The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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5043346 Maud Gorringe Deane (d.18th Sep 1940) My Grandmother Maud Gorringe Deane was lost on the City of Benares and I would like to share her story. In 1935 my grandmother was widowed, she was left with only one child Heather, my mother, still at home. They lived in Barbados and in 1938 she thought it was time my mother went to England. Of course war broke out soon after and my mothers siblings thought it would be better for her to return to Barbados for her own safety. There was some family disagreement over the opinion that she was putting her life in danger for Heather. She secured passage on the City of Benares, to help with the children evacuees, through a doctor friend of her late husbands, who was also a doctor. While she was in Liverpool awaiting departure my mother had a premonition and wired her mother not to leave. On receiving the telegram my grandmother telephoned my mother Heather and it was decided she would indeed leave for Canada and then return to Barbados. My mother was later devastated to learn that the ship had sailed on Friday the 13th. My mother died last year and the last year of her life was plagued with thoughts of her mother and an overwhelming feeling of guilt. Her relationship with her siblings was forever changed by this tragic event. She was 19 years old, left in a strange country at war. Sarah Jane Card Related Content: SS City of Benares Can you help us to add to our records? Add a record to our website. The names and stories on this website have been submitted by their relatives and friends. If your relations are not listed please add their names so that others can read about them Did you or your relatives live through the Second World War? Do you have any photos, newspaper clippings, postcards or letters from that period? Have you researched the names on your local or war memorial? Were you or your relative evacuated? Did an air raid affect your area? If so please let us know. Help us to build a database of information on those who served both at home and abroad so that future generations may learn of their sacrifice. Contact us. Celebrate your own Family History Celebrate by honouring members of your family who served in the Secomd World War both in the forces and at home. We love to hear about the soldiers, but also remember the many who served in support roles, nurses, doctors, land army, muntions workers etc. Please use our Family History resources to find out more about your relatives. Then please send in a short article, with a photo if possible, so that they can be remembered on these pages.

The free section of the Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers. We have been helping people find out more about their relatives wartime experiences since 1999 by recording and preserving recollections, documents, photographs and small items. The website is paid for out of our own pockets, library subscriptions and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources and we currently have a huge backlog of submissions. If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running. Hosted by: The Wartime Memories Project Website is archived for preservation by the British Library Copyright MCMXCIX - MMXXIV - All Rights Reserved We do not permit the use of any content from this website for the training of LLMs or for use in Generative AI, it also may not be scraped for the purpose of creating other websites.