The Sinking of the Lancastria (20 page)

Sergeant Major Picken had always been sceptical about religion, but now he prayed ‘hard and fast’ as he held on desperately to an oar that floated by him. The oil on the water seemed as heavy as tar, as thick and sticky as molasses. Another man took hold of the oar, saying he could swim no more. The two of them could barely keep their heads above the surface. Both felt dreadfully tired. German planes dived towards the stretch of sea where they were, dropping flares which flickered on the water. The aircraft came back to strafe, the bullets ripping past like red-hot pokers. They saw bombs falling, too, sending up great spouts of water that rained down dead fish.

Unable to swim or dive below the surface to avoid the bullets, Picken prayed still more intently. The man on the other end of the oar looked over his shoulder. Suddenly, two
high spouts of water zipped closer. The other man screamed, ‘Oh, my Christ.’ A bullet went through his forehead, his hands slipped, and he sank to his death.

Two men swam past dragging an unconscious fellow between them – they invited Picken to hang on to the third man’s legs, but he decided to stay with his oar. A life raft covered with soldiers and airmen singing ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ floated by; those in the water told them to shut up.

After swimming for an hour away from the ship, the Bren gunner, Fred Coe, lay on his back and watched three British fighters come over and chase four German planes away. Wearing nothing much except for their identification discs, and with oil sticking to their bodies, Coe and the men around him grew numb; but their attitude was simple – ‘Every man for himself, got to take charge of Number One in these circumstances.’

A swimmer glided through the water as if at the seaside, talking to those around him as he passed. A soldier noticed his unit’s mascot swimming by, a French dog they called Buller – the animal had followed him each day when he bicycled to collect the post. Men cried out for divine help; one of them noted later that ‘there were no atheists within my hearing’.

The chaplain, who had taken charge of men on the deck and told them to leave the ship, floated with two other men, one of them badly wounded. Their only support was a boathook. After a time, they came across a single man hanging on to a plank. They persuaded him to swap it for their boathook, and draped the wounded fellow over the plank.

A lifeboat went round in circles, the soldiers rowing it
pulling in different directions until an Irishman took charge, swearing at the men to make them coordinate their efforts. A cash box floated by trailing 100 franc notes; a swimmer grabbed as many as he could and stuffed them in his battledress pocket. The remains of big jellyfish killed by the explosions bobbed on the surface.

A Pay Corps private, wearing only his underpants and identity disc, was convinced that he saw a message from God in the sky. ‘My Presence shall go with you,’ the words from the Book of Exodus read. ‘This was no hallucination on my part,’ he wrote fifty-nine years later. ‘I believe the words were intended for me.’

Morris Lashbrook was separated in the chaos from his friend ‘Chippy’ Moore as he drifted away from the
Lancastria
, clinging on to a lifeboat. He helped one badly wounded man, but he slipped away – Morris said he would never forget the look in his eyes as he died.

Stan Flowers, who had lost touch with his fellow Kent man, Wally Smith from the heavy transport unit, felt himself being dragged down by the water in the pockets of his battledress trousers. He asked another man to help him get them off. The man did so, and the trousers sank, carrying with them Stan’s wallet in which he had kept the programme from a concert party and ten one franc notes. Soon afterwards, the other man was hit by a strafing bullet, and killed. Stan felt like giving up. Then, he remembered that it was his mother’s birthday. That had the effect of pulling him round, with a fresh sense of survival.

Seeing some of his men in the water round him, Clem Stott shouted to them and stuck up a thumb. He spotted a destroyer which seemed nearby; but, when he started swimming towards it, he realised how far away it was.

A raft crowded with men singing ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ passed close, and Stott swam to it. But those on board shouted ‘Get off! Get away!’, and feet in grey army socks kicked him in the face. Drifting through the wreckage and burned and blackened bodies, he could not spot a living human being. He felt as if he was consigned to be among the dead, and then grew even more anxious as cramp seized his left leg.

In the crowd of survivors, a man shouted, ‘Save me; I have a wife and three children’ – he was pulled out of the water on to a raft. An upturned lifeboat was covered with men, most of them injured. Some could not hold on, and slipped away to sink below the surface. Clinging to a big wooden box, a young man from the Royal Artillery talked to the nine others round him of his home, his family and his fiancée. One by one, five of the others were overcome by exhaustion and let go. Then the young man cried out: ‘My God, I have cramp’, and dropped beneath the water.

Having abandoned his smart bicycle on the deck of the
Lancastria
, Sergeant George Youngs held on to an orange box with a group of men. Seven of them loosened their grip and sank.

Some ranted and raved. Others were silent, praying or thinking of their families. Two men, neither of whom could swim, pounded the water, silently locked in an embrace. They went under once, and surfaced with deathly faces. Silently, they disappeared once more, and were not seen again. A sapper clinging to an oar watched his best friend sink to his death unable to do anything to save him.

One man pushed his plank to another, saying, ‘I can see your need is greater than mine.’ An exhausted survivor lay half on a raft, his head down in the oil on the surface, raising it to cry out prayers. Another soldier told him to shut up and
keep up his spirits, which would be a better path to salvation.

Two men floated together.

‘Well, Charlie, when you are ready I am,’ one said.

The other grasped a revolver attached round his neck by a string.

The first man shouted, ‘Fire away.’

Two shots rang out as the man with the gun shot his companion and then himself.

CHAPTER 8

The Rescue

AS SOON AS THE
LANCASTRIA
began to list, a fleet of boats hurried out to rescue survivors. French fishing craft joined the destroyers, armed trawlers and tenders from the British flotilla. One rowing boat was manned by an elderly man and a boy. When the first warships arrived, a cry went up of ‘The navy’s here!’ Among those they pulled from the water were the two Church Army sisters, Trott and Chamley, who had given their life belts to men in the sea. After three hours in the water, Alec Cuthbert and the man clinging to his life jacket were pulled on to a tiny boat with crab pots hanging along its side. In the hull, there were two corpses.

Michael Sheehan, from the
Lancastria
’s crew, saw a French tug sailing by, making no attempt to pick anybody up. At least one rowing boat set out from the shore on a scavenging mission. A British officer stood at the prow of a lifeboat levelling a revolver at people in the sea to keep them from
climbing aboard and overloading the vessel. One swimmer reached up to catch the front of the boat. The officer shot him. Immediately afterwards, he, himself, toppled into the water – one account said he was shot by somebody inside the vessel, another that those on board pushed him into the sea. Men in the water began to pull themselves inside.

The skipper of a French boat, which picked up Morris Lashbrook and those in the lifeboat to which he had clung, said he was going to take them back to St-Nazaire. Crowded round the Frenchman, the rescued men insisted that he head out to sea, and transfer them to one of the ships in the British rescue fleet.

At first, each rescue boat did its own thing. But then they became better organised, forming a circle round the men in the water. One tug had a crane with a winch, and used it to lower men on hooks to pick up people and haul them aboard. Many of those pulled from the sea were naked, smothered in oil, burned or otherwise wounded. Sergeant Bertie Cook, who had been saved by the friend who hauled him on to a floating plank, wore nothing except his watch.

Reunited with his wife in the water, Clifford Tillyer gripped his 2-year-old daughter, Jacqueline, by her clothes with his teeth as they swam for safety. The RAF man, Peter Vinicombe, and the women on a table-like raft saw small boats approaching. The women started waving their arms and shouting ‘Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu.’ One of the rescue ships came alongside them, and took on the civilians. Vinicombe clung to a tyre on its side. Covered with black oil, he was transferred to a motor vessel, the
Cymbula
, where two Chinese
crewmen washed him down. Only then did he discover that he had been hit in the arm by a tracer bullet.

The
Lancastria
’s electrician, Frank Brogden, watched the rescue ships, but they seemed unable to spot him in the mass of flotsam surrounding him. Thirty yards away, he saw a crew mate on a rescue boat. ‘Keep your chin up,’ the man shouted. ‘We’ll try to get to you.’

But as the rescue boats drew near him, they set up a wash that swept Brodgen further out into the estuary. ‘That’s it,’ he thought.

Then a French tug sailed up, and its crew threw a hook over the side. Brogden scrambled aboard. He was covered in oil from head to toe; his white dungarees were completely black. It was 9 p.m.

The French sailors handed him a mug of hot, sweetened wine that made him vomit, doing himself a power of good by bringing up oil he had swallowed in his five hours in the sea.

Stan Flowers, who had been given fresh strength to survive by thinking of his mother’s birthday, was pulled on to a long boat, and then put on a French tug where the crew gave him a sailor’s jersey with an anchor embroidered on it. He was afraid that if he was taken back to St-Nazaire he would be captured by the Germans, so he was relieved when the destroyer, the
Havelock
, sailed by, and he was transferred. A big sailor who helped him on board handed him a mug of cocoa and a cigarette. Stan lay on the deck, looking back at the sea covered with bodies. Tied to the destroyer’s rail were two dogs smeared with oil.

Soon, the decks of the rescue ships were as tightly packed as those of the
Lancastria
had been. Captain Fuller of the
John Holt
reckoned that 1100 people may have been brought on to his cargo ship.

When people pulled from the sea were found to be dead, the bodies were thrown back. ‘We have only got room for the living,’ a crewman said. On one French rescue boat, a doctor examined the black oily bodies covering the deck, and decided which were to be pitched into the sea. On another, a young woman whose legs had been broken died before she could be moved to a larger craft. On the
Havelock
, a very fat man sat propped up on a bench in a severe state of shock. Suddenly, he keeled over and died.

A man came up to Norman Driver to thank him for saving his life. He was upset that he had nothing he could give the sapper. Driver told him not to worry; they had both been saved. The man pressed something into the soldier’s hand, saying, ‘It’s all I’ve got. Thank you.’ It was a small packet with the picture of a lady on it – a French letter. Driver kept the condom for years.

Eleven-year-old Roger Legroux and his mother were pulled aboard a French fishing boat with Fernande Tips, whose mother was also picked up after three hours in the water. Roger and Madame Legroux were transferred to the
Havelock
. When they reached the destroyer, the unconscious boy was taken for dead, and his body was put on a pile of corpses on the deck.

His mother cried and screamed. Somebody gave Roger artificial respiration, and he came to. Soon afterwards, he was running round the boat with a Flemish boy of the same age.

Still, mother and son had a major concern – what had happened to Monsieur Legroux and his 13-year-old daughter from whom they had been separated as the
Lancastria
went down.

For the British troops, there was one familiar morale booster. Getting on board the
Havelock
, Sergeant Harry Pettit
of the RASC relished ‘endless supplies of hot, sweet tea, and how welcome it was’. On the French rescue boats, there was water, wine and cognac – one tug happened to have a large stock of condensed milk on board which the crew poured out for survivors. George Youngs of the RASC, who had abandoned his shiny bicycle on the
Lancastria
, gulped down water when he was hauled aboard a fishing boat. Then, he fell forward on his face from exhaustion.

A young man plucked from the sea sat with his head held as stiffly as if it was in a vice. The explosion of a bomb had driven a piece of wood into his neck just behind his ears. If he moved, he risked being killed. He died the following day on the way back to England, and was buried at sea.

Getting on to a French trawler, Sergeant Macpherson of the RAF headed for the engine room to try to dry out. Inside, covered by a blanket, sat a man who had been blinded by the bombing and fearfully lacerated by flying fragments. Boarding another French boat, John Edwards was met by great guffaws of laughter for his blue silk swimming trunks.