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Found this while googling. Very interesting and touching.
Part 1:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/s...a4262294.shtml
Part 2:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/s...a4262357.shtml
Part 3:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/s...a4262429.shtml
The following is a copy of a series of three articles that appeared in the WESTERN SUNDAY INDEPENDENT in March and April 1974.
This is George STONEMAN and his wife, Ena, of Plymouth. They are looking back thirty-one years to the day when a German U-boat saved their lives … after sinking the liner they were aboard.
The STONEMANS and their little daughter, June, spent five days drifting helplessly in a lifeboat in the tropical Atlantic and they were close to death. Suddenly, the U-507 rose to the surface. The crew fed them, gave them water and took Mrs. STONEMAN and June aboard.
It was one of the most amazing – and human – incidents of the last war and today the STONEMAN family tells their story for the first time in the first of a three-part series.
PART ONE
SAVED BY A U-BOAT!
Devon-bound. Then suddenly, the STONEMANS were adrift in a lifeboat in mid-Atlantic.
On a still, hot tropical night in September, 1942, the Cunard liner ‘Laconia’ was steaming at speed 260 miles north of Ascension Island in the Atlantic.
Behind her, Japanese armies looted and burned their way across the Pacific.
PACKED
Her 20,000 tons dead weight was packed, as it had never been before. The ship’s company was estimated at between 4,000 and 5,000 people, mostly the wives and families of British servicemen and a motley crew of soldiers, seamen and airmen.
There were also some 1,800 Italian prisoners of war – a fact that had a great deal to do with the incredible events that followed.
Among the people cramming themselves into every available nook and cranny of the ship was a Plymouth family, R.A.F. Sergeant STONEMAN and his wife, Ena and their five-year-old daughter, June.
TORPEDO
The family had been reunited at Durban in South Africa, after nightmare months of separation during which Mrs. STONEMAN and June had been hustled from the dying port of Singapore and George had been helping the R.A.F. to destroy vital installations in the South Pacific.
At 8.10pm on September 12th, in deep tropical darkness all of that was changed.
A torpedo from a German U-boat – one of a major pack – struck the ship below the waterline as she moved along at her maximum speed of twenty knots.
The big liner shuddered mightily and was immediately plunged into darkness. In less than fifteen minutes she had developed a sixty-degree list to port and within thirty minutes she had sunk.
It was never properly established how many people died. The figure was put at between two and three thousand. It was one of the major sea disasters of the war.
The STONEMAN family survived the explosion and rapid destruction of the liner and ended up in a lifeboat with forty-seven other men, women and children.
TOWED
They were more than 1,000 miles from the nearest land, some of them were injured, the lifeboat’s supplies had been contaminated – and they had no idea of their exact position.
During the six days that followed the sinking of the ‘Laconia’ came one of the most famous incidents of the war as:
· The survivors were picked up by the U-boat pack itself.
· Little June STONEMAN and her mum spent a strange – and hilarious – night aboard an enemy submarine along with over one hundred other people.
· One of the U-boats towed the drifting lifeboats for hundreds of miles to safety.
· The Allies decided to bomb the submarines which had surfaced to save the shipwreck victims.
A three-part series on the stoneman FAMILY starts today.
The submarine commanders were ordered to “ditch” their survivors at the earliest moment and dive for safety.
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 were finally re-united and arrived back in Plymouth just before Christmas, 1942.
The years have not blurred Mrs. STONEMAN’s memory, although she is inclined to forget the bad times – the first terrifying days after the liner’s sinking and the weeks in the French prison camp.
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So this describes what happened to the survivors and their harsh treatment by the French.
Why did Bleasdale not portray these events. The story was only half told, even then it was a amatuerish attempt.
Bleasdale said it was a little known story, I knew of this story many many years ago.
I still think he insulted Merchant Seamen in war, these guys were the bravest of the brave, when he shows a steward stealing money and a whimp of a Junior Third Officer baby sitting for a passenger instead of being on Watch in a war zone., and also entering a passengers cabin and rooting through her belongings while she is out. These are sackable offences, where did he get those stupid ideas from. again totally unbelievable.
Bleasdale should give an appology to all Seamen over that.
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