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5043484 Bess Walder September 1940. A beautiful, fast and elegant ship sets sail from Liverpool bound for Halifax in Nova Scotia, Canada. She has a crew of 203 and 191 passengers, including 100 children aged 4 - 15, and is in convoy with 19 other ships. The children are sad to leave home but they are being sent away from the very real dangers of war. Most of the children had already experienced such dangers - five children in one family had been bombed out of their home only the night before. One fifteen year old girl, Bess Walder, boards the ship with her younger brother. She takes up the story: "Once on that lovely ship we all had the most wonderful time. We quickly made good friends with one another, the weather was good, we played all kinds of games on deck, enjoying the gorgeous food that we had not been able to have at home because of rationing. It was like being on holiday and the days went by like a beautiful dream." Despite the dangers, everyone was having the time of their lives. They did lifeboat drill and knew what to do without panic in an emergency. Four days out, with the City of Benares still going at the speed of the slowest ships in the convoy, the weather suddenly changed. "On the night of September 17th, fierce gale-force winds had whipped up enormous waves; heavy swells and rainstorms. By 10 o'clock most people had gone down to their cabins and the children were fast asleep after a rather tiring day. At about 10.30, with the storm still raging, a huge and terrible explosion occurred, causing enormous damage in the ship's hold and the area below the cabins where the children were sleeping. The ship had been hit by a torpedo from U-boat 48. The German submarine commander had been tracking our convoy for some time, and chose this moment to attack the largest ship in the convoy, The City of Benares. All the other ships in the convoy now quickly dispersed. This is exactly what all convoy vessels had to do at this stage in the war at sea, to save themselves from being attacked by the same submarine. There was nothing they could do to help and they were forced to leave the stricken ship to fend for herself. Crews aboard those ships were appalled and distraught at having to leave The City of Benares. But their ships' captains were already moving their vessels away from her. She was in a helpless state and listing very badly... she began to sink very quickly. From a lifeboat that was already waterlogged, and would soon overturn; like many others, I watched her sink. It was a shocking sight to see this lovely ship go down to the ocean floor. It is still etched on my mind today, as it will be on those of all who saw it happen. A nightmare scenario." In the night and day that followed, with waves and troughs made worse by the sinking ship, there were many acts of heroism including those by HMS Hurricane. Some adults were saved but only 14 children, three of whom later died. Miraculously on September 25th six young boys and a few adults, drifting alone in the Atlantic in an open boat, were spotted by the crew of a Sunderland Flying Boat. Even more miraculously, of very few children who survived the disaster with Bess, one was her brother. Sixty years on, Bess and other survivors have just held their last service of remembrance in a London church. How do people deal with memories such as Bess and her co-survivors have had to live with? This is what Bess said at the service: "We, who were saved, have had to come to terms with a problem of forgiveness. To forgive those who did so much harm to so many people and who have left a trail of misery and horror in their wake is not easy, and to obey Christ's teaching on forgiveness when we say the Lord's Prayer is still, for some, greatly difficult in this context. Sometime after the war I spoke to the wireless operator of U-boat 48. He told me that when they found out that the ship had been carrying children, many of the crew broke down in tears. Some of them, especially family men, left the submarine service later as a result of the sinking. He said that their consciences were greatly troubled, long after the event. He hoped that we would find it in our hearts to forgive them. As child survivors... we have each had to tackle in our own way the ethical issue of finding out how to forgive... Forgiveness can be very beneficial to the soul, reciprocal and helpful in healing deep wounds of the mind. It sometimes has to be a long process, one that may never quite be completed. It can continue throughout one's life. But never does it preclude forgetting."
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