Read The Sinking of the Lancastria Online
Authors: Jonathan Fenby
15. Stan Flowers got a will to live when he remembered it was his mother’s birthday.
16. Fred Coe, former boy soldier and Bren gunner on theLancastriawho was pulled from the water on to a rescue boat.
17. General Alan Brooke (centre), who had master-minded the second evacuation from France, with survivors and his staff on the voyage home.
18. British newspapers reported the disaster – six weeks later and for one day.
19. Churchill thought the press had had quite enough bad news. So he ordered that the disaster was not to be covered.
20. Jacqueline Tillyard, who floated away from the ship in her mother’s arms at the age of two.
21. Jacqueline Tillyard with Joan Rodes (right), the ‘Angel of St-Nazaire’ who crossed the bay on a rescue boat though pregnant.
22. Joan Rodes with two men she helped to save, Percy Fairfax (left) and George Youngs (right).
23. Survivors at the memorial service in London in 2004. Fred Coe holds the standard of the Lancastria Association; at the other end of the seat is Denis Maloney whose boat rescued Coe on 17 June 1940.