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Critic's choice, Max Hastings
THE SINKING OF THE LANCASTRIA by Jonathan Fenby (Simon & Schuster,
ASK ALMOST anyone what was the greatest maritime tragedy in British history, and they think of the Titanic or Lusitania.
Yet in reality, the sinking of another ship 65 years ago today cost the lives of more people than both those great liners' losses put together.
On the afternoon of June 17, 1940, amid the fall of France, the 16,423-ton Cunarder-turned-troopship Lancastria was lying off the port of St Nazaire with around 6,000 British soldiers, airmen and civilians embarked as fugitives.
Four bombs from a Luftwaffe Junkers 88 struck the ship with devastating effect, causing it to capsize inside 20 minutes.
As thousands of screaming and helpless people struggled in the oil covered sea, German fighters strafed them. Even so close inshore, it took rescue boats between three and five hours to recover survivors.
Some 2,500 eventually reached the shore, or were carried back to England by warships and merchantmen.
At least 3,500 and maybe more, in Jonathan Fenby's view, perished.
When Winston Churchill heard news of the disaster, he ordered it to be suppressed, on the grounds that the British people had endured as much bad news as they could take.
Today, Fenby argues that those who suffered so much on that terrible afternoon off the Loire estuary deserve to be remembered.
He has pieced together the stories of many people who found themselves fleeing the German onslaught amid defeat. The 150,000 British personnel who remained in France after Dunkirk were dismayed to hear Churchill proclaim to the House of Commons and the BBC that the British Expeditionary Force had been successfully evacuated.
In truth, a fortnight later many were still seeking safety. There were some fighting units, together with many more soldiers from rear-area units and RAF ground crews.
Many lost their officers and comrades, and simply straggled to the Normandy and Brittany ports in any vehicle they could lay their hands on. Some preserved discipline, others drank and looted their way west.
Amid the throng on the dockside at St Nazaire, there were men who refused to abandon their dogs, and even a pet angora rabbit. There were a few children of British civilians, together with nurses and wives.
Having arrived on the Lancastria, they collapsed into relief that 'Blighty was in sight'. One soldier kissed the deck. Another, a private named John Broadbent, ignored a notice saying 'Officers only' and jumped into his first bath for weeks.
When the bombs struck as the ship lingered, waiting for another liner to sail in company, panic broke out.
Screams and shouts rent the air as people jumped into the sea, or clung hopelessly to the listing hull.
John Broadbent jumped out of his bath quicker than he had ever done in his life - and survived. Hundreds were killed by the blast, while some chose to shoot themselves rather than face the sea.
STRUGGLING in the water, one man said to his mate: 'Well Charlie, I'm ready when you are.' The other soldier said: 'Fire away.' To the horror of onlookers, one shot the other and then himself with a revolver.
Gazing mesmerised at the scene as he lay in the water, RAF groundcrewman Donald Draycott thought with curious detachment: 'You'll never see anything like this again.' It is a ghastly story, and Fenby tells it well. The survivors, when at last they got home, were urged to say nothing about the experience, and few wanted to.
Some, looking down from the deck of a rescue ship approaching Plymouth, were amazed to glimpse holidaymakers on the beaches, and reflected grimly that they little knew what was coming.
A Royal Marine band in full-dress uniform played to welcome the refugees, prompting one officer to mutter: 'You'd think we were winning this war, instead of losing it.' Fenby makes too much of 'Churchill's cover-up' of the Lancastria disaster. War, and above all, the supreme crisis of 1940, made brutal demands on truth.
Churchill already knew that the logical response to Britain's predicament was to surrender to Hitler. In order to inspire the British people to a brilliant, wholly irrational defiance, the last thing he needed was to heap upon them more tidings of tragedy.
The loss of the Lancastria was a blow, yet it seems far more remarkable that 186,700 British, French and Poles reached England safely from the Norman and Breton ports.
What would have seemed a great catastrophe in days of peace became only a footnote of war.
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