barefoot and filthy.’
Helpers lit cigarettes for men who were shaking so violently that they could not do so themselves. The badly wounded were carried into a fleet of ambulances, and given morphine.
While the wounded were treated in hospital, others were taken to naval barracks where they bathed and shaved. After that, they tucked into a huge meal of fish and chips washed down with mugs of tea. Some were directed to a school for deaf and dumb children. Members of the Lancastria’s crew went to the Seamen’s Mission. The wireless truck driver, Leonard Forde, who had rowed out to a rescue ship, was billeted in a girls’ school whose pupils had been hurriedly evacuated to make room for them. The men were amused to see a notice above an electric bell push reading: ‘IF IN NEED OF A MISTRESS RING THIS BELL’!
Many survivors were bizarrely dressed in what clothes they had been able to get on the rescue ships. Some had only newspapers wrapped round them. Harry Pettit wore underpants and half a blanket. George Thomson, a 36-year-old NCO, walked ashore with two other survivors: none of them had any clothes. A woman relief worker asked if they would like a cup of tea. ‘I’d rather have a pair of trousers,’ Thomson replied. He was given a pair of sailor’s bell bottoms, a Wasps rugby vest and a squadron leader’s jacket.
The Sinking of the Lancastria Page 18