The Sinking of the Lancastria
Page 19
As Joe Sweeney walked down the gangway, a big cheer went up and everybody started laughing. He looked round to see what was so funny, and then realised that it was the sight of him in the too-small clothes he had been given by the girl in the street in St-Nazaire and had ripped apart to accommodate his body. At the marine barracks, he was handed boots a size too small for him – they were the biggest available. It was seven months before he got a pair that fitted him, and he suffered in-growing toenails as a result.
Sergeant Major Picken was still in the pyjama bottoms and butcher’s apron he had taken from a cupboard on a French trawler. He recorded being ‘smuggled in’ to Plymouth among columns of ‘well uniformed chaps’. ‘From our red, weathered faces, many people thought we were Gurkhas!’ he added.
As Fred Coe shuffled along the street covered in a blanket, an ‘extremely attractive’ young woman approached him and led him to her home. There she gave him an Ever Ready single-blade safety razor, soap and a toothbrush while her mother provided soup and her father handed over clothes, including trousers that were six inches too short.
Captain Griggs went to a telephone box to call his family, who had not heard from him for more than a month. He told them that he was ‘sound in wind and limb’. Then he used money in the wallet he had kept on him to buy new clothes.
After he had been issued with clothing, the one thing Bill Slater of the Pay Corps wanted was a beer. He had no British money, but he got ten francs from a friend, ordered a pint and handed over the French note. By the time the till was rung, he had drunk half the glass – and then he got tuppence change.
Sidney Dunmall paused at the quayside to fill up one of the letter cards to be sent to their families being handed out by the Salvation Army. ‘I am well, am back in the UK,’ he wrote. Then he got into a coach and was driven to a barracks where he and his colleagues feasted on roast beef and rice pudding before being taken on to Crown Hill Fort above Plymouth for a good night’s sleep.
Jim Skeels had been given a smart uniform with gold braid by a marine gunner on the trip back from St-Nazaire. As the soldier walked down the gangplank at Plymouth, with his new uniform partly unbuttoned, two burly marines took him by the arms, lifted him off the ground and hustled him into a naval lock-up. An officer told him he had contravened regulations – ‘A marine, even if he is dying, must have all buttons fastened.’ Skeels got a message to his commanding major in the army who came and had him released, giving the marine officer a flea in his ear.
Denis Maloney, the sailor from the Highlander who had led the rescue of forty people in a lifeboat, also had trouble after landing. Initially, he and two mates were ignored when they arrived at Devonport, stinking and filthy with oil. They went to a barracks parade ground covered with people lying wherever they could. There, Maloney and his companions were each given an advance of five shillings against their pay.
Maloney went to a pub and drank a few pints of beer. When he came out into the street, he had gone only a hundred yards when he ran into a naval police patrol, who asked him where his gas mask was. They frogmarched him back to the barracks, and kept him under detention for the night. He expected to be court-martialled for leaving his ship without orders. Instead, the officers lined up to shake his hand. Later, however, an officer wrote on his papers, ‘this man needs supervision’.
When the convoy that included the City of Mobile arrived in Plymouth, the men on board, who had been without food or water since leaving France, pushed aside the guards on a tender that came alongside with supplies. They grabbed the bread and ham, and set the water pump operating. Fred Hahn described them as ‘thirst mad animals’. He, himself, went on to Southampton where he called his wife, Betty, from a telephone box.1
‘Hallo, Fred,’ she said. ‘I knew you wouldn’t drown. Have a lovely trip?’
‘Lovely,’ he replied. ‘Sea as smooth as a mill pond and fine sunny weather. How’s the kids?’
Another man on the City of Mobile, who had been irritatingly jittery on the voyage about submarines and mines, had a less welcoming reception when he telephoned home. According to Hahn, his father told him, ‘you white-livered bastard. I hope I never see you again’, and rang off.
A young woman, Muriel Hooper, of King Street in Plymouth, stood in the street with her autograph book, asking survivors to sign it.
‘There will always be an England,’ wrote one man from the RASC.
‘Up and at ’em,’ added another.
A sapper wished Miss Hooper, ‘Good luck and all best wishes.’
Another man chose to draw a map of Holland.
Six decades later, Miss Hooper’s autograph book lies among Lancastria memorabilia at the RAF station at Digby in Lincolnshire, home of the 73rd squadron which lost so many men on the liner.
When the Duggan family arrived in Plymouth from Brest on a cross-Channel steamer escorted by a minesweeper, they were held up for John’s Bedlington terrier to be put into quarantine. That settled, Eddie Duggan went to try to get hotel rooms, but was turned away because he did not have enough English money. He rejoined the other civilians who had come over on the steamer, and they pooled their cash. Duggan took it to a big hotel where they got rooms at last.
Thirteen-year-old Emilie Legroux, who had been taken from a raft on to a rescue ship, was looked after in Plymouth by an Englishwoman from the Fairey Aviation branch there. Her mother and 11-year-old brother were housed in a refugee centre. Before long, Madame Legroux found her daughter, and the three of them tucked up in bed at a Salvation Army hostel. Later, they went to London and visited Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus before settling in Hayes, Middlesex.
Isobella Macclaine Bowden, from Padstow in Cornwall, was working with the Red Cross in Plymouth when the survivors were brought ashore. She collected the letters they had written to say they were safe, and took them to the main post office which stayed open past midnight to handle the traffic. She also got home telephone numbers from some of those who had escaped the disaster, and placed calls during the night.
‘I can’t tell you who I am or where I am,’ she said. ‘But I have spoken to your husband (or boyfriend, father, brother). He’s in England safe and sound and will be contacting you.’
In some cases, there was a silence at the other end of the line, and then a scream loud enough to wake the whole household, and a cry of ‘He’s home; he’s safe.’ Others just whispered, ‘Thank you, thank you.’
Men who were taken to leave Plymouth by train were not told where they were heading; only the engine drivers knew that.
A detachment at the foot of the slope leading to the station looked so exhausted that it seemed they would not be able to stagger up with their rifles. A very young-looking lieutenant called them to attention, and gave the order to march. To cheers from onlookers, the men moved up the slope as though they were at their depots.
On the platform, a young soldier raced forward and grabbed a young woman from the Red Cross who was collecting letters from those boarding the train. He whooped with joy as he took her by the waist, swung her round and kissed her to a roar of laughter from the other soldiers. Then he politely apologised. He explained that, while leaving France, he had told himself that, if he got back to England, he would kiss the first pretty girl he saw.
There was a pleasant surprise at the station for Morris Lashbrook. Standing there when his unit assembled was his friend, ‘Chippy’ Moore, from whom he had been separated after they jumped together from the Lancastria.
In the evening, a dance was held with ladies from the WRAF; but most of the men just wanted to sleep, usually on the floor of military establishments in the town. Later, they remembered how wonderful it was to lie on a mattress with clean white sheets.
Others spent the night in pubs. In one, some of the Highlander’s crew met soldiers they had brought home, and they all made a night of it, singing and celebrating as they drank.
More decorously, in his new clothes, Captain Griggs had dinner at the house of the
chief of the naval barracks where he stayed the night.
Barry Stevens, who had transferred from the Havelock to the Highlander, went to give a report to the commander in Devonport. Before he could do so, he passed out on the spot. Waking the next morning in a bed at Admiralty House, he was told by the commander that he obviously needed leave – he was given forty-eight hours.
In the main hospital, a young man lay in bed looking intently around him, but saying nothing. When the nurse, Isobella Macclaine Bowden, came round to collect outgoing mail from the patients and to wish them good night, the man in the next bed explained that his neighbour was Greek and spoke no English. The nurse clasped her hands and put them under her cheeks, closed her eyes and said, ‘Sleep well.’ When she opened her eyes, she saw the young man sitting up in bed, holding up one hand and pointing one finger. ‘One sleep, no good,’ he said. Then ‘two sleep, ah’ and he threw his arms round himself in a warm embrace.
Walking round a shed on the dockside, Harry Grattidge bumped into the Chief Engineer from the Lancastria, whom he had believed dead on the ship. Grattidge was still in the corporal’s jacket and woollen underwear he had been given on the rescue ship. The engineer was clad only in an old patrol jacket. The two men pumped hands and, the Chief Officer recorded, ‘grinned at one another like fools unable to speak’.2
On his return, Alan Brooke recorded that he ‘thanked God for again allowing us to come home. I also thanked God that the expedition which I had hated from the start was over.’3
From the day he had arrived in France, he had seen that the battle on the continent had been lost, and that what mattered was to get as many men back to Britain as possible. Now what his biographer would describe as his ‘vision . . . of a beaten France and of only Britain resurgent’ had become reality.4
Brooke went to naval headquarters at Admiralty House in Plymouth, had tea, a bath and dinner – and took the midnight train to London, which was late arriving. At the War Office, he was questioned about why more equipment had not been brought back. His superiors seemed to have forgotten the order to save men and abandon or destroy material. Then Brooke went to his home in Hampshire to rest; six days later, he met Churchill for the first time over lunch and was appointed commander of the home front in preparation for the expected invasion from across the Channel – later, he would become Chief of the Imperial General Staff and chief military organiser of the British war effort.
The survivors who followed Brooke on the trains heading north from the coast during the following days were seen off at the station in Plymouth by women welfare volunteers handing out bags of soap, razor blades, sweets, cigarettes and matches. One group of survivors reciprocated with a singing concert including what were described as ‘some rather rude songs’. As their train pulled out, they looked at the holiday crowds sunbathing on Dawlish beach, and contrasted what they saw with what they had been through.
When RAF Warrant Officer W. Horne got to London, the strange assortment of clothes he had been given on landing drew stares from other travellers on the Underground. Harry Grattidge set off for the capital by train in a second-hand suit with tuppence in his pocket. The Chief Officer’s hair was still matted with oil, and the smell of fuel was on his breath. So strong was the odour that the other passengers in his compartment made for the refreshment car. At one point on the journey, an elderly man, who looked as though he was returning from holiday on the coast, beckoned him into the corridor, and said he could see he was in trouble. He offered Grattidge a pound to tide him over. The seaman said he did not need help; he was being met in London. The old man kept a close watch on him when they arrived to check the truth of his story.
Getting to Waterloo station, Sergeant Major Picken and some comrades were taken for escaped German prisoners, and detained in a waiting room. They were moved to Kensington Barracks, and held until the Sergeant Major, who had served there before, was recognised and allowed to telephone his wife, who had not heard from him for six weeks.
Taking a few days’ leave in civilian clothes, Joe Sweeney found himself being shouted at by a woman who asked if he did not know there was a war on, and said he should be in the forces.
A Sherwood Forester who had donned an air force uniform while escaping from France was hauled in by military police, who asked him to which branch of the RAF he belonged. He said he was in the army. The police interrogated him as to why he was wearing an RAF uniform: in the end, he convinced them, and was released.
William Knight, who had driven across France in his lorry loaded with explosives, got back to Liverpool on a troopship after being picked up by a French fishing boat. When he was debriefed, he found that nobody wanted to know about the Lancastria, or to believe what he said. One of those who questioned him said he was suffering from a hallucination, and should be sent to an asylum.
Survivors were told that the sinking of the liner must be kept secret. It would be a breach of King’s Regulations to say anything about what had happened at St-Nazaire. If the locals in Plymouth invited them to their homes, they were instructed by officers to refuse. In Liverpool, as the truth of what he was saying became evident, William Knight was told to keep quiet under the Official Secrets Act and to sign an undertaking not to mention what had taken place, particularly not to the press.
Reaching home in Faversham, Stan Flowers went to see the boss of a machinery works where he had been an apprentice before being called up. He told the older man that he had been in St-Nazaire, and had had a bit of trouble on a ship called the Lancastria. His ex-employer recalled that he had been on a cruise on her before the war.
Most of the survivors did not seem to have any desire to talk about the disaster, and wanted to put it behind them. Several who contributed recollections to the Lancastria Association more than half a century later had not previously talked about it, even to their wives and children. The soldiers and airmen were soon back in service, in Britain, Egypt and the Sudan or the Far East, and they did their best to push the tragedy to the back of their minds as they got on with the job of fighting the war. However, the experience would never dissolve. Later on, an airman who had been on the Lancastria jumped at a recruit who was singing ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ in a forces canteen and shouted at him to stop; then he apologised, saying, ‘Sorry, chum. But we’ve got memories.’
Survivors were informed that they could ask to be reimbursed for personal losses of possessions, but then found their claims refused. The only thing for which payment was made was a Bible – whose value was put at twenty-five shillings. ‘We resubmitted our claims, all claiming loss of Bible,’ one man recalled. ‘We must have been a religious squad.’ Captain Griggs put in for the total loss of all his kit, but some months later a suitcase was delivered to his home, having been picked up by the navy.
When Joe Sweeney and other survivors from his unit got back to their base in Nottinghamshire and went on parade, a brigadier stopped in front of them, and ordered that they should be put on a charge for having lost their rifles. Sweeney remonstrated, but the officer insisted. Fortunately, the brigadier left the base soon afterwards, and the matter was shelved. Another survivor was told off for the ‘very serious offence indeed’ of having lost his army identity disc.
Fred Hahn had a long slow train journey through blackouts to his regimental headquarters in Leicester, where he stayed in the Grand Hotel before being given forty-eight hours’ leave. He headed for home at Cheadle Hulme, outside Manchester.
On the Saturday night, six days after the evacuation from St-Nazaire had started, he and his wife went to a dance at the Cricket and Tennis Club. As they arrived, the band was playing the Blue Danube waltz. A friend motioned to the musicians to stop playing while he greeted the survivor from France. As the music resumed, the Hahns began to waltz.
Back in France, 4000 troops were still left in St-Nazaire. Some were men saved from the Lancastria who had not been able to board the last rescue ships. Some got off on later rescue ships. Some were taken prisoner.
The loss of the Lancastria was felt particularly keenly in her home port; a quarter of the 330 crew had been lost. When the first survivors reached Liverpool by train, they found the station platform lined with women carrying photographs of their husbands, sons or boyfriends, asking if anybody had seen them. The wife of one sailor waited at Lime Street station for her husband, who she had been told had survived the disaster. He passed close to her as he left the train, but was so black with oil that she did not recognise him at first.
Captain Sharp and Chief Officer Grattidge met for lunch in a Liverpool pub to start work on a report on the disaster.
The Captain was puzzled as to why such a big ship with her bulkhead doors closed had sunk so quickly.
‘My conclusion,’ he wrote, ‘is that each of the bombs which struck the ship passed through the upper deck and hatches, bursting in the ship and blowing holes in her sides. Then, apparently, a further bomb exploded in the water close to the side, just abaft the bridge, which probably added to the damage.’
The weather at the time, he added, ‘was light NW wind, slight sea and swell, cloudy with bright periods’. The report, marked confidential, put the death toll at between 3000 and 4000, including seventy of the 330 crew.