大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from 大象传媒 London CSV on behalf of Leonard Eker and has been added with his permission. He fully understands th site's terms and conditions.

In June 1940 when I was nearly 13, my father decided to send my mother, younger sister and brother and me to Australia as invasion was imminent. We sailed from Liverpool on the "Samaria" and when we said goodbye to my father on the quayside I was extremely shocked to see my father crying, as I had always regarded him as a man of steel.

As we left Liverpool we were joined by the"Arandorra Star", and a British destroyer which escorted us for three days. The Arandorra sailed towards Montreal ,but never arrived. We headed for New York.

In May 1943 my father decided to bring us all home and we sailed on a neutral Portuguese ship, the SS Serpa Pinto to Lisbon.

We were due to fly from there to the UK by British Airways. At that time there was an unwritten agreement between the Germans and British that passenger planes from neutral countries to the UK would not be atacked. One evening we all went to the airport to fly to UK, but my mother refused to board the plane as they could not find all her baggage. That plane was shot down by a German fighter plane. Leslie Howard was on board and was killed.
In 1945 while serving in the Merchant Navy the troopship on which I was travelling, the "Scythia" had to pull over in the Suez canal to let another ship pass in the other direction. Lo and behold, that was the Samaria, the ship that had taken me to America in 1940! It had survived the War.

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