WITHOUT WARNING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 July 1940, Page 5

WITHOUT WARNING

TORPEDOING OF BRITISH SHIP,. CARRYING ENEMY INTERNEES POOR SHOWING MADE BY GERMANS. LAUNCHING OF LIFEBOATS HAMPERED. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day. 10.50 a.m.) LONDON, July 3.' One thousand scantily-clad survivors of the Arandora Star, of 15,305 tons, which a U-boat torpedoed when site was carrying 1500 German and Italian internees to Canada, have landed at a Scottish port. British soldiers were aboard guarding the internees. The ship went down with many Germans and Italians, after a panic which seriously hampered the launching of lifeboats. Two soldiers said the ship was struck without warning. One said: “We cursed the U-boat but the Germans and Italians cursed more. They were almost ferocious in denunciation of this type of warfare. Such was the scramble that we had no opportunity for getting into a lifeboat.” The water was strewn with wreckage and bodies. The captain and several of the ship’s officers were standing on the bridge decks and several of them are feared to have been lost. A British ship picked up many survivors. The soldiers bitterly criticised the conduct of tiie German prisoners who were "big hulking brutes who tried to sweep the Italians aside and had to be forcibly restrained. Bitter hostility between the Germans and Italians developed both on the liner and on the rescue ship. Troops were constantly on guard to prevent fights. There is no estimate available of the casualties (but the Italians, who were mostly tradesmen in the United Kingdom, apparently were the worst sufferers.