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THE CHINA MAIL, OCTOBER 3, 1940,
Soldiers Sang As Bombed Troopship Went Down
BY A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT STRUGGLING FOR FOOTHOLD ON THE SIDE OF A 16,000-TON BRITISH TROOPSHIP AS SHE LAY HALF CAPSIZED AFTER A BOMB ATTACK, SCORES OF VETERANS OF THE AUXILIARY MILITARY PIONEER CORPS THE THIN RED LINE" · LAUGHED IN THE FACE OF DEATH AND WENT DOWN WITH THE SHIP, A SONG ON THEIR LIPS,
Smiling as he watched them stood an immacu- late British officer, coolly smoking a cigarette. He could not swim. He went down with them."
As cncmy planes circled pye the sinking vessel, a soldier with a en gun blazed away at them from the tilting deck until he was waist deep in water. Hc was swept away by the sea.
on, Many of us were covered. In filthy oil. The sallors clothed
Threw-Her-Baby
Sole Agents:-Á. S. WATSON & CO., LTD. Cunarder, sunk at ancher off St. Lanras ra, they capsid. One had
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This valour was shown in the loss of the Lancastria, famous old
Nazaire, in the Bay of Biscay, after B.E.F. men, and Tel. 20616. taking aboard
women and child refugees from France
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Crammed in the liner were 5,000 troops and refugees, plus a crew of 300. There are 2,823 people missing it was stated, the first time the full story was revealed.
Some of those missing may have been able to reach the shore.
Eight enemy bombere attack
Ilner.' and vivors belleve the planes were Italian.
-the
At first they missed.
some sur-
The soldiers were so tightly packed that they could not move, But they leered at the enemy airmen,
But the machines came back and a salvo hit the Lancastria
She sted heavily, making it difficult to get the boats launched. Then she capsized and sank Half an hour after being hit.
As two of the boats were trop. ping down the towering side of the
about 120 people on board, in- cluding two Frenchwomen and two children, aged about five. They were Bung into the water.
One woman flung her baby Into the water and dived in after it. She was a strong swim- mer, and after picking up the child she made off to one of the lifeboats.
In the stokehold had been a Pioneer Corps C.Q.M.S., who dashed to the side
-Kay Francis, appearing as Deanna Durbin's mother in Universal's “It's a Date," .com. ing to-morrow to the King's Theatre...
AIRMAN
BURIED AS
woman and her tight-year-old SON BORN
child.
"I helped them up the stairs," A flight-sergeant in the he said, "but it was a terrible job. Steam was pouring down RA.F. and his wife were on us and we had to hold hand- looking forward to the kerchiefe to our faces to save birth of their baby, due to arrive on the first anniver- sary of their wedding.
them from being burned. "I got the mother and child into a lifeboat and then was forced in myself,"
He added:
"The heroism of two officers is something I shan't forget. One was the sixty-nine-year-old Town
But baby was late. He was born on the day of his father's funeral.
The discipline aboard the ship during that hali-hour was per-Major of Dieppe, Colonel Tram-Flight-Sergeant Instructor Roy
fect.
| Machine-Gunned Them
The soldiers pressed back to form an alleyway for the worl men and children to reach the boats.
The came the order: "Every man for himself."
lin.
Calmly Waited
"He stood apart from the men hurrying to leave the ship, He could not swim and so he lit a clgarette and calmly awaited
death.
Signalman J. McMylor, of the One of the crew said: "The Royal Corps of Signals, said: "As "sea was almost a solid mass of the ship sank by the bows, men men clinging together like flies, were clinging to the propeller, covered with thick oil,
singing Roll. Out the Barrel.' The "There were women and chil-boat I was in tried to get to them, dren struggling for their lives, too. but it could not get there before
"Yet those aeroplanes roared the propeller disappeared." down and machine-gunned the "I was two yards from the hatch people in the water.
when the explosion occurred, and "Some of the airmen seemed to was knocked to the deck," said be taking photographs of the ter-Lieutenant R. Haynes, of the rible scene.
AM.PC, "As I lay there waiting "Badly wounded men were for the debris to fall I began to floating in. thair life-jackets.
pray. Many of those life-Jackets be- came empty."
“A Grand Lad”
A company sergeant-major of the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps said:
"It must have been anly sec: onds, but it seemed like ages, and I prayed like hell.
"Then I felt a blow on the back. A rifle had hit me. I was glad it. was not a Bren gun."
Two Church Army sisters, who| were put aboard the Lancastria after being bombed in a lorry dash to the const, said:
gave the order to man the hosepipes, for smoke was com- Ing up the hatch. It was impos.. "We got into a lifeboat, and as cible to obey, because the troops we moved away from the ship's were jammed so fight in the side soldiers looking, through a alloyways.
porthole saw we were wearing "Just then the ship gave a sud-lifebelts. den lurch to port till she was list- ing at an angle of 45 degreas. We were thrown off our feet.
"From the bridge came the or der: 'Every man for himself,” and I chucked hatchboards over the side to act as rafts when we got into the water. By this time the ∙ship was beginning to sink and her propellers were high out of the
sca.
"Forward was a soldier with Bren gun, rattling away with. all he'd got. He stuck it oven when the water was up to his walat. His gun was silonood only when he was washed away from it. A grand lad. I hope he was saved. Just before the ship capsized and went down, some of our men -we call ourselves The Thin Red Line-scrumbled on to her upper most side.
"There had no chance. They stood, knowing that they went down like brave mon singing Roll Out the Barral.' "After three-quarterfin hour I was picked up by one of the Lancastria's lifeboats, crowd od down to the waterline with survivors. Thon a warsh p took us nboard.
16ome of us had not a stitch
Pilot Captured
"They
.after them.
a
The parents of the baby were
Nelson and Mrs. Lela Nelson, aged twenty-two, of Trafalgar Terrace, Darlington.
By a coincidence, Mrs. Net- son's father died the same day.. Mrs. Nelson told a reporter: "My husband was looking for ward so much to having a son. In his last letter he sent a kiss from
Daddy to baby.'
"He always seemed to be sure we would have a boy. He even chose the name for him. Brian Lewis. Now I am going to add my husband's name, Bq baby will be christened Brian Roy Lewis.
"He will be christened in St. Matthew's Church, Darlington, the church where we were married, and where my husband's and my father's funeral services were held.
"The same vicar, the Rev. Ó, H. Beaglehole, had conducted all the services, and he will christen the baby."
OBJECTOR'S B.B.C. POST
Charles Frederick William Chil- ton, described as an assistant pro- ducer at the B.B.C., of Queen Alexandra Mansions, Judd Street, London, unsuccesscully applied at the London Conscientious Objec- tors' Tribunal for exemption from the combatant forces.
He asked to be enrolled in the R.AM.C. or naval medical ser- shouted 'Give us vice saying he had had first-aid chance, and we took off the training. belts and flung them into the The chairman (Judge Har- cea. The soldiers jumped in. greaves) said Chilton's views were not so much those of a conscien- "R.A.F. planes which sped to tious objector osa lack of faith the scene dropped lifebelts among in war being able to do any good. the struggling soldiers,"
**His name would be removed from One soldier who had been blind-the register, Chilton said he would cd by the force of the first ex-appeal. plosion was led along to the ship's hospital. Just as the doctor was attending to him a second bomb exploded, killing all those, in the hospital, including the doctor.
WOMAN DEAD, MAN STARVING
A man was taken to hospital În
A soldier swam to a pont, withi a young girl whose legs had bean broken. She died on a rescue ship..
One Belgian mother, who had a weak condition, believed to be walked half across france, was due to lack qf food after his sister reunited with her three children had been found dead in bed. In a rescue boat after being The woman was Dorothy May sthree hours in the water.
Keene, a · spinster, aged forty- The captain, Commander duen no Tamide Avenue, Shir-
„Cheshire, Av. Southampton. what pov of Wallasey, Ch was saved.
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whon n frland called, tha bro- It is believed that a 'plane shot | han. Leeffe : Owen Keene, aged down later by a British vessel "Mirty-eight, asked him to see if was one of those which bombad::e could “wake up" his sister. The the liner. The pilot was captured. visitor found Miss Keene dead.