Non-Combatants
Page 28
Postscript
The Aurelia would have got back all right. She’d have had to, if only because we haven’t finished yet with Andy Holt. Either in convoy or solo she’d have made it into the Clyde in late afternoon on 8th September.
Evacuation of children from Britain to North America was stopped after the sinking of the SS City of Benares on 17th September. Only thirteen of the ninety children on board were saved, six of them after spending a week in a lifeboat in the care of a Miss Cornish. The boat was eventually spotted by a Sunderland of the RAF’s Coastal Command, which guided a destroyer to it, and the City of Benares’s fourth officer, Mr Cooper, who was in charge of the boat, stated in his report that all the children were in good form, having looked on the whole thing as a picnic.
Good for them. Less so for the other seventy-seven. The torpedo had hit at about ten p.m., when they’d have been in their bunks.
The extraordinary practice of loading leaky drums of aviation spirit into ships’ lower holds, with ammunition stowed on top of it and an improvised system of ‘steam-ejection’, is described by Captain R.F. McBrearty in his memoir Seafaring ’39–’45. It was resorted to in certain North African ports, where it was applied to ships supporting the post-Alamein advance of the British 8th Army.
Once again I’d like to thank Captain I.D. Irving, FNI for his kindness in vetting the script of this novel for me, as he did with its predecessor Westbound, Warbound.
First published in the United Kingdom in 2005 by Time Warner Books
This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
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Copyright © Alexander Fullerton, 2005
The moral right of Alexander Fullerton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781788630825
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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