This is part of an account from a Mrs Stoneman who was one of the survivors.............................
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Luckily for the hundreds of helpless men, women and children, the U-boats had delivered them, to a designated spot – and the Vichy French cruiser, ‘Gloire’ was en route to pick them up from Casablanca.
The survivors, in about eleven lifeboats were told to keep together … they would not have long to wait.
That same day the old French cruiser picked them up and, after a refuelling stop at Dakar, delivered them to Casablanca.
The survivors thought they were as good as home, but in many ways they were just beginning an ordeal that in many ways was worse than the one they had endured.
ROTTEN
“The French were rotten,” said Mrs. STONEMAN. “That’s the only word to describe them. We ended up thinking of THEM as our enemies and not the Germans. They treated us like animals most of the time.”
On the journey to Casablanca the men were separated from the women and children and spent most of the time locked up in steel holds that rapidly became like pressure cookers.
Mr. STONEMAN said: “They really treated us rough and that journey was one of the worst I made in my life. We had little food and hardly any water.”
The STONEMANS were interned in a camp at a place called Sidi El Ayachia, an insect-infested group of mud huts on the edge of the desert.
All Mrs. STONEMAN can remember were countless days of terrible food, little water and killing heat.
They lived on lentils and dried peas mostly boiled into a kind of soup.
Once a day they were given a square of hard bread and a cup of strong coffee.
“It’s quite impossible for me to describe the filth of that place,” she said. “We were infested with lice and fleas and almost everybody suffered almost permanently from dysentery.”
“We were a burden to the French and they made it quite clear that they hated us. If it hadn’t been for the kindness of some of the missionaries, life would have been unbearable.”
The STONEMANS stayed in the camp for almost two months and they were finally released following the American invasion of North Africa.
Mrs. STONEMAN and June were the first to go. They went by hospital ship to Gibraltar and from there to Liverpool. Husband, George, followed a few days later.
They said that they were a lot better treated by the more friendly Germans who were very caring.
Stuff France I say.
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