My hero father and a forgotten tragedy
FOR years I have been writing to the Ministry of Defence, to the Prime Minister’s office and to the MP for the High Peak, where my dad lived and died, in an effort to get recognition for the survivors and victims of the British troopship Lancastria. She sank, with terrible loss of life, off St Nazaire on June 17, 1940. So far, I’ve had no replies. What happened at the time was swept under the carpet because Winston Churchill had told the country that all our troops had been evacuated from Dunkirk. It wasn’t, in fact, true, but for the sake of morale, the government decided to bar any news of the sinking. My father was one of those on board. At first, he was reported as ‘missing in action’, but it turned out he, along with many others, had managed to get on top of the upturned hull. Two officers blew their brains out in front of him. My father managed to swim through the flaming oil on top of the water and got ashore. He arrived there naked, his clothes having been burned off. I didn’t know about this as I was growing up because he never talked to me about it, but my mum told me some of the details a year before she died. My father arrived home physically unhurt but very badly affected mentally by this experience. Despite this, just seven weeks later the Army shipped him off to Egypt without any medical treatment. He survived the war but was put in hospital for his mental condition. My mother took him out and brought him home: the war was over, but for them the problems lasted until he died. My dad would stop in the street and talk to himself. We were never told why this happened, so my brother, sister and I were ashamed when we saw him doing it. Even his three brothers, who also fought in the war and should have understood, treated him like a leper. Nobody knows how many men were on the Lancastria at the time. Along with British troops, there were men from all the countries invaded by Germany, wanting to get to Britain so they could fight to free their particular country. My dad was a hero, as were all the men who survived the Lancastria, only to be shipped back to fight, almost straight away, no matter what effect the sinking had had on them. They ought to receive recognition for their bravery and the ones who perished deserve to have the wreck marked as a war grave.