TERRIBLE SCENES

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 4, 4 July 1940, Page 12

TERRIBLE SCENES

SCRAMBLE TO ESCAPE

WRECK OF ARANDORA STAR

GERMANS & ITALIANS

LONDON, July 3

British soldiers who acted as guards described the terrible scenes on board the torpedoed liner Arandora Star before the vessel sank. There was panic, particularly among the Germans, who were awakened by the terrific crash.

One soldier said that the Germans and Italians behaved just as. one expected them to behave—they thought of their own skins first. They fought each. other in a mad scramble for the

boats,

Another soldier described a. wild rush to slide down a rope. Bitter hostility between the Germans and the Italians was apparent on the liner and on the British ship that picked them up, and the troops had to be constantly on guard to prevent them coming to blows.

A third soldier said: "There was such a scramble that we had no opportunity of getting into the lifeboats. We just grabbed.a plank of wood apiece and jumped for it ; " The sea was not rough, but all around it was strewn with wreckage and bodies.

After some of the soldiers had been in the water .two hours they were picked up by a lifeboat which already had 150 people on board. .

One German, unlike his compatriots, behaved heroically. When the lifeboat capsized he took command of the situation, summoned assistance from those in the water around him, managed to right the boat, and then set out to rescue those in the water.