The Sinking of the Laconia (2010) s01e03 Episode Script
Episode 3
This is the diary I had in the lifeboat.
And I've written various things that were happening on each day.
"Saturday, 12th September, 1942.
"Torpedoed 20.
07, sunk 20.
43.
" We were sitting targets because of the smoke belching from the funnel.
Your attitude, really, is, "It won't happen to me.
" It was the longest night I've ever known.
I was absolutely terrified.
"This is the end, now.
" There's nowhere you can go, is there? There's sharks in the water.
He was only doing his job.
I mean, that is war.
TORPEDO EXPLODES That was my first ship, yeah.
The Laconia.
And I was on here for nine months.
And that was my home.
Until it disappeared that night.
The Laconia was a luxurious Cunard passenger liner launched in 1921.
Her fortunes changed 20 years later, when she was commandeered as a transport for British troops engaged in fighting on the African continent.
I was so naive and young, that we sailed from Liverpool and I thought, I thought we were in New York the next day! That's how naive I was.
But we went.
We were going up to join the convoys.
With the U-boat war at its height in the North Atlantic, large convoys would be assembled before ships dared venture out into the open water.
Escorted by fast destroyers and aircraft carriers, slower vessels like the Laconia were thereby afforded some protection as they sailed towards their destinations.
Our first stop was Freetown.
Then from Freetown, Cape Town, around to Durban, up the coast to Mombasa, and then, our final destination was Port Tufic.
Port Tufic, at the southern end of the Suez Canal, was a major conduit for men and supplies during the war.
Officers returning from the Middle East would sometimes be accompanied by their wives and children, like Sarah Cunningham, who was leaving Cairo to start a new life in Scotland with her husband and baby.
There was a lot of soldiers, and their wives and children walking around.
There wasn't many very young babies.
Mine was really very young, just over a year.
With only a third of the ship's capacity being utilised, the decision had been made to transport nearly 2,000 Italian POWs captured during the North African campaigns.
They were kept below deck.
They were being taken on the ship to go into English prison camps.
Returning home to join Bomber Command was RAF navigator Bryan Lawrence.
He well remembers the despondent mood among the prisoners.
I don't think the Italians wanted to be in the war at all.
I'm sure these people would have been much happier in London selling ice cream, than they were, sort of, in the desert, trying to fight the British.
On August 12th, 1942 the Laconia left Port Tufic with its mixed bag, destined for the UK.
Further passengers joined the ship en route in South Africa, including a young naval officer, heading home on shore leave.
The Laconia came in, and I joined her for the passage back to England.
She looked very tall, she was 20,000-odd tonnes.
She had seven decks, the top of which was the boat deck, and I saw the guns on the outer end, and I thought, "Well, got some sort of protection here," but I didn't think for one moment we were going to need it.
Until 1942, U-boat operations had been limited to the North Atlantic, but innovative means of refuelling, resupplying and rearming submarines at sea meant that ships could remain operational for months.
The U-boat war now extended into the South Atlantic for the first time, catching the Allies completely by surprise.
We were so short of escorts, and they were being used for other things which were regarded as more important, like convoys to Malta, North Africa, that sort of thing.
Josephine Pratchett had just fled the Japanese invasion of Singapore with her family.
The sense of relief that she shared with her younger brother was to be short-lived.
It actually hit home that we were going to be going through dangerous waters.
This was sailing home at the height of the U-boat war in the Atlantic.
It would be nice to have had a convoy, but So, we assumed, if we're not going to be escorted, if we can sail alone, that their Lordships must think that we're pretty safe.
Taking a relaxed view of life aboard ship was RAF armourer Ron Croxton.
He had just been evacuated from Crete.
When you're on the troopers, you're on the wall every morning at 10am.
You had a practice, and you had to dress accordingly, and report to your boat station, so what we did was grab a coat, water bottle, and your life jacket.
Your attitude was, "It won't happen to me.
" And you don't let it worry you.
I was very aware of everybody moaning about the ship.
They moaned about the food, they moaned about being uncomfortable.
They moaned that we were sitting targets, because of the smoke belching from the funnel.
She was old, this ship.
A modern ship doesn't produce smoke.
But an old one does.
And smoke on the horizon for a submarine was very easy to follow.
It's an old submarine, man, they've got the periscope up.
And they're just waiting until an appropriate time, and our appropriate time was about 8.
05pm at night, just as it was getting dark.
There was a dance that evening on board, and my parents were going up to it.
And I was detailed to baby-sit my brother.
I wouldn't be allowed in the dance anyway, at that age.
In those days, when you were 15, you were going on 8.
We had both changed into our pyjamas, and my brother had the top bunk and I had the bottom one.
And he got out a game of draughts, and while I was climbing up into the bunk, the first torpedo struck.
TORPEDO EXPLODES We heard this one bang, and we jumped up.
There was a deathly hush after the first explosion, because everybody, immediately, you know, and then the second one struck.
TORPEDO EXPLODES The ship shook.
The lights went out.
I was so frightened that I couldn't move at all.
People say that in these circumstances, you think of your past life.
I didn't think of mine, I only thought of my present one, and tried to get up to the boat deck.
I just stood still.
And my husband said, "come on, come on, there's something wrong here.
" And he dragged me out.
I was buying a bar of chocolate in the purser's cabin.
I gave him the money.
He entered it in the book.
Although we'd been hit by torpedoes, he very carefully took my tuppence, put it in his safe and shut the safe.
His accounts were going to be right to the end, even if they were down in the middle of the ocean.
We got up the baby and And people were pushing and shoving and screaming.
So I just panicked, then.
18 years of age.
Run down to the Run down three or four decks to the working alleyway.
And all that was on my mind was to go down and try to get my life jacket.
My father threw our life jackets at us.
They were hanging by the door.
We put them on.
He said, "Come on, up you go," and we rushed upstairs, just as we were, carrying the life jackets up to our lifeboat station, which we knew where it was, because we'd had so much drill.
The two torpedoes had both gone into holds where the Italians were.
They were on the water line of the ship, right down below.
They would be in hammocks and things like that.
They wouldn't stand a chance.
But there were still Italians who got out and were trying to push everybody out of the way, get into the boats, and the Polish guards were trying to stop them.
And at one point, I heard rifle fire.
And the poor Italians were trying to escape, you know.
And they didn't want them to escape.
They were shooting them! That's stupid.
But for the passengers on deck, the only thing that mattered was getting into the lifeboats.
Many of these were in poor condition, unable to cope with the inevitable overcrowding caused by the blind panic enveloping the ship.
We were all standing together waiting for one of these boats, and as it came down, there was a lot of people in it, but it got as far as our deck.
And this Mrs Lynsey, her name was, she lifted her young son, Dennis, up, put him in the boat, and before she could get in or anything, it had gone down.
It was still being lowered.
So she missed it.
And she shouted over to him, "Don't worry, I'll see you later.
" And the next thing we knew, because it was so overloaded, the rope snapped, and they all tipped into the sea.
I don't know how many people survived, but Dennis didn't.
A lot of people were thrown out.
It was all the pushing and shoving.
And they were getting eaten by sharks.
People were leaping into the boats.
The boats were full up.
People were jumping into the water.
We rushed around to our own boat station again, by which time, the petty officers and the seamen had managed to get our boat level with our deck.
And he said, the petty officer said, "Get in now," and he helped us in, we had to be helped over the rails.
And we did get in.
And a lot of the seamen were trying desperately to get this boat down to the water.
Which they eventually managed, but gradually, people were getting in it, you know, as it was going down.
And when it did arrive in the water and they cast away, then all the people who were swimming and calling for help, they climbed in as well.
They had taken the lifeboat down, full of people, there was about 60-odd people in.
And these ropes were hanging down, which had just lowered the lifeboat.
And they were shouting to me, "Jump, jump!" So I jumped from the side of the ship.
I got hold of the rope, and slid down right into that lifeboat.
And that's where I was saved, really.
Some good swimmers might have dived in.
I am not a good swimmer.
I did not dive in.
I waited, held on to the rail until the water came up to about a level where I could walk over the rail and into the water.
So there was nothing heroic there! Suddenly there was a terrific roar.
And the stern of the ship came up, and then it went down below, and then it was pitch darkness.
When a ship goes down, it sucks, and a ship of that size would suck everything down, and anybody down.
I went down when the boat went down.
But I think I was blown back to the surface, possibly by the boilers blowing up.
We could hear Italians screaming out.
"Aiee, aiee.
" It's an awful noise.
It really is.
Oh, God, it's a horrible thought to think of all the people, you know, that went down with that ship.
People were trapped in the engine room.
Firemen and all that.
There were some Italians trying to get into our boat in daylight, as soon as daylight appeared.
And there wasn't room.
If I tell you, there was not room, I mean, it was just jam-packed solid.
And they kept trying and trying.
And they were shot.
In the head.
You can imagine 60-odd people next to you.
Nowhere you can go, is there? There's sharks in the water.
Flippin' heck.
It was the longest night I've ever known.
It went on and on and on.
And in the morning, we found ourselves No ship, she'd gone.
But hundreds, literally hundreds of people, nearly all dead, in their life jackets.
I remember in particular a young girl with blonde hair, in a life jacket, on the surface, with her blonde hair spread out behind her.
Dead.
I remember a woman with a hat on.
Dead.
You heard the throb of the engine.
Chug, chug, chug And there it comes into view.
It looked like the bows of a destroyer coming.
And so we waited.
And eventually, as it got closer, one realised it was the conning tower of a submarine.
The conning tower opens, and two matelots get out, and they go to the machine gun on the bow.
We thought, well, you know, "Here we are, we've survived this far.
Now we're going to be machine-gunned.
" And it came alongside, and the captain came out with a megaphone, and in perfect English he said, "You are survivors from the Laconia?" We said, "Yes.
" He said, "I want all the women and children to come aboard my ship.
" Some of the men were a bit loath to let us go, naturally.
So he reassured them, and he said, "Please don't worry, they will be perfectly safe".
The U-boat captain, Werner Hartenstein, had joined the navy in 1928, and worked his way through the ranks to officer class.
He transferred to U-boat command in 1941, and was on his fourth patrol when he encountered the Laconia.
I remember him very well, but I would be hard put to describe him.
He was wearing a tattered cap, I remember, that was white.
A bit of a ginger beard.
I thought that he seemed quite a small man.
A slim person, he was.
No Nazi about it.
No Adolf Hitler or anything.
He was the one who sank us, he told us.
So I didn't have much, sort of feeling towards him or the crew.
The crew were very, very young.
Their average age was 19 or 20, and Hartenstein was 32.
They then started to give us water and soup.
Then we got back in the boat, but of course all those people who were badly injured couldn't come out of the boat.
He gave water, he sent water to them.
I thought, "What is he doing here?" Giving us water, which they must have a shortage of anyway, and endangering his boat.
This wasn't the normal U-boat captain, who certainly wouldn't have bothered about survivors.
We were the first boat that he rounded up, the very first.
Because we were the first, we were taken below.
They gave us a good meal, and then they told us to lie on the bunks.
Now, to a 15 a year-old girl with a brother 4.
5 years younger, it was wonderful.
They were very, very kind to us.
Especially to the kids.
They gave them big bars of chocolate, they kept them happy, you know, things they'd never seen for years.
But then you have the feeling, "Let's hope nobody depth-charges the submarine," because we'd be worse off, we'd be down below.
I stayed on the deck and talked to him, and he stayed more or less in the conning tower.
I suppose that was his duty, in case he had to do an emergency dive.
One of the officers come round and he said, "what's your name?" I said, "Johnson.
" "What's your Christian name?" I said, "Edward.
" He said, "Ah, Edward, "a good German name.
" It must have been unknown for an English sailor in the middle of the South Atlantic to go on board a U-boat.
I mean, you know, it was crazy.
It WAS strange.
But it was like .
.
almost like one of those dreams when things don't exactly fit.
But this is actually what happened.
Having secured the safety of nearly 400 survivors, Hartenstein realised his efforts would be in vain if he didn't get them to a rendezvous point as soon as possible.
He broke radio silence, and radioed that he would give safe passage to any boat coming out to pick up survivors.
My thought was that he was radioing people to get English ships to come, which he would then torpedo.
But of course, that wasn't the case.
But what the Germans didn't know was that the Americans had a secret air base on Ascension Island.
The exact sequence of events is unclear, but it seems as though Hartenstein's message had not been picked up.
There was some cloud at the time, and we heard a plane come over.
It was an American Liberator.
The U-boats all had Red Cross flags on the foredeck, which the aeroplane should've seen, and which it probably did see.
There's no part down in the book of rules of war, "What to do with a Red Cross submarine flying a Red Cross flag.
" We saw the bomb doors open.
We thought, "Good God, this is it.
" We saw the bombs come down.
BOMB EXPLODES The two lifeboats that were at the front of the tows were blown up.
It killed at least 100 people.
I think they were just ignorant of what was going on.
Hartenstein realised that he was now vulnerable to further attacks, and although the plane had left the area, he needed to offload his passengers immediately.
He told us that he was going to have to put us all back in the boats, "It's too dangerous for me to keep you here.
" He told us that he had radioed a Vichy French cruiser which was in the area, it was called the Gloire, and that it would pick us up.
The submarine commander had the safety of his crew to think of, so he ordered the lifeboats all to clear off, because he was going to submerge.
He wished us good luck and cut the boats free, and that was it.
And left us.
He went down slowly, so it didn't create a disturbance to the lifeboats.
A very thoughtful German.
That first day, it was very, very hot.
I was used to the heat already, but that was really hot.
We didn't talk a lot.
We were too dry, your mouth dries up.
Your tongue swells.
I had worked out rations, they worked out at a tablespoon of water in the morning and two tablespoons at night, sort of thing, which is not a lot.
You ought to try it sometime! My mother, she just happened to have her period when the ship was torpedoed.
Consequently, she was smothered in blood, as you can imagine.
They were wearing summer clothes, and the sharks were round the boat the whole time, and when somebody like me wanted to spend a penny and go to the loo, I had to get two people to hold me, put my bum over the side, and then one of the guys with the oar was poking away at the sharks.
I didn't take long, I can assure you! I was very, very quick.
I did, a couple of times, drink my own urine.
It's horrible.
I'll be honest with you, this is what I used to do, and probably others did it.
Salt water.
That's no good to you, is it? We knew that if we were in that boat for any length of time, people were going to start to die of thirst, and people did die in the boat.
The wounded people, etc, who died, one by one.
We just, as far as we could, gently put them over the side.
To start off with, we did say prayers for the first one or two that died.
But after that, it was just a question of disposal over the side, without any ceremony.
But the physical deprivations weren't the only hardships the survivors had to endure.
I can remember one or two being sort of, shall we say, nearly out of their mind.
There was one chap, and he went berserk.
He got hold of an axe or something, and he was going to chop the boat up.
He went round smashing things.
So, he was grabbed and put over the side.
We got rid of them, they died.
We had to.
One of the horrors of war.
The body got weaker.
We stopped rowing.
We spent all the days gradually getting quite drowsy.
You'd find yourself like this, you know? All you remember is sitting there, gazing into the distance.
There's nothing you could do.
You just had to wait and wait for something to happen.
What happened was after five and a half days, this big ship came towards us, a cruiser, it was, called the Gloire.
It was a very big battleship, I might say.
A battle cruiser, but a very big one.
It was a great feeling.
I thought, "Well, that's fine.
"We're near the end now.
" We were all clapping and cheering, we found the energy for that.
It was actually coming towards us, we were going to be rescued, yes! And that was, everybody was absolutely, really, really joyful.
And they put down climbing nets for us to climb up, which of course was a complete waste of time because nobody could really climb up.
We were hoisted up.
Taken on board by their French rescuers, the grateful survivors realised they still had a long journey ahead, but allowed themselves a moment to look back.
When we said goodbye to the lifeboats, we all stood at the side and watched it going on its way, up and down on the waves.
And that was wonderful.
Yeah, drifting away.
Well, that was beautiful.
When I heard later on that the submarine had been depth-charged in the West Indies, with loss of all life, I was rather sorry in some ways.
Because he was a very nice man.
And I've written various things that were happening on each day.
"Saturday, 12th September, 1942.
"Torpedoed 20.
07, sunk 20.
43.
" We were sitting targets because of the smoke belching from the funnel.
Your attitude, really, is, "It won't happen to me.
" It was the longest night I've ever known.
I was absolutely terrified.
"This is the end, now.
" There's nowhere you can go, is there? There's sharks in the water.
He was only doing his job.
I mean, that is war.
TORPEDO EXPLODES That was my first ship, yeah.
The Laconia.
And I was on here for nine months.
And that was my home.
Until it disappeared that night.
The Laconia was a luxurious Cunard passenger liner launched in 1921.
Her fortunes changed 20 years later, when she was commandeered as a transport for British troops engaged in fighting on the African continent.
I was so naive and young, that we sailed from Liverpool and I thought, I thought we were in New York the next day! That's how naive I was.
But we went.
We were going up to join the convoys.
With the U-boat war at its height in the North Atlantic, large convoys would be assembled before ships dared venture out into the open water.
Escorted by fast destroyers and aircraft carriers, slower vessels like the Laconia were thereby afforded some protection as they sailed towards their destinations.
Our first stop was Freetown.
Then from Freetown, Cape Town, around to Durban, up the coast to Mombasa, and then, our final destination was Port Tufic.
Port Tufic, at the southern end of the Suez Canal, was a major conduit for men and supplies during the war.
Officers returning from the Middle East would sometimes be accompanied by their wives and children, like Sarah Cunningham, who was leaving Cairo to start a new life in Scotland with her husband and baby.
There was a lot of soldiers, and their wives and children walking around.
There wasn't many very young babies.
Mine was really very young, just over a year.
With only a third of the ship's capacity being utilised, the decision had been made to transport nearly 2,000 Italian POWs captured during the North African campaigns.
They were kept below deck.
They were being taken on the ship to go into English prison camps.
Returning home to join Bomber Command was RAF navigator Bryan Lawrence.
He well remembers the despondent mood among the prisoners.
I don't think the Italians wanted to be in the war at all.
I'm sure these people would have been much happier in London selling ice cream, than they were, sort of, in the desert, trying to fight the British.
On August 12th, 1942 the Laconia left Port Tufic with its mixed bag, destined for the UK.
Further passengers joined the ship en route in South Africa, including a young naval officer, heading home on shore leave.
The Laconia came in, and I joined her for the passage back to England.
She looked very tall, she was 20,000-odd tonnes.
She had seven decks, the top of which was the boat deck, and I saw the guns on the outer end, and I thought, "Well, got some sort of protection here," but I didn't think for one moment we were going to need it.
Until 1942, U-boat operations had been limited to the North Atlantic, but innovative means of refuelling, resupplying and rearming submarines at sea meant that ships could remain operational for months.
The U-boat war now extended into the South Atlantic for the first time, catching the Allies completely by surprise.
We were so short of escorts, and they were being used for other things which were regarded as more important, like convoys to Malta, North Africa, that sort of thing.
Josephine Pratchett had just fled the Japanese invasion of Singapore with her family.
The sense of relief that she shared with her younger brother was to be short-lived.
It actually hit home that we were going to be going through dangerous waters.
This was sailing home at the height of the U-boat war in the Atlantic.
It would be nice to have had a convoy, but So, we assumed, if we're not going to be escorted, if we can sail alone, that their Lordships must think that we're pretty safe.
Taking a relaxed view of life aboard ship was RAF armourer Ron Croxton.
He had just been evacuated from Crete.
When you're on the troopers, you're on the wall every morning at 10am.
You had a practice, and you had to dress accordingly, and report to your boat station, so what we did was grab a coat, water bottle, and your life jacket.
Your attitude was, "It won't happen to me.
" And you don't let it worry you.
I was very aware of everybody moaning about the ship.
They moaned about the food, they moaned about being uncomfortable.
They moaned that we were sitting targets, because of the smoke belching from the funnel.
She was old, this ship.
A modern ship doesn't produce smoke.
But an old one does.
And smoke on the horizon for a submarine was very easy to follow.
It's an old submarine, man, they've got the periscope up.
And they're just waiting until an appropriate time, and our appropriate time was about 8.
05pm at night, just as it was getting dark.
There was a dance that evening on board, and my parents were going up to it.
And I was detailed to baby-sit my brother.
I wouldn't be allowed in the dance anyway, at that age.
In those days, when you were 15, you were going on 8.
We had both changed into our pyjamas, and my brother had the top bunk and I had the bottom one.
And he got out a game of draughts, and while I was climbing up into the bunk, the first torpedo struck.
TORPEDO EXPLODES We heard this one bang, and we jumped up.
There was a deathly hush after the first explosion, because everybody, immediately, you know, and then the second one struck.
TORPEDO EXPLODES The ship shook.
The lights went out.
I was so frightened that I couldn't move at all.
People say that in these circumstances, you think of your past life.
I didn't think of mine, I only thought of my present one, and tried to get up to the boat deck.
I just stood still.
And my husband said, "come on, come on, there's something wrong here.
" And he dragged me out.
I was buying a bar of chocolate in the purser's cabin.
I gave him the money.
He entered it in the book.
Although we'd been hit by torpedoes, he very carefully took my tuppence, put it in his safe and shut the safe.
His accounts were going to be right to the end, even if they were down in the middle of the ocean.
We got up the baby and And people were pushing and shoving and screaming.
So I just panicked, then.
18 years of age.
Run down to the Run down three or four decks to the working alleyway.
And all that was on my mind was to go down and try to get my life jacket.
My father threw our life jackets at us.
They were hanging by the door.
We put them on.
He said, "Come on, up you go," and we rushed upstairs, just as we were, carrying the life jackets up to our lifeboat station, which we knew where it was, because we'd had so much drill.
The two torpedoes had both gone into holds where the Italians were.
They were on the water line of the ship, right down below.
They would be in hammocks and things like that.
They wouldn't stand a chance.
But there were still Italians who got out and were trying to push everybody out of the way, get into the boats, and the Polish guards were trying to stop them.
And at one point, I heard rifle fire.
And the poor Italians were trying to escape, you know.
And they didn't want them to escape.
They were shooting them! That's stupid.
But for the passengers on deck, the only thing that mattered was getting into the lifeboats.
Many of these were in poor condition, unable to cope with the inevitable overcrowding caused by the blind panic enveloping the ship.
We were all standing together waiting for one of these boats, and as it came down, there was a lot of people in it, but it got as far as our deck.
And this Mrs Lynsey, her name was, she lifted her young son, Dennis, up, put him in the boat, and before she could get in or anything, it had gone down.
It was still being lowered.
So she missed it.
And she shouted over to him, "Don't worry, I'll see you later.
" And the next thing we knew, because it was so overloaded, the rope snapped, and they all tipped into the sea.
I don't know how many people survived, but Dennis didn't.
A lot of people were thrown out.
It was all the pushing and shoving.
And they were getting eaten by sharks.
People were leaping into the boats.
The boats were full up.
People were jumping into the water.
We rushed around to our own boat station again, by which time, the petty officers and the seamen had managed to get our boat level with our deck.
And he said, the petty officer said, "Get in now," and he helped us in, we had to be helped over the rails.
And we did get in.
And a lot of the seamen were trying desperately to get this boat down to the water.
Which they eventually managed, but gradually, people were getting in it, you know, as it was going down.
And when it did arrive in the water and they cast away, then all the people who were swimming and calling for help, they climbed in as well.
They had taken the lifeboat down, full of people, there was about 60-odd people in.
And these ropes were hanging down, which had just lowered the lifeboat.
And they were shouting to me, "Jump, jump!" So I jumped from the side of the ship.
I got hold of the rope, and slid down right into that lifeboat.
And that's where I was saved, really.
Some good swimmers might have dived in.
I am not a good swimmer.
I did not dive in.
I waited, held on to the rail until the water came up to about a level where I could walk over the rail and into the water.
So there was nothing heroic there! Suddenly there was a terrific roar.
And the stern of the ship came up, and then it went down below, and then it was pitch darkness.
When a ship goes down, it sucks, and a ship of that size would suck everything down, and anybody down.
I went down when the boat went down.
But I think I was blown back to the surface, possibly by the boilers blowing up.
We could hear Italians screaming out.
"Aiee, aiee.
" It's an awful noise.
It really is.
Oh, God, it's a horrible thought to think of all the people, you know, that went down with that ship.
People were trapped in the engine room.
Firemen and all that.
There were some Italians trying to get into our boat in daylight, as soon as daylight appeared.
And there wasn't room.
If I tell you, there was not room, I mean, it was just jam-packed solid.
And they kept trying and trying.
And they were shot.
In the head.
You can imagine 60-odd people next to you.
Nowhere you can go, is there? There's sharks in the water.
Flippin' heck.
It was the longest night I've ever known.
It went on and on and on.
And in the morning, we found ourselves No ship, she'd gone.
But hundreds, literally hundreds of people, nearly all dead, in their life jackets.
I remember in particular a young girl with blonde hair, in a life jacket, on the surface, with her blonde hair spread out behind her.
Dead.
I remember a woman with a hat on.
Dead.
You heard the throb of the engine.
Chug, chug, chug And there it comes into view.
It looked like the bows of a destroyer coming.
And so we waited.
And eventually, as it got closer, one realised it was the conning tower of a submarine.
The conning tower opens, and two matelots get out, and they go to the machine gun on the bow.
We thought, well, you know, "Here we are, we've survived this far.
Now we're going to be machine-gunned.
" And it came alongside, and the captain came out with a megaphone, and in perfect English he said, "You are survivors from the Laconia?" We said, "Yes.
" He said, "I want all the women and children to come aboard my ship.
" Some of the men were a bit loath to let us go, naturally.
So he reassured them, and he said, "Please don't worry, they will be perfectly safe".
The U-boat captain, Werner Hartenstein, had joined the navy in 1928, and worked his way through the ranks to officer class.
He transferred to U-boat command in 1941, and was on his fourth patrol when he encountered the Laconia.
I remember him very well, but I would be hard put to describe him.
He was wearing a tattered cap, I remember, that was white.
A bit of a ginger beard.
I thought that he seemed quite a small man.
A slim person, he was.
No Nazi about it.
No Adolf Hitler or anything.
He was the one who sank us, he told us.
So I didn't have much, sort of feeling towards him or the crew.
The crew were very, very young.
Their average age was 19 or 20, and Hartenstein was 32.
They then started to give us water and soup.
Then we got back in the boat, but of course all those people who were badly injured couldn't come out of the boat.
He gave water, he sent water to them.
I thought, "What is he doing here?" Giving us water, which they must have a shortage of anyway, and endangering his boat.
This wasn't the normal U-boat captain, who certainly wouldn't have bothered about survivors.
We were the first boat that he rounded up, the very first.
Because we were the first, we were taken below.
They gave us a good meal, and then they told us to lie on the bunks.
Now, to a 15 a year-old girl with a brother 4.
5 years younger, it was wonderful.
They were very, very kind to us.
Especially to the kids.
They gave them big bars of chocolate, they kept them happy, you know, things they'd never seen for years.
But then you have the feeling, "Let's hope nobody depth-charges the submarine," because we'd be worse off, we'd be down below.
I stayed on the deck and talked to him, and he stayed more or less in the conning tower.
I suppose that was his duty, in case he had to do an emergency dive.
One of the officers come round and he said, "what's your name?" I said, "Johnson.
" "What's your Christian name?" I said, "Edward.
" He said, "Ah, Edward, "a good German name.
" It must have been unknown for an English sailor in the middle of the South Atlantic to go on board a U-boat.
I mean, you know, it was crazy.
It WAS strange.
But it was like .
.
almost like one of those dreams when things don't exactly fit.
But this is actually what happened.
Having secured the safety of nearly 400 survivors, Hartenstein realised his efforts would be in vain if he didn't get them to a rendezvous point as soon as possible.
He broke radio silence, and radioed that he would give safe passage to any boat coming out to pick up survivors.
My thought was that he was radioing people to get English ships to come, which he would then torpedo.
But of course, that wasn't the case.
But what the Germans didn't know was that the Americans had a secret air base on Ascension Island.
The exact sequence of events is unclear, but it seems as though Hartenstein's message had not been picked up.
There was some cloud at the time, and we heard a plane come over.
It was an American Liberator.
The U-boats all had Red Cross flags on the foredeck, which the aeroplane should've seen, and which it probably did see.
There's no part down in the book of rules of war, "What to do with a Red Cross submarine flying a Red Cross flag.
" We saw the bomb doors open.
We thought, "Good God, this is it.
" We saw the bombs come down.
BOMB EXPLODES The two lifeboats that were at the front of the tows were blown up.
It killed at least 100 people.
I think they were just ignorant of what was going on.
Hartenstein realised that he was now vulnerable to further attacks, and although the plane had left the area, he needed to offload his passengers immediately.
He told us that he was going to have to put us all back in the boats, "It's too dangerous for me to keep you here.
" He told us that he had radioed a Vichy French cruiser which was in the area, it was called the Gloire, and that it would pick us up.
The submarine commander had the safety of his crew to think of, so he ordered the lifeboats all to clear off, because he was going to submerge.
He wished us good luck and cut the boats free, and that was it.
And left us.
He went down slowly, so it didn't create a disturbance to the lifeboats.
A very thoughtful German.
That first day, it was very, very hot.
I was used to the heat already, but that was really hot.
We didn't talk a lot.
We were too dry, your mouth dries up.
Your tongue swells.
I had worked out rations, they worked out at a tablespoon of water in the morning and two tablespoons at night, sort of thing, which is not a lot.
You ought to try it sometime! My mother, she just happened to have her period when the ship was torpedoed.
Consequently, she was smothered in blood, as you can imagine.
They were wearing summer clothes, and the sharks were round the boat the whole time, and when somebody like me wanted to spend a penny and go to the loo, I had to get two people to hold me, put my bum over the side, and then one of the guys with the oar was poking away at the sharks.
I didn't take long, I can assure you! I was very, very quick.
I did, a couple of times, drink my own urine.
It's horrible.
I'll be honest with you, this is what I used to do, and probably others did it.
Salt water.
That's no good to you, is it? We knew that if we were in that boat for any length of time, people were going to start to die of thirst, and people did die in the boat.
The wounded people, etc, who died, one by one.
We just, as far as we could, gently put them over the side.
To start off with, we did say prayers for the first one or two that died.
But after that, it was just a question of disposal over the side, without any ceremony.
But the physical deprivations weren't the only hardships the survivors had to endure.
I can remember one or two being sort of, shall we say, nearly out of their mind.
There was one chap, and he went berserk.
He got hold of an axe or something, and he was going to chop the boat up.
He went round smashing things.
So, he was grabbed and put over the side.
We got rid of them, they died.
We had to.
One of the horrors of war.
The body got weaker.
We stopped rowing.
We spent all the days gradually getting quite drowsy.
You'd find yourself like this, you know? All you remember is sitting there, gazing into the distance.
There's nothing you could do.
You just had to wait and wait for something to happen.
What happened was after five and a half days, this big ship came towards us, a cruiser, it was, called the Gloire.
It was a very big battleship, I might say.
A battle cruiser, but a very big one.
It was a great feeling.
I thought, "Well, that's fine.
"We're near the end now.
" We were all clapping and cheering, we found the energy for that.
It was actually coming towards us, we were going to be rescued, yes! And that was, everybody was absolutely, really, really joyful.
And they put down climbing nets for us to climb up, which of course was a complete waste of time because nobody could really climb up.
We were hoisted up.
Taken on board by their French rescuers, the grateful survivors realised they still had a long journey ahead, but allowed themselves a moment to look back.
When we said goodbye to the lifeboats, we all stood at the side and watched it going on its way, up and down on the waves.
And that was wonderful.
Yeah, drifting away.
Well, that was beautiful.
When I heard later on that the submarine had been depth-charged in the West Indies, with loss of all life, I was rather sorry in some ways.
Because he was a very nice man.