iv NAVY NEWS, EVACUATION FROM FRANCE 70th ANNIVERSARY SUPPLEMENT JULY 2010


h Continued from page vii Peter Stahl was over the Loire this Sunday afternoon, but a good 150 miles from activities in Quiberon Bay. He had orders to smash the crossings over the river in the city of Tours. He needed two passes of the bridge – on the first dive Stahl’s payload failed to release. Not so on the second. Volltreffer. He returned to his base convinced the bridge was useless. The fliers celebrated their success with a “serious drinking session” in a Belgian inn.


RAF armourer


arrived in a truck on the edge of St Nazaire. For a month, the 19-year- old had lived a transitory existence supporting Fairey Battle bombers of the British Air Forces in France – the RAF counterpart of the British Expeditionary Force. The BAFF, like the BEF, was pulling out of France. Mansfield and his colleagues rendered their trucks and their weapons useless, then moved towards the docks. They spent the night sleeping under the eaves of the quayside warehouses. “All night long ack-ack guns were firing and shrapnel was ‘raining down’ on the warehouse roof, making a terrible noise,” the ground crewman recalled. “It did not bother us – we were so tired we slept through it all.”


Sunday June 16 had turned to Monday 17 by the time the voice of Maréchal Philippe Pétain crackled out of French radio sets. Just hours before the 84-year-old marshal, saviour of Verdun a generation earlier, had been asked to form a new government in Bordeaux, to where the nation’s politicians had fled when Paris was threatened. For his age, Pétain’s voice was far from infirm, but his words were hurried. He spoke for barely 90 seconds – reading the 203 words of a prepared statement. The poilu had fought “avec un héroïsme digne de ses longues traditions militaires contre un ennemi supérieur en nombre et en armes” – with heroism worthy of his long military traditions against a foe superior in number and arms. But the poilu could fight no longer. “My heart trembles when I tell you today that we must end the struggle.”


F


in the Loire estuary. Her Majesty’s Troopship Lancastria was at anchor, a dozen miles from St Nazaire. A Royal Naval officer moved among the flotilla in a launch, outlining the plan of evacuation for the day. In her heyday, the liner had been built to carry 2,200 passengers. Her captain, Rudolph Sharp, was prepared to raise that figure to 3,000. The naval officer shook his head. “We were told to take as many troops aboard as could be loaded, without regard to the limits laid down by international law,” Sharp’s first officer, Harry Grattidge, recalled. Grattidge was perturbed – and not just by the officer’s seemingly cavalier attitude to maritime safety. The sky, he noted, “throbbed with planes”. The planes were British – the RAF was flying near-constant patrols over the St Nazaire roadstead. The Loire throbbed with boats.


Since dawn, a stream of smaller vessels had either been heading into or out of St Nazaire to collect waiting troops. A round-trip to the larger merchantmen and liners at anchor took upwards. By 6.30am, the first weary men filed aboard the Lancastria. To them, the 16,000-ton ship looked tired and old – but her size suggested she was solid, secure, safe.


In the docks at St Nazaire, NAAFI canteen employee Frank Clements was looking to barter. The 30-year- old, serving in brand-new destroyer


irst light this Monday found upwards of three dozen vessels either at anchor or under way


Ted Mansfield


HMS Highlander – requisitioned by the Admiralty from Brazil just two days into the war – was a keen amateur photographer who ‘circumvented’ regulations and took his camera wherever he went. The evacuation was an event begging to be photographed for posterity, but Clements had no film left. In port, he bumped into a sailor willing to exchange film for a pair of socks from Highlander’s NAAFI.


It was mid-day by the time most Germans learned that France was suing for peace. Peter Stahl and his comrades had barely recovered from the previous evening’s heavy drinking session when news reached them. “This calls for another celebration,” the pilot decided.


According to the day’s menu, lunch aboard the Lancastria was a grand affair: hors d’œuvre of consommé, crab salad or fried fillet of cod; a main course of steak or perhaps veal and bacon in a parsley sauce, accompanied by potatoes and beans, or perhaps a cold buffet; dessert of apricot flan or ice cream, and finally cheese, biscuits and coffee. Few of the


with two funnels, the Oronsay – from 12,000 feet she looked the biggest target. “Sometimes the afternoon sun


caught their wings in a fine flash of scintillating light,” Harry Grattidge observed on Lancastria’s bridge. He and Capt Sharp followed the bombers’ progress as they swooped on the Oronsay. “Every so often came the sharp- edged snarl of a bomb, the rocking explosion, the fountains of spray that spattered our decks like spring rain,” Grattidge recalled. After several of these near-misses, the Germans hit the Oronsay’s bridge, killing several of her crew.


On the bridge wing of destroyer


HMS Havelock an Aldis lamp flashed furiously. The instructions were simple: set sail for England. Rudolph Sharp signalled back. He wanted a destroyer escort. None could be given. Lancastria’s captain decided to


remember such a spread being served. They do remember the Lancastria being crammed, her holds filled with camp beds and straw mattresses. Ted Mansfield was given a blanket, sent below and told to find somewhere to sleep. He did. “It was pretty grim down there,” recalled Cpl Donald Draycott, serving with 98 Sqn RAF. “Having a strong sense of preservation, I thought if we got attacked, we wouldn’t have a chance down there.” He remained on deck.


First Officer Harry Grattidge struggled through the crowded passageways against a torrent


rescued troops


wait till Oronsay had effected repairs – safety in numbers. His first officer agreed and returned to his cabin “mortally tired”. Try as he might, Grattidge could not sleep. “I had a sixth sense of impending disaster,” he remembered.


soldiers, stumbling over kit bags and helmets. At the shell door in the liner’s side through which the rescued troops came aboard, Grattidge found Lancastria’s purser. How many souls were aboard, he inquired. At least 5,000 men, the purser responded. “I was horrified,” wrote Grattidge. “Five thousand men already embarked when our normal capacity was three thousand.” He ordered the doors closed and told the arriving vessels to make for the neighbouring troopship, the Oronsay. Lancastria would take no more men. She could, however, accommodate a few civilians. A tug approached the liner with a handful of dishevelled refugees, including a brother and sister, no older than ten, clinging on to a golden retriever “and a disreputable mongrel”. “We can’t have those dogs


aboard,” the First Officer told the children. “You’ll have to leave them on the tug.” The youngsters looked at him blankly. An Englishwoman intervened and translated on the sailor’s behalf. The children’s eyes welled up. The children had walked all the way from Brussels. Their pets had walked with them. They were inseparable. Harry Grattidge buckled. He ignored quarantine regulations and allowed the dogs aboard.


The reports of concentrations of shipping in the Loire estuary filtered back to the headquarters of Fliegerkorps IV – IV Air Corps. From there they were passed to Kampfgeschwader 30 – 30th Bomber Squadron – and finally to its II Gruppe – 2nd Wing. At 2pm on June 17, 14 Ju88s carrying 250 and 500kg bombs lifted off from Le Culot airfield in Belgium and made for Quiberon Bay. Among the fliers was Peter Stahl. His celebrations of victory over France had been cut short.


The first German bombers appeared over the Loire estuary shortly before 2pm. They aimed for a large ship


● Soldiers sit on the upturned hull of the Lancastria as the liner sinks off St Nazaire – as photographed by NAAFI employee Frank Clements aboard HMS Highlander


of


KG30 found “an enormous fleet of merchant ships of all sizes spread across the wide river estuary”. Peter Stahl aimed his bomber towards “a fat freighter”, trying to ignore the “ferocious flak” and French Morane fighters buzzing over the mouth of the Loire. One jumped on Stahl’s tail. “There’s no time to think about the finer details of dive-bombing,” the pilot wrote. “I throw the Ju88 on its nose and dive down.” The French fighter followed. The bomber gained speed. 370mph. 420mph. Bombs away. The Junkers banked sharply, staying out of the reach of anti-aircraft guns. The French fighter struggled to follow.


A


The Lancastria rocked. Ted Mansfield woke up. A soldier told him not worry. “Nothing son, go back to sleep.” A near-miss evidently.


In his cabin, Harry Grattidge listened “to the longest, most fearful silence I had ever heard”. Then the sound of bombs falling again “so fast that it ripped at your eardrums. Four times the Lancastria bucked and shuddered like an animal in pain.”


Ted Mansfield did not need to ask his comrades in khaki what had happened. Lancastria had been hit. The liner rolled first to port, then to starboard. Alarm bells were ringing. The loudspeaker ordered abandon ship. Men struggled to make their way topside.


On the bridge Rudolph Sharp and Harry Grattidge struggled to comprehend the carnage. One bomb had landed in No.2 hold, home to perhaps 800 RAF personnel. Another had possibly gone down Lancastria’s funnel. One had certainly exploded in No.3 hold, causing 500 tons of fuel oil to gush out.


Then the smoke drifted and parted and we saw the mess of blood and oil and splintered woodwork that littered the deck and the furious white core of water that came roaring from the bottom of the ship in No.4 hold.


There was confusion, but no panic on Lancastria’s upper decks, RAF corporal


Donald Draycott


remembered. Indeed, he even passed an Army NCO still trying to fight the fires. “You’ve had it chum!” he told him. “You’re wasting your time!”


By the time Ted Mansfield reached


fter an “endless” flight across northern and western France, the 14 Junkers 88s of II/


Lancastria’s upper deck, the liner was listing heavily – much of her port side was already under water. There was little hope of swinging out the lifeboats. Mansfield sat down and determined to jump off the sinking ship when the right moment came. For the next few minutes he watched the German bombers continue their attack, strafing men struggling to cling on to debris in the oily water.


Lancastria’s bridge was also raked by machine-gun fire. The bullets bounced off the now-useless telegraphs. By now, just 20 minutes after the first bomb struck, the water was almost lapping the bridge. “It’s time now, Harry,” Capt Sharp


told his first officer. The two men stepped off the bridge into the ocean and swam for it.


Ted Mansfield had also decided it was “time to get off”. He removed his boots and walked down the side of the foundering liner. “I could see men through the portholes, but was unable to help them in any way, knowing that they were soon to perish,” he remembered.


Harry Grattidge felt he was swimming through “cold black syrup”. He held on to a spar to keep his head above water. Over the tumult of men and women thrashing in the water, muffled explosions, the rattle of machine-guns, he heard the beautiful voice of a tenor. There’ll always be an England... Other survivors heard men singing Roll out the Barrel and, more fittingly, Abide With Me. “For a while the side of the hull remained above water with hundreds of men sitting on it, singing lustily before they floated off,” recalled Lt J P Mosse in HMS Highlander. Such stoicism was soon replaced by an indescribable sound of horror rolling across the bay as the liner disappeared beneath the waves and the hundreds still trapped below decks screamed.


As the Lancastria died, HMS Highlander and anti-submarine trawler HMS Cambridgeshire moved in to pick up survivors. Frank Clements seized his camera and began recording the rescue mission.


Ted Mansfield struggled into an abandoned launch. A sailor took charge of it, towing a lifeboat. The two craft moved among the survivors, hauling them out of the water, until the launch was full and the lifeboat was low in the water. The two craft made for HMS Highlander.


Frank Clements had put down his camera to help rescue Lancastria’s passengers aboard his destroyer. He saw soldiers in the water struggling in the oil, weighed down by their kit and their rifles. The NAAFI man called on the troops to ditch their equipment. Some did. Many did not. They drowned. Clements did succeed in rescuing a baby girl, who slipped out of her mother’s arms and fell back into the sea.


Harry Grattidge was picked up by a French rowing boat and taken first to a destroyer, then to the Oronsay, from where he helped direct the recue mission. For the rest of the day, boats brought survivors aboard the troopship. Many were horribly burned.


There were burned survivors aboard HMS Highlander too. And scores of men who had swallowed oil. The living were transferred to the Oronsay, the dead were sewn into bags or hammocks and committed to the deep after dark. One of Highlander’s crew rubbed down an oil-covered Ted Mansfield. The RAF man was given a duffle coat – he was feeling cold, despite it being a fine summer’s day – and a


hot mug of tea.


After a few minutes, the overloaded destroyer manoeuvred alongside the Oronsay, a plank bridged the gap between the two vessels, and the survivors ran across. Not all made it. Some men slipped off the gangway. They were never recovered. Aboard the troopship,


Ted


Mansfield was offered another mug of tea and, best of all, a large corned beef sandwich – his first food in ages.


Having been pursued by a French fighter, Peter Stahl had no chance to observe the impact of his bombs on the evacuation fleet. Back at his airfield in Belgium, he conferred with fellow pilots. They agreed they’d scored “numerous good hits” on the ships. The men resumed the celebrations interrupted by the day’s mission, while their commander reported the successes to the Luftwaffe High Command. KG30’s daily report describes “two hits by 500kg bombs on a fully-laden transporter entering the Loire estuary. Transporter similar to a battleship, around 30,000 tonnes. The stern flew into the air, the ship capsized.”


Ted Mansfield was one of 2,477 people rescued from the Lancastria. At the time she was bombed, there were at least 6,000 souls aboard. Some reports suggest the figure was nearer to 7,000. Whatever the toll that Monday, the loss of the Lancastria remains the worst maritime disaster in British history. The Belgian children Harry Grattridge had allowed on board died. So too had their dogs.


he survivors of the Lancastria arrived in Plymouth the following afternoon. Ten ships arrived in Devon from the Loire that day. They delivered 23,000 men, women and children. French soil was now all but empty of British troops and British citizens. Operation Aerial, however, continued. There were Poles to rescue from the Continent. Czechs. Belgians. Frenchmen. There were civilians to save from the Channel Islands – with the surrounding coast occupied by the Germans, the Admiralty decreed there was no way of guaranteeing the islands’ liberty.


T Aerial continued until the very last


day of fighting – June 25, when the Franco-German armistice came into effect. By the time it concluded, the Royal Navy had overseen the rescue of 191,870 Servicemen, 144,000 of them Britons. In all, the concerted efforts to evacuate the British Expeditionary Force – Operations Dynamo, Aerial and Cycle – saved 558,000 fighting men, two in every three of them British. Perhaps as many as 40,000 civilians were also rescued. Dynamo, the ‘Dunkirk spirit’, are shining beacons in British history. Aerial and Cycle were also successful, improvised operations. They have all but been forgotten.


The loss of the Lancastria was deliberately ‘forgotten’. When news of the tragedy reached Churchill’s ear, the premier forbade publication. “The newspapers have got quite enough disaster for today,”


he


determined. He would lift the ban when affairs did not seem so bleak “but events crowded upon us so black and so quickly that I forgot”.


On June 25th, a strange figure appeared at Semaphore Tower in Portsmouth. Wearing the dress of a French fisherman was one Cdr Robert Elkins. He and a Gordon Highlander had slipped away from the column of prisoners and made for the coast on foot and bicycle. “After many adventures” the pair of fugitives stole an 18ft boat from the village of Lion-sur-Mer, north of Caen, reaching Hayling Island 36 hours later.


What Winston Churchill tried to hide, Nature was determined to reveal. For weeks after the sinking, the Atlantic deposited bodies on the shores of the Pays de la Loire. At least 120 corpses were washed up on the beaches of La Bernerie-en-Retz, a good 15 miles from the spot where the Lancastria went down. Frenchmen – or their German overlords – ensured the dead were buried with full military honours. “These soldiers that you’ve taken


to their final resting place fought for their country with the same courage you have fought for ours and our Führer,” one German officer told a burial detail. “A nation which honours the dead is a great nation.”


News of the Lancastria tragedy finally appeared in British newspapers on July 26 – one day after the New York Sun had published Frank Clements’ images of the liner’s final moments. On his return to English soil, the NAAFI employee either gave or sold prints of the photographs he had taken on June 17 to a man in a pub; the images were subsequently sold to the newspaper. They remain the only photographic record of the Lancastria’s demise.


For the men of the 51st Highland Division, a towering slab of Scottish granite dominates the eastern clifftops above St Valéry, a monument to their sacrifice.


who were not entombed in the ship – were buried in at least two dozen cemeteries around the Loire estuary. It was nearly 50 years before they were formally recognised with a huge piece of granite, engraved in gold, mounted on a stone plinth on the St Nazaire seafront overlooking the liner’s last resting place. “We have not forgotten,” the inscription declares resolutely.


●♦●


Written by Richard Hargreaves. With thanks to Pam Mansfield for her father-in-law’s account of the Lancastria disaster, the staff of the National Archives, Kew, the Imperial War Museum, London, and the Bundesarchiv, Freiburg-im-Breisgau. In addition, the following books, documents and internet sources have been used:


Barnett, Corelli, Engage the Enemy More Closely: The Royal Navy in the Second World War


Churchill, Winston S, The Second World War


David, Saul, Churchill’s Sacrifice of the Highland Division


Fenby, Jonathan, The Sinking of the Lancastria


Grattidge, Harry, Captain of the Queens Hardeweg, Bernd, Im Westen James, William, The Sky Was Always Blue


www.lelancastria.com Levine, Joshua, Forgotten Voices of Dunkirk


Gehring, Egid (ed), Abbeville: Erinnerungsbuch der Division Blümm


James, William, The Portsmouth Letters www.lancastria.org.uk (website of the Lancastria Association of Scotland)


Luck, Hans von, Panzer Commander Manteuffel, Hasso von, Die 7. Panzer- Division im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Einsatz und Kampf der “Gespenster- Division” 1939-1945


Meier-Welcker, Hans, Aufzeichnungen eines Generalstabsoffizier 1939- 1942


Rommel, Erwin, Krieg ohne Hass Roskill, Stephen, The War at Sea, Vol. 1 Sebag-Montefiore, Hugh, Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man


Stahl, Peter, Kampfflieger zwischen Eismeer und Sahara Starcke, Gerhard, Die Roten Teufel sind die Hölle


Smith, Peter, Naval Warfare in the English Channel 1939-1945


Plato, Anton von, Geschichte der 5. Panzerdivision


Ellis, L F, The War in France and Flanders


Crabb, Brian James, The Forgotten Tragedy: The Story of the Sinking of HMT Lancastria


The dead of the Lancastria – those


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