The Day War Broke Out

by Jacky Hyams

  Around 7pm, Mother dressed us for bed and helped us with our prayers, which ended ‘keep me safe till morning light’. Putting on an evening skirt and blouse (blue with large black buttons which I loved to play with), she tucked us into our bunks with our favourite stuffed toy animals and went down to dinner.

  7.39PM

  Lying in my bunk in the dark cabin, I was not quite asleep. Suddenly I heard and felt a terrific thump. In later years, watching war movies which showed merchant ships being torpedoed on the Atlantic convoys, I could not reconcile those spectacular explosions with the one I had felt on the Athenia. Still, it was severe and the huge ship suddenly lurched and took on a decided list, then slowly went dead in the water. I sat up in the bunk and waited. I have no vivid memory of fear, only a wondering of who would come and tell us what to do next. The stewardess arrived first, followed very soon by Mother.

  Down in the dining room, she had been seated at a table near the stairs. She ordered soup. While waiting for it to arrive, she read the Captain’s notice apologising for the reduced level of service. The soup soon came and she laid the notice down, took up her spoon and dipped it into the soup.

  It never reached her mouth. She recalled a ‘tremendous thud and the crash of breaking things’. The floor seemed to lift. There were shouts and screams. Then the lights went out. She was shocked.

  The stewards made for their stations without panic or hesitation. Mother made for the nearby stairs at once. The ship lurched, listed and then stabilised. She asked herself: Am I to die now?’ Then she suddenly realised that so much depended on her. ‘What will my husband feel? My children, quickly, I must reach them.’

  She remembered the directions, two flights up and turn left twice. She was helped by men’s lighted matches and their encouraging entreaties to keep calm. Reaching our passageway, she turned into a cabin: it was empty! Feeling desperate, she realised she had made a mistake and turned in too soon. Hurrying out, she found the right cabin and found us, ‘quiet but frightened, but oh, so very brave. It was they who gave me courage.’

  Together, the stewardess and Mother put lifebelts on my sister Barbara and I. Little Andrew was too small for one, so putting on a lifebelt herself, Mother lifted him up.

  It was very dark and I suggested we should get the flashlight from the dresser drawer. With Andrew and Barbara in her arms and followed by the stewardess and I, we moved into the passage. It seemed smoky; it smelt of cordite. The smoking-room floor was wet and Mother fell. But she was up again quickly, and moving through the swelling crowd, we hurried to our boat station to see the boat being lowered as we arrived. The stewardess gave us two blankets and Mother gave her the flashlight as she wanted to return to see that all her passengers’ cabins were empty.

  Right after the explosion Mother had taken off her skirt in order to move freely.

  I was wearing only pyjamas and Barbara a nightie. Andrew had on his pyjama jacket. Mother took off her blouse and wrapped it around Barbara and her stockings were put on Andrew. This left her just decent. Then she dropped one of the blankets and somebody took it away!

  Now we prepared to enter our lifeboat, swinging from its davits, in and out, in and out. Someone lifted me onto the ship’s rail. Looking down, I saw the dark and angry waves below. As the lifeboat swung into the rail, I was pitched headlong into it and grabbed by helping arms. How Mother made it with the two other children, I don’t know. But she did.

  Then began the lowering. It couldn’t be quick enough for Mother. There was trouble with the ropes at one end when we finally reached the water and they could not be released. Two men who seemed to be managing things finally got them cleared, but it was a nasty moment and she dreaded a spill. I recall all of this but I had the supreme confidence of a seven-year-old that the grown-ups would eventually get us away.

  We moved out quickly in case we should be drawn in by suction. A young girl took Andrew and the blanket and Mother held Barbara. I sat nearby. It was not fully dark and we could still see what we were doing. Not far away we could see the huge, beautiful ship remaining very steady and with only a very slight list.

  Only later would we know that Third Officer Colin Porteous, on the bridge when the torpedo struck, had immediately pushed a button which closed all watertight doors throughout the ship. As he sounded eight short and one long blast on the ship’s whistle, Athenia had heeled violently about five or six degrees to starboard, then slowly swung back to port and settled at about three degrees. She would remain afloat for another fifteen and a half hours and soon after 11am the next morning, tipping her bows skyward and slipping quietly, stern first, faster and faster, would be gone, her grave marked only by debris, bubbles and a vortex on the sea’s surface.

  Although the lifeboat was crowded, nobody panicked. There was water in the boat up to our knees and the seats were wet and cold because the lifeboat’s drain plug was not in place and could not be found. People took turns bailing to keep the boat from filling up. After an hour of frantic searching, someone found the drain plug, to everyone’s great relief. Although the sea was not very rough, some people were being sick. Others struck up a hymn and tried to keep spirits up by singing. That lasted for a while, but eventually everyone settled down to wait for rescue and try to keep as warm as possible.

  A twelve-year-old girl gave Barbara and Mother her rug. She was wearing a warm dress and had noticed that Barbara had only a nightgown and Mother her three pieces of underwear. Towards morning, I got close to Mother and she pulled me to her. The three of us huddled under a rug like a tent, to keep off the rain and wind. What a joy it was!

  We were fortunate enough to have an American sea captain in our boat and he took charge and did it well. People took turns with the rowing through the night, including Athenia’s nurse, a steward and an elderly American gentleman who had been at Mother’s table. Towards morning, the rowers became weary and our boat began taking the waves broadside. By now, they had grown quite big. Mother had a horror that the boat would capsize. The rescue ships, Knute Nelson, City of Flint and Axel Wenner-Gren’s private yacht Southern Cross had arrived during the night but we were far from them. [Wenner-Gren was a Swedish industrialist and, at that time, one of the richest people in the world; the yacht had once been owned by Howard Hughes.] But then, as dawn brightened, we saw two British destroyers approaching. What a joyful sight! Mother said that it was almost funny the way people tried not to sound too eager but couldn’t help showing their feelings.

  One of the destroyers, HMS Electra, soon drew near to our lifeboat. We heard words of warning, ‘Sit still’, ‘Keep your heads’, Just be patient’, then we were alongside. Down came a rope ladder followed immediately by a great, tall, sturdy sailor. One look at him was enough – we were safe!

  More sailors dropped into the lifeboat and began to get us aboard. Children first, we were boosted up and had to jump for the rope ladder as the boat came up on a swell. At this point Mother got her only injury, a bruised leg, when she swung onto the ladder and just escaped catching it between the lifeboat and the destroyer. Her only recollection of the ascent was ‘Thank goodness I was once a gymnastics teacher!’

  As her bare feet came into contact with Electra’s solid deck, she knew that all four of us were safe.

  The sailors took us below and brought tea and dry blankets. Their complete understanding and wonderful kindness released bottled-up feelings and tears of gratefulness and relief came to Mother. We were all separated coming aboard and I was taken over by the torpedomen’s mess. Slung up in a hammock just under a beam, I fell asleep in the warmth, crying for my drowned stuffed animals. I don’t remember how long I slept, but when I woke and sat up suddenly I hit my head hard on the steel deck overhead! Lying in my hammock and feeling quite seasick, I asked where my mother was. The torpedomen soon found her and reunited us. While we waited, one of them gave me an old Leading Torpedoman’s arm badge – I still have it today.

  Mother had already found Andrew and Barbara and we were all
taken to the engine room, washed up in buckets and changed into sailors’ warm, dry clothing.

  We ate too. I ate so many chocolate bars that I got sick (I wasn’t able to eat them again until the war was nearly over). But afterwards we were taken on deck and the clean, fresh air cleared my head and I felt good once more.

  Electra and her sister ships remained on the spot until evening, looking for the sub and watching for survivors. Towards evening, our sailor friend set out three mattresses for us on deck and settled his own on the outside. Despite a call for ‘Action Stations’ and a warning not to mind any depth-charge explosions we might hear, we all slept.

  By the morning of 5 September, we came into sight of Scotland. How destroyers can move! As Electra moored, people from our mess hurried on deck, but we waited below. As our turn came to disembark, one of the torpedomen, Jack Phelan, approached Mother and pressed something into her hand, saying, ‘Please take this. The men of my mess have collected it for you and the children, knowing you are without money or clothes.’

  This gesture meant a lot to her and she could not reply, holding back tears, her throat hurting and eyes burning until he was gone. Perhaps he misunderstood her silence for that December, safely in Canada, we received a Christmas card signed by the men of Electra’s torpedomen’s mess. With it came a letter from Jack Phelan dated 23 December 1939.

  Dear Mrs Gunyon,

  I was very pleased to know that you and the children arrived home quite safe and going by the snaps, the children look in wonderful health. But I think you still have a lot to forget. But all that will pass in time. I have always admired your courage and devotion which you gave to your children during that time and I wanted to help to lift that burden off your mind during your short stay with us.

  I have often wondered, you had my address. But you never wrote to me and I was thinking if it was on account of me collecting that small donation for you and the children, that it made you feel embarrassed to me.

  Well, this is only a short note also hoping that you and the children spent an enjoyable Christmas.

  Yours most sincerely,

  JACK PHELAN

  Once ashore, we were overwhelmed with kindness. Clothing had been collected and was handed out to everyone. Mother remarked that at some other time it might have been funny to see some people’s eagerness to claim the lovely silk underwear and stockings!

  Next came the trip to Glasgow by bus, a crowded hotel, a hasty meal, everyone bewildered, loudspeakers never ceasing their inquiries for somebody or other.

  At last our names were called and a friend of my father appeared like a fairy godfather. He had us installed in no time at a quiet hotel, where we rested and got warm.

  Within forty-eight hours of the sinking, in Brazil my father had received three telegrams assuring him that we were safe. We spent a couple of weeks at a friend’s lovely home on the moors at Dawlish in Devonshire.

  I got a new stuffed toy, a Scottie dog I named Larry, to replace those that had gone down on the Athenia. But I still grieved mightily for them.

  On Sunday, 1 October, we embarked for New York aboard the United States Lines’ Washington, anchoring the next day off the French town of Le Verdon, near Bordeaux. Here, she debarked French passengers and picked up a cargo of wines, automobiles and other cargo. On 5 October, we left France and that is when I learned about the Bay of Biscay. We tossed, jumped, bumped and went through agony and I was very seasick. I recall sucking lemons as a cure – it seemed to work.

  Arriving in New York Harbour on 12 October, shipyard workers repainted the huge American flag on each side of Washington’s hull, advertising her neutral status.

  My brother Andrew’s underpants, hung out the porthole to dry, received a coat of red paint.

  That evening, we landed and drove through the darkening streets of the city to my Uncle Mario’s home on Staten Island. The next day, we took a train north and finally arrived at my grandmother’s home in Oakville, Ontario.

  I still have my mother’s replacement passport, issued on 28 September 1939. It records our arrival in Canada at Fort Erie North on 13 October 1939. Another stamp testifies to us having been granted status as Canadian landed immigrants on 21 January 1942.

  Phil Gunyon settled in Canada. Following a long career with Alcan Aluminium Ltd, he has maintained a lifelong interest in military history.

  5

  HOW WE LIVED THEN

  ON 29 SEPTEMBER 1939, 65,000 PEOPLE (DESCRIBED BY the somewhat unlovely term as ‘enumerators’) were sent out to every home in the United Kingdom to register the details of everyone living in every household. This was Registration Day, planned by the General Registry Office in December 1938, and the information recorded that day is known as the 1939 Register.

  In a sense, the 1939 Register proved to be a mini census of the UK population at that time. A census is normally taken every ten years. But with war fast looming, the decision was taken to create the 1939 Register as a means of recording everyone in the country who would require an identity card.

  The next census was not due until 1941; it was half hoped, in 1938, that there might still be a peacetime census, making the 1939 Register an interim resource. Events, of course, proved otherwise, for the war lasted long after 1941 (a new census was not taken until 1951). As a result, the 1939 Register documents the basic details of the lives of forty-one million people as war broke out.

  On Registration Day, householders were asked to complete a form giving details of everyone living in their house. In return, they would receive an identity card and a ration book in the post. Everyone needed to give their full name, address, sex, date of birth, marital status, occupation and/or details of whether they were a member of the armed forces or reserves.

  The enumerator’s job, going from household to household, was not an enviable one, as described in January 1939 by the General Register Office.

  The qualities desirable in an enumerator have sometimes been underrated. His duties require an ability to master somewhat detailed official instructions and forms and a sufficient standard of clerical efficiency to enable him to carry out the procedure with precision and punctuality. Tact and courtesy are necessary in interviewing households in explaining what has to be done and in coping with occasional unobligingness.

  A regular and clearly legible handwriting is also necessary. The element of handwriting is of importance, since under somewhat disadvantageous conditions of house-to-house visits, the enumerator is required to make entries in the schedules delivered in his enumeration book and in other documents which will serve as a basis for much of the subsequent operations.

  There’s no official record of the level of ‘unobligingness’ the enumerators encountered in their painstaking trek from door to door – you need only use your imagination. Yet the 1939 Register is, effectively, a mini-snapshot of Britain at that precise point in time and reveals, in the small detail, much about the population as it went to war.

  On average, three people lived in each home. Their work or occupation gives important clues to their everyday lives; the 1939 Register shows very clearly that women at that time were still chained fast to domesticity. This would change, of course, through the war, as both voluntary and paid work for women increased. And slowly, but surely, the more affluent households were already beginning to buy labour-saving devices like the vacuum cleaner, which first became available in the 1930s. Yet the Register is still a reminder of how wartime altered the landscape for so many women. For good.

  Of the twenty-two million women on the 1939 Register, nine million recorded their occupation as ‘unpaid domestic duties’.

  Over three million women stated their occupation as ‘paid domestic duties’.

  In other words, nearly half the women in the country were involved in carrying out domestic work, most of it unpaid.

  The majority of the nineteen million men recorded in the Register were either retired or working in administrative work, i.e. clerical jobs. A nation of women still
tied to hearth and home and men dependent on a desk job wage until – or if – they volunteered for or were summoned to enrol for military service.

  Yet while the Register, now available online for England and Wales, gives everyone an important glimpse of the past, it cannot answer other big questions about the era: how were people living then? What were their homes like? How did they spend their leisure time? How did they get around? What were the elements that made up their day-to-day lives just before war changed everything?

  The memories of the Chamberlain broadcast of the previous chapter give a hint of what everyday life was like for some. But a closer look at Britain in the 1930s is required.

  A HOME OF YOUR OWN

  The 1930s in Britain tends to be mostly regarded as an era dominated by dole queues, hunger marches, unemployment and widespread poverty. This was the time of the Great Depression, the severe worldwide economic downturn which spread across the globe after the stock market crash of Wall Street in 1929, lasting for the better part of a decade.

  Britain’s wealth had once come from the industrial areas of the country, the heavy industry producing coal, iron, steel, ships and textiles in the nineteenth century. Since the First World War, these older industries were undergoing serious decline. They had not been able to modernise and were badly affected by competition from other countries. As a consequence, whole swaths of the country – especially areas in the North-East, North-West, the Scottish Lowlands and the mining villages of South Wales – faced record unemployment levels. Pits were closed. Mills were shut down. Millions were on the breadline.