Blitz Kids (15 page)

As the day broke, Colin continued to believe that salvation would come but he also knew if he fell asleep he would die before the rescuers arrived. Every element of his being was thrown into staying awake. He
concentrated on the brave singing of the adults around him, as they too attempted to raise their spirits. He continued with the grim task of pushing away the corpses that endlessly rolled from the waters into the ailing lifeboat. All the time he knew that a single heavy wave might be enough finally to submerge them.

By late morning the rains ceased and the survivors attempted to use the weak sun to dry their clothes and revive their numb flesh. Clothing and blankets were laid out to dry, ready in case the storm rose again. For some there was nothing to be done. Bess and Beth, the two girls hanging on to the upturned lifeboat, had no relief from the waters. There was nowhere for them to go. At one point they spotted a lifeboat and tried to call out, but could not raise a sound. Their exertions the previous night had left their throats dry. Yet they had been spotted, though as fast as the sailors on the nearby lifeboat attempted to work the vessel towards them, the waves beat them back. By the time the waves had finally subsided, the girls were out of sight again. Nonetheless, the girls hung on and were not alone in their fortitude.

In the aftermath of the sinking, many of the children had displayed mental and physical courage. Colin had amazed the adults by his efforts to help his fellow passengers and keep the dead from rolling back into the boat. Elsewhere, a girl urged her mother to keep awake and stay alive. The desperate mother suggested they take off their lifebelts, slip over the side of the boat and go to sleep in the water. It was a touching invitation to suicide, a way that mother and daughter might at least die together. Yet the girl shouted at her mother, urging her to see sense, insisting that rescue would come and they should be alive to see it. On one of the rafts, an evacuee and a sailor toiled to rescue a sailor who had slipped overboard. Grabbing the man under his arms they somehow managed to pull him back to safety. The sailor was amazed at the strength of the child who, despite a freezing night perched atop a life raft, had summoned from somewhere the energy to help pull the man to safety.

And so the day continued: some people died whilst others defied death, fighting back through the cold and the pain to keep themselves alive, just hoping a rescue boat might be on its way. All day, this thought filled their minds: stay awake long enough and surely a boat must come. It was simple: the mentally strong would live, the weak
would die. Yet with the light slowly fading even the strongest among them began to wilt. Through the night and the morning, they had been pitching over the waves, desperate to be rescued, yet no one had come. Certainly some of the survivors claimed they had seen boats, whether they were real or imagined was anybody’s guess.

Yet someone out there was searching for them. Detached from its convoy duties, HMS
Hurricane
, a Royal Navy destroyer, had been ordered to find the
Benares
survivors. The ship’s captain had headed through the storm, coaxing as much speed as was wise to reach the position of the lifeboats. Spurring him on was the knowledge that so many children had been aboard the ship. Captain Simms ordered all lookouts into position and set the ship on a course to conduct a ‘box search’ that would cover the entire area in which survivors might be expected to be found.

At first the
Hurricane
found nothing but then the sea began to reveal a lucky few. The first boat to be spotted contained survivors from a merchant vessel that had been sunk the same night. As fortune had it, two of the children from the
Benares
were aboard the craft, the first of the evacuees to be rescued. The next lifeboat spotted from the
Hurricane
proved less encouraging. The warship launched her whaler, sending sailors to investigate. They struck out through the waves to reach the lifeboat, on which they had counted twenty survivors. But it was an illusion. The lifeboat carried twenty corpses: all had succumbed to the elements during the night.

However, as the search continued, the news began to improve and, one by one, the lifeboats were located. It was not a quick process, as a box search requires skilful navigation and endless patience, but it was worthwhile. The sailors steered carefully, ensuring the destroyer did not swamp the lifeboats and rafts as it approached. On one occasion, as it was alongside a raft while a young boy was being pulled up from below, a sudden movement of the warship swamped the raft, washing two sailors overboard. The two exhausted men were saved by a trio of sailors who dived overboard before the sea could sweep them away. The eight-year-old boy who had been lifted to safety was taken to the
Hurricane
’s engine room where he was revived.

On Lifeboat No. 10, just one child had survived and fourteen had died. As they reached Lifeboat No. 11, the sailors found just fourteen
passengers had survived, with twenty having perished overnight, including nine of the eleven children who boarded from the stricken liner. One of the survivors was Louis Walder, the brother of Bess Walder who was still adrift, clinging desperately to an upturned lifeboat. The other was Rex Thorne, whose sister had perished as the
Benares
launched its lifeboats. He was not alone in his suffering: as the survivors were slowly lifted onboard the
Hurricane
a fortunate few were joyfully reunited with their families, while others had their worst fears confirmed.

When Bess Walder and Beth Cummings were finally rescued, the sailors were shocked to find the girls had survived their ordeal. They were so cold and exhausted their frozen and swollen fingers had to be prised from their grip on the lifeboat. It seemed the girls were on the brink of succumbing to exposure as they could hardly move and did not respond to obvious pain. They could not speak and their mouths and throats were filled with sores. It was intensely painful and they could hardly swallow the drinks they were offered – but they were alive.

Finally, HMS
Hurricane
reached Lifeboat No. 2 where Colin Ryder Richardson had somehow managed to survive. At first he couldn’t believe it. He had been thinking he would see a ship but nothing had arrived. All he could think was ‘Where’s the bloody Navy?’ But now the moment had come. Suddenly, the increasingly drowsy boy looked up and saw the
Hurricane
, his thoughts immediately changing: ‘I thought, she looks so beautiful.’ As they neared Lifeboat No. 2, the sailors were astounded to hear the survivors singing ‘Rule Britannia’. The first to leave the half-submerged lifeboat was the eleven-year-old Colin. He had been told to climb up the scrambling nets to reach the decks, but he was too weak to do so. Instead, a rope was placed around him and he was pulled towards the deck. He was shaking with cold and could hardly control his body, feeling nothing below the waist. His skin seemed waterlogged and as ‘soft as jelly’. Whilst he had been so brave during the night, his ordeal was over and finally his body and mind succumbed to the cold. He could no longer stand up and was immediately rushed to the engine room to join other survivors.

Once aboard, the survivors were washed down, cuts were treated to prevent infection and frostbitten limbs carefully cleaned. Many had skin that was swollen and split as a result of their prolonged immersion
in water. As the children were laid down to go to sleep, they were watched over to prevent them slipping into a coma. Despite all efforts, three of the children died after being rescued.

Although the captain and crew of the
Hurricane
believed they had rescued all the survivors, they were wrong. The first boat they had found was not from the
Benares
but from the
Marina
, the merchant ship that had been torpedoed the same night and which had carried a number of survivors from the liner. Lifeboat No. 12 had been missed. With a large complement of sailors onboard, the craft had not remained on the same patch of water. Instead, they had set sail for the nearest land, the coast of Ireland, hundreds of miles to the east.

There were forty-six people on board, a combination of seamen (both British and Indian), passengers and six children. The six boys were thirteen-year-old Ken Sparks, eleven year olds Howard Claytor, Paul Shearing and Fred Steels, and nine year olds Billy Short and Derek Capel. The experience of the sailors was vital to any hopes of survival. Most importantly they could navigate, were strong enough, initially, to work the ‘Fleming’ gear to help move the craft through the waters and vitally could organize the precious food rations to ensure they could be distributed fairly and last for a week. The boys in the lifeboat were lucky to be under a canvas shelter, rigged up by the sailors to protect the youngsters from the elements.

The boys on Lifeboat No. 12 were in many ways fortunate. Unlike some of the other boats the passengers were dry, their boat not having been swamped by the waves like the other craft. That said, their ordeal was only just beginning. The other boats had been the scene of immediate misery, with sodden and shivering people just hanging on for survival. For Lifeboat No. 12 the sufferings took longer to start but endured for days after. The cold was something none who lived through it could ever forget. Even wrapped up in blankets and huddled in their shelter, the boys couldn’t avoid the weather. The wind burned their skin, dried and chapped their lips. Salt particles formed in their clothes and matted their hair. Their mouths grew parched and dry, leaving them hardly able to swallow the biscuits they received for their meals. It was the ultimate agony, surrounded by water but dying of thirst. Each day they received seemingly miserly rations, yet these were doled out in such a way to keep them alive for as long as possible. A
few sips of water and a mouthful of ship’s biscuits, supplemented at times with thin slices of tinned fruit, did just enough to keep them alive.

There were a few moments of relief. The sight of whales skimming through the waters gave them something to occupy their minds for a few moments. One of the sailors cheered them by tirelessly undertaking daily swims, as if to prove that if he had sufficient energy to keep moving then so should they. To keep their minds off their misery, the one woman on the boat – a children’s escort named Mary Cornish – made up stories. These featured the popular character Bulldog Drummond, a hero known for the sort of heroics popular in the period. She had no idea where her stories were heading – or, indeed, whether the boys would survive long enough to hear the ending – but she knew it was vital to keep their spirits up. She also attempted to calm the boys by stressing that they were, just like Bulldog Drummond, living through their own personal adventure. She told them that any number of other British boys would envy them their adventure.

Yet for all its initial excitement, this was not a glamorous escapade. Misery was heaped upon misery as the boys watched the adults around them suffer. There was a seriously ill priest curled up before them. Worst of all, some were reduced to madness with one suicidal sailor diving overboard and surrendering to the waves. Such incidents lowered their morale, with their spirits only lifted again when the
ever-decreasing
rations were issued.

As the days passed it was the boys’ turn to be touched by madness. One of their number, Paul Shearing, was reduced to crying out as his desire for water took over. He screamed out in recognition of his own madness, his desperate desire for liquid to sate his thirst. Those assisting him noted how the boy’s feet and legs were bloated and marked with sores. It was clear he was dying and a small extra measure of water was surreptitiously smuggled to him, helping ward off the effects of thirst and hunger for a few brief minutes.

Wrapping clothes around Paul’s legs and body to raise his body temperature, the adults tried to clean and dress his swollen legs, soothing the sores that afflicted him. They rubbed the puffy flesh to aid his circulation, in the hope of warding off frostbite. It was desperate and seemingly doomed to failure, but it was all they could do in the circumstances. Yet for all it seemed the boy could not possibly survive,
by the eighth morning Paul had somehow defied the odds. He was still on the brink of madness and death, but he was still there in the boat along with the five other boys.

Though the boys did not know it then, their ordeal was almost over. After more than a week adrift their supplies were almost exhausted. A little water remained but it was hardly enough to do more than just wet their lips. Some food was still available but without water there was little hope anybody could generate enough saliva to swallow it. Though only the sailors realized it, the inhabitants of Lifeboat No. 12 were facing their final hours.

Somehow, seemingly out of nowhere, salvation finally came. It was one of the children, Ken Sparks, who first spotted it. He spotted a dot in the sky. At first the others dismissed it as a bird, a cloud or a trick of the light – more likely a trick of the mind. From his parched throat came the cry, ‘Plane!’ Some ignored him but others followed his gaze. Next the boy was on his feet waving his shirt in the direction of the apparition. Soon it came closer, revealing its form: it was a plane. For the children, this soon took on an element of a favourite wartime game. All across Britain, boys had developed a deep interest in aviation, learning to identify aircraft by their silhouettes. In the summer of 1940 plane-spotting had become the number one pastime for many youths, developing childish rivalries of who could best identify the aircraft – both British and German – that filled the skies. Those who had studied seaplanes soon realized this was a Short Sunderland, an aircraft that hunted submarines across the seas around Britain.

Though the plane came close, there was still some time before salvation would come. Unable to land on the choppy seas, the crew instead signalled to the sailors by Morse code signalling lamp, telling them that another plane would soon be with them, to be followed by a ship. True to their word, the plane soon arrived, dropping food and water to the desperate passengers of Lifeboat No. 12. Within minutes they were gorging themselves in anticipation of the forthcoming relief. Then what had become unthinkable finally came: on the horizon appeared HMS
Anthony
.