6

The Ettrick

The Arandora Star had left Liverpool about 24 hours before us on the afternoon of the July 1 and had taken a route which had brought her north past the Isle of Man, through the North Channel between the Mull of Kintyre and Northern Ireland, past Malin Head, then due west into the open Atlantic. At approximately 1.30am on July 2, Gunther Prien, German U-boat commander, caught sight of the vessel in his periscope. Prien was the same commander who, on October 14, 1939, during the very first weeks of the war, had breached the supposedly impregnable defences at Scapa Flow, Orkney, to sink the battleship Royal Oak.

As his log book later showed, he was returning to base from a tour of duty in the North Atlantic, with just one torpedo remaining in the boat’s arsenal. His instruments had alerted him to the presence of a ship in his vicinity and as he surveyed the Arandora Star through his periscope, he noted that the unmarked British vessel carried armaments fore and aft. He launched his last torpedo at her.

It struck in the boiler-room area in the aft region of the ship and within 30 minutes the Arandora Star sank to the bottom of the sea, taking about 720 souls with her. The full extent of the losses will never be known because the haphazard method of loading did not make for accuracy of count. The records show that she was carrying 1600 persons on board of which 374 were British, made up of soldiers and crew, 478 were German, consisting of the crews of two captured merchant ships, German nationals living in Britain and German-Jewish refugees. Seven hundred and twelve were Italians, all civilians living in the UK and broadly representative of the Italian immigrants there. The official casualty list showed that 486 Italians, 156 Germans and 79 Britons died.

To the prisoners on the Ettrick the peril of our situation was only too apparent. Imprisoned as we were in the hold behind the fences of barbed wire, in the event of an emergency we would be caught in a trap and perish without the slightest hope of escape. Captain Vinden’s promise that it would not be a long journey was our only consolation. Perhaps the Isle of Man was indeed our destination and if so our confinement would last for only a few hours.

I decided to stay for as long as possible on the deck area as I had no desire to go back into the cramped and badly-lit hold. At least I could breathe some fresh air. The soldiers on the other side of the wire seemed to have a friendly enough aspect, so I attempted a conversation with them. At the sound of my Scottish accent they responded freely enough, and expressed amazement at the nationality of their prisoners. They had been told that the men behind the wire were German PoWs and to be extremely careful when approaching them. Names and places of origin were exchanged. One of the soldiers hailed from Glasgow, knew our shop well and he promised me that on his return to Scotland he would get in touch with my parents with news of my whereabouts. Years later I was to learn that the soldier had indeed kept his promise, much to the relief of my parents. The news of the sinking of the Arandora Star with heavy internee casualties had been released in the UK to the consternation of every Italian family who thought that their relatives might have been on board that ship.

A chance remark from one of the guards revealed that the ship’s destination was Canada and not the Isle of Man, as had been generally supposed. The information spread like wildfire through the prisoners, creating panic amongst us. To cross the Atlantic under such conditions, caged in like so many animals? How long would the journey take? It was just not possible, and many of the prisoners refused to believe the guard’s remarks, repeating Captain Vinden’s comment about a short journey. As the hours passed however, it became plain that the Isle of Man was being left far behind and the realisation that Canada was the destination set in.

Fortunately no one on board then knew the fate that had befallen the Arandora Star some hours before. As it was, the fear of an Atlantic crossing and the prospect of some unknown fate in far-off Canada only increased the misery of the men packed into the claustrophobic confines of the hold. Had the Ettrick been torpedoed and sunk there is no question that all the prisoners on board would have gone down with her, given the manner of their confinement. The ship was crammed to overflowing with a total of 3,500 men. Of these, 385 comprised the British crew and soldiers, commanded by Captain Howell. The prisoners consisted of 900 German PoWs of all ranks, about 1,800 Jewish refugees and German civilians and 407 Italians, 257 of them civilians and 150 merchant seamen. There were more men on the Ettrick than on the Arandora Star, a far bigger ship. The Ettrick, however, was a troop carrier and was designed to accommodate 2,800 men, though not in conditions such as we experienced. The presence of 900 highly-trained German soldiers who might have been a threat to crew and guards was probably the reason for the proliferation of barbed wire. The fact remains that the Ettrick was nothing less than a potential floating coffin.

The rumours persisted but on the second day at sea Captain Vinden confirmed that our destination was Canada. However, the leaked information from soldier to prisoner had a serious consequence for us. The free deck area next to the prisoners’ cage was declared out of bounds to soldiers and crew alike, much to the regret of the prisoners who thereby lost a good source of cigarettes and information.

The news that Canada was indeed to be our destination cast a pall of gloom over us. The only ones happy at the prospect of landing in Canada were members of the Jewish groups on board. Although not actively persecuted as the German Jews had been, Italian Jews had suffered under the impact of the Fascist race laws of 1939, under which no Jew could hold government office, practise medicine or law, or follow the teaching professions.

Now, faced with what they thought was the certainty of a Nazi victory and consequently a Hitler-dominated Britain and Europe, the Italian Jews on board were glad to be leaving a continent which promised only the prospect of more persecution and suffering. The hundreds of German and Austrian Jews on board were doubly happy at the thought of Canada, for these refugees had known the terrors of Nazi persecution at first hand. But for the internees resident in Britain, exile to Canada meant separation from families and loved ones, because in the event of an Axis victory, which at that moment seemed probable, they worried that they might never again see their homes and families.

There was one Jew amongst them however who refused to believe the story about our Canadian destination. Roberto Tagiuri was a young lawyer specialising in international law and he spent his days proclaiming to all and sundry, including a stone-faced Captain Vinden when available, that the transportation of civilian internees across war zones where they could be at risk, was illegal. It was just not conceivable that Britain could be in violation of the law and therefore Canada could not possibly be our destination!

Three weeks and more had now gone by since our internment. In that time we had been cut off from all news of the war. Wave upon wave of rumour swept through the prisoners and grew wilder as they spread. The almost unanimous feeling was that now France had fallen, Britain could not hold out against the Axis powers. The non-Jewish civilians were acutely worried that if the war were to end in a matter of weeks, they might find it difficult, if not impossible, to return home.

The weather, which had been warm and sunny for weeks, now worsened. The wind rose to gale force and the heavy seas brought the added misery of seasickness. There was hardly a man unaffected by the heaving motion of the ship and the smell of vomit and sickness lay heavy in the cramped confines of the hold. The inadequate flow of air through the ventilation ducts did little to dispel the laden atmosphere. The bad weather brought one benefit: it made us forget our constant yearning for proper food. Our rations each day consisted solely of bully beef and hard biscuits, masses of which were dumped each morning at the wire gate for distribution amongst us. No eating utensils were provided, apart from a tin mug for each man which could be filled at will from large tea urns set with their spouts inside the wire. One prisoner with some medical knowledge was heard to wonder how long it would be before we developed scurvy on such a diet!

The stormy weather lasted for two days, and the misery of the seasickness also served to dull the news of our Canadian destination. Once the men were able to move around more or less normally, a rota of sorts was established to give everyone a chance of going on deck to breathe some fresh air and to see some daylight.

An important difference between PoWs and civilian internees was that the latter had never been subjected to military discipline. Some of them did not take kindly to being told what to do in circumstances which required obedience and cooperation, and the group in the hold of the Ettrick at times proved difficult to handle. The sailors obeyed the commands of their officers quickly enough, but some of the civilians were reluctant to obey requests even if for the common good. In such cases force had to be applied, and this was done by volunteers with the necessary physical attributes.

Many prisoners preferred not to make use of the deck rota, and sat instead apathetically in the dim confines of the hold, but the majority were only too anxious to stay on deck for as long as possible for fresh air. A few however had to be forcibly removed from the deck to give everyone an opportunity to get away from the claustrophobic hold. Although the Ettrick had been designed as a troop ship, with adequate toilet facilities in normal circumstances, the latrines had been unable to cope with a combination of overcrowding and seasickness. Buckets were provided for emergency use. When full, these had to be emptied over the side by the prisoners and because hours would sometimes pass before a guard was provided as escort, the smell was terrible. It was small wonder that some prisoners did all they could to spend more than their allotted time on deck.

We had thought that the conditions at Warth Mills were bad, but what we had to undergo on the Ettrick was infinitely worse. Ralph Taglione, a Londoner and manager of the Café Royal in Regent Street, had appointed himself as spokesman for the civilians. Merchant seaman Captain Bonorino acted for the sailors, and between them some semblance of order was imposed in the hold. But protests were made in vain to the guards about the conditions in the hold. On one occasion, Captain Bonorino, with me at his side as interpreter, insisted to a soldier that the captain be sent for. Vinden listened impassively as Bonorino ran off a long list of complaints in Italian, then answered roughly in the same language.

‘Fatela finita con questi pianti. Non lo sapete che siamo in guerra? Voi Italiani siete buoni soltanto per cantare e per chiavare.’¹

Even if this was an accurate statement, it hardly justified being kept in such appalling conditions.

He then turned brusquely and limped off. Bonorino shrugged stoically.

‘A quello qualche Italiano gli deve aver fatto le corna.’²